WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA
IT may seem strange that, if this has been the general course of
development, the first civilised nation to which we turn does not
bear the features that it would lead us to expect. Egypt, the first
and most enduring of civilisations, has a proud page in the calendar
of womanhood. In no other nation, until quite recent times, has
woman enjoyed so much power and prestige. Indeed, the development of
woman's position in Egypt is in some respects the reverse of what
we shall find to be the general rule. There seems to have been no
heritage of subjection from a barbaric past, but from the first we
discover woman in a position of honour and influence. Through the
long ages of Egypt's power she retains that position, and she
finally loses it at the very stage of incipient decay at which the
women of other civilisations are beginning to obtain it.
We need not pause to point the moral for those who think that "the
subordination of women is invariably one of the prices of empire";
but we may recall our warning that there has been no uniformity in
the separate national lines of human development. At the lowest
levels of culture men and women are physically, mentally, and
morally equal. There are, however, differences that contain the germ
of the future divergence. The tie of the children makes the woman,
like the female animal in her shorter motherhood, economically
dependent on the male. As he grows in wisdom or astuteness, he will
perceive and abuse it. Moreover, though sex functions as such lay
little disability on the woman at that level of culture, the
difference of their work has led to a difference in the nature of
their powers. The man, accustomed to hunt and fight, works in spasms
of energy, and can exert his stored force with greater effect on
occasion. The woman works continuously and less violently. It may be
added, too, that she has inherited an instinct of passivity in love:
the male an instinct of active search and conquest--an instinct
curiously embodied in the ovum and the sperm-cell.
In all this we have a clear promise of the later development; and
when the political structure evolves in the way I have indicated,
and the control quite naturally falls to the men, the real wonder is
that there were ever any approaches to a matriarchate at all. But
many circumstances may influence the natural course of development;
and it is sometimes forgotten that these circumstances may have
passed away long before the race or tribe comes to our knowledge.
Yet the effect on woman's position may remain, in people so
tenacious of traditions. I have described many such circumstances,
and need add here only the possibility of a distinctly moral or
humane development on the point of the treatment of woman in some
tribes. There are plenty of instances of the development among lowly
tribes of one or other virtue (say veracity among the Khonds, or
pacificness among the Esquimaux) above the European level.
We are, therefore, quite prepared to find exceptions to the general
rule that, as races civilise and pass into the light of history,
woman will be found subordinate. At the same time, we must, for the
purpose of this inquiry, bear clearly in mind the distinction
between power and respect in the home, or in social life generally,
and influence in the political administration. Even in works that
profess to deal with woman's political development this is not
always done. Possibly, if we bear that distinction in mind, we may
find it necessary to modify a prevailing impression in regard to
ancient Egypt.
The golden age of the women of Egypt comes comparatively late (about
1500 B.C.) in the history of that remarkable nation; but all the
records tend to show that her position was one of relative ease and
dignity from the beginning of the dynastic race. Between 8000 and
5000 B.C. we find broken traces of a long struggle for the Nile
delta between tribes (apparently) from the African east and the
Asiatic west. About 5000 B.C. a powerful, civilised race enters the
arena, conquers the land, and founds the Egyptian people that we
know so well. Where they came from is still a matter of conjecture,
but there is good reason to believe that they brought their early
civilisation from some part of southern Arabia. We must suppose that
they came from one of those tribes, still plentiful enough in the
north of Africa and the south of Asia, in which women held a good
position. Even to-day we find tribes side by side in the African
desert (such as the Tuaregs and the Bedouins) who hold a radically
different attitude towards their women. This must have been the case
with the great variety of tribes that were found in the region of
Persia, Syria, and Arabia thousands of years before Christ. From one
tribe came the Jews, whose attitude to woman has had so baneful an
influence on her history. From another came the ancestors of the
Egyptians of the historic period.
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.
