Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

From the moment when the remains become sufficient to afford a full picture of Egyptian life we find the position of woman good.^[3] It has, however, been described so often that a slight summary will suffice here. “The Egyptian woman of the lower and middle class,” says Maspéro, “was more respected and independent than any other woman in the world.” In no class of the community was there a trace of the dominating tendency of the male, and the resultant family life seems to have been of the happiest. In the poorer class the girl ran nude with her brothers until the age of puberty, and then put on the light and close linen smock from the breasts to the ankles. About fifteen she married, and began to rear the large family and live the busy day of her class. Her husband had heavy tasks to perform, under feudal pressure, and she and the children had often to help him to escape the bastinado by sharing his labour. In the little brick or mud hut, with its few stools and mats and utensils, she was mistress. Polygamy was allowed, but her husband was too poor to afford a second wife. She aged early under that merciless sun, but had the affection of husband and respect of children to the end. The children were her children, and took her name; and on the great religious festivals she would grease her hair, and don her sandals and bracelets and better robe, to catch the rare hour of joy like her partner in life—possibly enough, her own brother.

When we rise to the easier class we find that woman has even greater independence. For the greater part of Egyptian history there was no private ownership of property for the mass of the people. The king, nobles, and priests had the dominium eminens of the land, and only such things as jewels and furniture could be held privately. But such inheritance as there was passed through the mother, and she had so high a position in the home that Egyptologists speak of the husband as “a privileged guest.” In theory her husband was polygamous, or could bring in concubines; but she made her stipulations before marriage, and suffered little in that respect. She had her own house and her own slaves, and complete liberty to go about and receive visitors, in her robes of finest linen. In the country she and the children accompanied the husband when he went out to hunt or fish. And if a young woman aspired to something more than domestic work, she might become one of the many women assistants in the cult of the great female goddesses of her country.

People of the twentieth century, with no historical knowledge, are apt to wonder that so much is made of this, and fancy it is only a bright picture in contrast to the Greek or Roman civilisations. In point of fact, it is only in recent years that an English woman has had an equal social liberty; even now she has not so high a prestige in the home, and certainly not the same position in regard to inheritance and property. But our chief concern is with woman’s political development, and we must see how she stood in this respect in ancient Egypt.

As the political system of Egypt was an absolute and sacred autocracy, there was no political power whatever for the middle and lower classes, and so woman had in this no disadvantage as compared with man. Above the whole of the people were the castes of priests and feudal nobles, and high above these the monarch. Before him, as “son of the Sun,” even the greatest nobles bowed in theatrical awe, and shielded their eyes from his burning rays. And here we find that, as I predicted, Egypt is by no means an exception to the general law, that, as nations come into the light of history, the control of the corporate life is always in the hands of the men. It is not without meaning that Egyptian statues of couples make the woman smaller than the man, or standing behind the man. They had nothing like the so common conception of her as an inferior being; but they did assuredly hold that she was unfitted for the three supreme things in their system—the priesthood, the army, and royalty.

The priestly caste she could merely penetrate as special minister of certain goddesses; she never wielded its power. In the order of nobles she had more opportunity. She could govern the feudal province in the husband’s absence, and even after his death; but it remains true that this is only a vicarious and exceptional assumption of man’s office. And this is to be said, with little alteration, of the royal power. The queen was with the king when he drove in his flowing linen robes and red-striped head-dress to the temple, and when he sat in the gallery to receive his subjects; but she was at a lower level, or behind him, and she had no voice in the council of nobles that he sometimes summoned. She could rule in his place if he went on a long journey, and she could even remain on the throne, and rule alone, when he died. A few women have left their names as rulers. The daughter of Amenhotep, especially, is always noted as a powerful and useful ruler of Egypt for fifteen years. It is not so often noted that she had herself depicted on the monuments as a man, and that her legal position was probably that of regent. Royalty was, in Egyptian eyes, a man’s office. There was not the least pretence of equality in succeeding to it.

The brightness of woman’s social position in Egypt must not, therefore, blind us to the fact that she was normally excluded from higher power, and rarely reached any share of it. However, as this power was confined to one man, with tributary power among a few other men, no one can draw any moral for our democratic age. Let us rather see how woman lost her position of equality in the people at large.

Before the Egyptian woman sank to a position of inferiority she seems, for some centuries, to have risen higher than ever. At about the beginning of the sixteenth century B.C. the rigid frame of Egyptian civilisation began to relax. Amenhotep instituted private ownership of landed property and the use of legal contracts. One consequence was that the middle class began to amass wealth and win power from the priests and nobles; another consequence was that women also used their privileged position to acquire wealth. As time goes on the marriage-contracts show a painfully commercial spirit. The woman not only stipulates that there shall be no rival, but she fixes the fines for her husband’s misdeeds and obtains more and more of his property.

As the general character and power of the nation were now rapidly deteriorating—the rigidity of the old system proving incapable of adaptation to the changed conditions—we can easily see what this would lead to. The land was torn with political dissension; avarice, vice, and sensuality displaced the sobriety of the older people. The kings slunk in their harems, and for a century or more the priests ruled, even marrying the princesses. Woman was still in her privileged position, but the decay went on, with flashes of revival, until 650 B.C. Ethiopians and Assyrians had overrun the land, but a powerful ruler arose in 650. Among other improvements he developed the commerce of Egypt, and this led to the beginning of woman’s downfall.

To the north of Egypt, across the Mediterranean, a race had grown to civilisation that had a very different tradition in regard to the treatment of its women. The Greek held his wife in subjection, and when his commercial affairs brought him into Egypt he could not but express his astonishment at the way in which men were ruled by their weaker wives. By this time, the contracts show, women were pressing too far with their marriage-stipulations and their property. One writer makes the last grievance of the men consist in the fact that they had to borrow money from their wives at exorbitant interest. At all events, the decay of Egypt set in once more after 530 B.C., and the Greek ideas grew more familiar. The fine old Egyptian ideal of equality took long to die, but at last a Greek ruler came to the throne and made an end of it. He passed a law that no woman could part with property except by the consent of her husband, and substituted the father for the mother in inheritance. She sank slowly into a condition of economic dependence; and the downtrodden slave of the fellah of modern Egypt, or the veiled and imprisoned wife of the merchant, are no less eloquent ruins of the old civilisation than are the pyramids of Gizeh.

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