Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

The other Egyptian woman of whom Hebrew history speaks is Pharaoh's daughter, who, bathing in the Nile, with her maidens, discovered the infant who was destined to lead Israel out of Egypt and become the chief power in moulding the Hebrew commonwealth. The young Egyptian woman who became a mother to the child Moses, gave him all the advantages of Egyptian culture, which for those days were by no means meagre, and so played no insignificant part in the making of a lawgiver, and through him, in the making of a nation, whose moral and religious influence was to be second to none in the history of the past.

Late Judaism came in contact with a number of Egyptian princesses, especially in the age of the Ptolemies. Among these are the Cleopatras, three of whom lived a whole century before the days when Mark Antony was led astray by the most celebrated of all the women of this name. One of these was daughter of Antiochus the Great and wife of Ptolemy Epiphanes. She being attracted by the value of the balsam and other products of Palestine, asked that the taxes of the land of the Jews be given her as her dowry. A second Cleopatra, daughter of the last, greatly favored, as we have already noted, the Jews in Egypt, according to Josephus, and was in turn greatly beloved by the larger number of the Jews of the Diraspora, or Dispersion, who had sought refuge and a livelihood in the rich region of Egypt.

The third Cleopatra, daughter of the last-mentioned and of Ptolemy Philometer, was married in B.C. 150 to Alexander Bala. His checkered career is given us by Josephus and in the First Book of Maccabees. Two other women of this name also appear in the history of the Jews, one a mother of Ptolemy Lathyrus, a woman of great force and determination, who expelled her son from Egypt and caused him to take refuge in the island of Cyprus. The last was wife of Herod the Great, and mother of "Philip the Tetrarch." The story of Cleopatra, the beguiler of Mark Antony, is too well known to need repeating here. The women of Egypt of the Macedonian and Roman periods, let it suffice to say, were a power in the affairs of those marvellous days.

The moral code of the Egyptians, theoretically speaking, was relatively high, though it cannot be said that the women well known in Egyptian history or presented in romance bore an exceptionally elevated character. But the best women of ancient days were not usually those whose names were furthest known or most widely heralded. According to the Greek legends, some of the queens were not slow to accomplish their purposes, regardless of the method or the cost. Queen Nitocris, of the fifth dynasty, the celebrated queen with the "rosy Cheeks," avenged the murder of her brother by inviting the conspirators against his life to a banquet hall lower than the Nile, and while they feasted turned in the waters of the river upon them.

The Egyptian religious life was shared in by priestesses. Their pantheon contained goddesses, who were highly honored. Women were considered to have souls as well as men, and as great honor was paid them in the rites accorded to the dead.

Sacred prostitution, which was so well known among the ancient Semites, was also practised in Egypt. Anthropomorphism was common there as elsewhere among early religionists. The gods were supposed to have their generation in the same manner as men. The male and female divinities therefore had their necessary part in the mysterious creations of nature. The female function in generation, however, was a purely passive one. Just as, according to the current ideas, the father was the sole parent of the child, the mother only furnishing carriage and nourishment for the infant, so the female principle in nature was receptive matter--"the lifeless mass in which generation took place."

"Women," says Frederick Shelden, "are compounds of plain sewing and deception, daughters of Sham and Hem." This morsel of wit is not true of the women of Egypt in ancient days. The women of the Nile were, as a rule, remarkably faithful to their obligations to their gods, as they conceived them, and often to their households and to society. They were limited, to be sure, in their outlook upon life and service, yet religious to a fault, and sometimes moral. It has not been long since there was exhumed in Egypt,--which has proved indeed the most fruitful of all fields for the archæologist,--a remarkable prayer engraved upon the funeral shell of an Egyptian lady who lived in the age of the Ptolemies. It is a prayer, the sentiments of which show how some of the essential elements of a commonwealth life have been recognized by good men and women of all lands and of all ages. The prayer is as follows: "All my life since childhood I have walked in the path of God. I have praised and adored Him, and ministered to the priests, His servants. My heart was true. I have not thrust myself forward. I gave bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked. My hand was open to all men. I honored my father, and loved my mother; and my heart was at one with my townsmen. I kept the hungry alive when the Nile was low." Here godliness, support of religious ideals and services, truthfulness, humility, charity for the distressed, honor to parents, and good citizenship, are recognized as the true conduct and held worthy of the consideration and reward of the gods.

Among the Christian women of western Egypt of to-day are the Coptic women. Christianity very early made wide conquests in Egypt, and while the Christian religion has revolutionized ideals and modified customs, it has never destroyed many of the social habits that have had racial sanction for centuries. The Christian church of Egypt is the Coptic Church, which has existed almost since the beginning of the Christian era. The women of this fellowship are of course very different in many respects from the other women of modern Egypt, notably the Mohammedans. Close to Heliopolis is pointed out a sycamore fig tree called the Tree of the Virgin. It is here, according to the Coptic legend, that Mary and Joseph rested with their infant son when fleeing from Herod. Not far away is a miraculous fountain, in which, as the story goes, Mary bathed the feet of the child Jesus. Having once been salt, the spring now became wholesome and sweet.

The Copts have preserved their early traditions, and their customs are in many respects in contrast with those of other people around them. It is the mother of the young man, not the father who usually makes the arrangements for their son's marriage. "She goes among her friends to find a wife for her son, and when after inquiry she discovers a girl whom she thinks in every way suitable, she informs her son, who is influenced by her opinion and commits the arrangements to her judgment. Sometimes the choice of the bride is left to women whose profession it is to select a fitting bride for the man who employs them, and to open the preliminary negotiations. There is naturally a good deal of risk in this; but as women are so entirely secluded in the East, as they are shut out from their legitimate place in society, such an arrangement becomes necessary, and so husband and wife are married without having looked into one another's face." But when once a Copt has chosen a wife, she is his forever. No divorce is permissible. They are one till death.

When the influences that had early gone out from Egypt and made for art and learning in all the lands about the Mediterranean began to return with compound interest from the shores of Greece to the land of the Lotus, the women as well as the men were destined to feel their power. Many a woman had her life lifted from the drudgery of the purely physical life into the higher atmosphere of intellectual pursuits and attainments. Especially marked was this in Alexandria where the great library and university were exerting a powerful influence, and Christianity was making its teachings felt in favor of equality of opportunity. In that great university town, the first Christian theological seminary was established, where both men and women might study the teachings of the Nazarene. Theological discussions at length became so general in Alexandria that some one has said that "Every washer-woman in the city was arguing the merits of homoousian and homoiousian in the streets."