* * * * * *
When we turn to the second great civilisation, whose history we can
trace to nearly 5,000 years before Christ, we find that neither was
the rise so high, nor the fall so low. Somewhere before 4500 B.C. we
get our first glimpse of the pioneers of civilisation on the
Babylonian plain. A strange people, with language and ways more akin
to Chinese or Turks than to the surrounding Semites, descends into
the valley, and founds the cities that went before Babylon and
Nineveh. It is useless to inquire into the position of woman among
these Sumerians or Akkadians. By 4500 B.C. the Semites from the
Syrian highlands (some say from Arabia) mingle with them, and a
mixed civilisation rises. Many authorities think the older race had
the maternal type of family, and that the Semites modified the
woman's position.
However that may be, woman enjoyed an independence in ancient
Assyria only second to that of the Egyptian and Ethiopian women. The
wife of the worker had the same busy round of labour, the same
freedom to roam the streets unveiled for her purchases of fish and
vegetables. In the law-courts men and women were, as in Egypt, on a
perfectly equal footing. The recently discovered Hammurabi Code
(dating back to more than 2000 B.C.) contains many remarkable
provisions, in the most striking moral contrast to the Hebrew code.
There are whole pages regulating the relations of men and women with
a general sense of justice that has no parallel in legislation until
the most recent times--if even now.
There was not, however, the perfect social equality of Egypt, and as
we pass to the higher classes we get indications of male domination.
The woman of the lower-middle class had an excellent position. While
her few slaves attended to the work in the rooms that opened on the
central court, she chatted from the flat roof with her neighbour on
the adjoining roof, and she moved freely about in the heavy
embroidered garments that the Assyrians wore. She had brought a
dowry to her husband, and kept control of it or increased it, with
perfect freedom to trade. In the imperishable clay tablets that
still recall the business-world of Babylon and Nineveh we find
married women very commonly interested in trade or industry. The
wealthier women, with large dowries, should, on the face of the
matter, have great independence, but it seems that some restraint
was imposed on them. They spent most of their time in the elaborate
luxury of their houses, and, if they ventured out, it was only with
the accompaniment of a troop of slaves and eunuchs. Ladies of higher
rank were even more restricted, and the queens never went out.
We find, then, in ancient Mesopotamia that woman generally had no
sex disabilities. In some clauses relating to divorce and
unfaithfulness we find the inevitable advantage of the male, but in
practice the woman had little to complain of. As in Egypt, the
political system was a sacred and absolute monarchy, so that neither
men nor women had any control, or any idea of aspiring to it. Queens
could occupy the throne. Semiramis is probably a mythic personage;
but a Babylonian princess, Sammuramat, ruled at Nineveh (whose king
she had married) about 800 B.C. with great success. Once more,
however, this was exceptional and vicarious. Political power was in
the hands of men--the king and his council of nobles; and over all
the community again were the castes of warriors and priests, though
the latter body could be penetrated by women to some extent, owing
to the immense popularity of the goddess Ishtar.[4]
To sum up, therefore, in regard to Egypt and Assyria, we must say
that they were civilisations in which no one can with propriety talk
of the "subordination of women"; yet they were two of the most
powerful, and certainly two of the most enduring, empires the world
has ever seen. We may take Maspéro's statement that in Assyria
"woman was equal, or nearly equal, to man"; in Egypt she was
even nearer to perfect equality. There was no struggle of the sexes
in Assyria; and the remarkably good legal position, commercial
activity, and general independence of the women "in no way
affected the womanly character of their duties," as Dr. Reich is
forced to admit. Assyria did not mount to greatness by the
subordination of woman, nor did it lose its greatness by, or during,
any revolt of its women. Egypt, also, grew to greatness without any
shade of subordination of woman; and, although in this case the
curtain falls on a discontented and embittered womankind, it was
because the men positively robbed them of their 5,000-year-old
rights. If there were any logic in the fallacy of the anti-feminist
historians, we should have to say in this case that the equality of
woman was the price of Egypt's empire, and the destruction of that
equality the cause of its downfall; but we may leave fallacies to
those with a poorer case.
Egypt and Assyria were exceptional in that they did not live long
enough to hear and consider the cry of democracy. The power remained
to the end in the hands of a heaven-sent king. They fall into line
with my general statement that in all early civilisations the power
is in the hands of men. But as they never passed the stage of
absolute monarchy, and no struggle in the least resembling the
modern contest ever set in, we must go on to later empires for the
second phase of woman's political evolution.