WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
ous lives of the influential and the wealthy. But in happy domesticity the Egyptians excelled all peoples. The women were the beloved of their husbands, the mistresses of the house. Innumerable are the precepts to husbands, urging them to bestow tenderness and affection upon their wives, to cherish them in every manner, and to honour all women.
The marriage contracts, in the days of the highest culture in Egypt, prove conclusively that women were more favoured than men. Purchase-marriage became a form only, for the bride-price was given to her, and the wife's property was entirely her own to enjoy and dispense as she chose. In the event of separation, the wife retained her possessions. A woman who left her husband was entitled to all that was her own, and in some instances the wife was endowed with the whole of her husband's belongings.[1]
Children were carefully and lovingly tended by both parents. Even the child of a slave woman was legitimate and accorded equitable rights. The woman who had wandered from the strict path of chastity was not scorned nor made an outcast. Petah Hotep declared that such misfortune should be softened by the kindness of the man who had consorted with her. He
- ↑ See "The Truth About Woman," C. Gasquoine Hartley (Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan).
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