Dr. Georg Ebers, the Leipzig professor, and author of the popular series
of historic Egyptian novels, remarks that “if it is true that a nation’s
degree of culture can be estimated by the more or less favourable
position accorded its women, then Egyptian culture ranks above that of
all other ancient peoples.”
The women of ancient Egypt were not kept in seclusion like those of
Greece. They did their own marketing, and had other domestic and public
liberties and privileges which astonished the Greek historian Herodotus,
who also mentions that although polygamy was tolerated among them,
monogamy was the rule. Inasmuch as the Egyptians had an advanced
culture, invented many arts, promoted the sciences, and were industrial
rather than militant in their occupations, it is possible that several
of the more refined elements of Romantic Love may have existed among
them; for just as we have seen that some animals have higher notions of
love, conjugal and romantic, than some savages, although the latter
represent a later stage of evolution, so it seems probable that among
the nations of antiquity Love did not progress steadily, year by year;
but that some nations had more and some less of it; while the
acquisitions of one period may have been lost in evil and corrupt times
following, as was certainly the case in India.
Since we have no such extensive literature of Egypt as we have of the
Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews, it is not easy to arrive at definite
conclusions. But the Egyptian custom of forming “trial marriages” for
one year, and the ease with which a husband could divorce and expel his
wife by simply pronouncing three words in her presence do not harmonise
with our modern notions of Love. How scornfully a modern Romeo would
reject the very notion of such a trial-marriage! for does he not feel
_absolutely_ certain that his Love is eternal and unalterable?
The institution of trial-marriages seems to point to the conclusion that
the Egyptians, like the Greeks, looked upon marriage primarily as a
means of augmenting the family and the state, and not as a union of
loving souls—children or no children—which is the modern ideal.
Professor Ebers of course has a right to make use of a poetic license in
painting the Love affairs of his Egyptian heroes and heroines in modern
colours, as Shakspere does in _Antony and Cleopatra_. At the same time
it would give an added flavour to historic romances if their pictures of
domestic and public life were characterised by _emotional realism_ as
well as by general antiquarian accuracy. The elaborate analysis of Love,
for the first time attempted in the present monograph, should facilitate
this task for novelists.