Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley Read online

  In Mesopotamia the Code of Hammurabi, which consolidated Babylonian law in approximately 1750 BC, included many regulations relating to the control of female behaviour and the proper conduct of a marriage. In particular, it emphasized the complete authority of the male within the home, with wives and children treated as the disposable property of the husband. Although women were allowed certain very important legal and economic rights, including the right to own property and the right to a protective and binding marriage agreement, these rights were strictly limited. For example, it was very difficult for a wife to divorce an unsatisfactory husband, and a woman had no control over the disposal of her dowry which legally passed to her sons at her death.14

  The laws and customs of Greece were if anything more repressive in their treatment of women, condemning all wives and daughters to a perpetual and suffocating protection.15 Respectable Greek women, effectively excluded from all public life, had few legal rights unless they acted with the full consent of their kurieia or male legal guardian. As a result, many upper-class women led unsatisfactory half-lives, closely confined within their own quarters where they spent long days working at the loom and supervising the household. Only in Sparta were young girls permitted to enjoy healthy exercise and positively encouraged not to spend too long at their weaving; this liberal behaviour was considered to be shockingly lax in ultra-conservative Athens. Under strict Athenian law women were effectively owned either by their father or by the husband who had been selected for them. Their dowries were at all times under the control of their husbands and they were neither allowed to inherit nor to make valid legal contracts. Their children became the property of the father and his family.

  The Roman woman was also expected to behave with a becoming modesty, although she was permitted to enjoy a wider range of social activities than her Greek sister. It was quite acceptable for a Roman matron to dine with male guests, visit shops and temples and even play a restricted role in furthering her husband’s career, and indeed male Greek visitors to Rome were thrown into embarrassed confusion when first attending banquets at which the ladies of the household were also present. Despite this additional freedom, however, the Roman woman remained under her father’s legal control until she married, when her father had the option of transferring his guardianship to the new husband, thereby allowing the bride exactly the same legal rights as any daughter of the groom. If the father did not exercise this option he remained financially responsible for his daughter who was legally still a member of his household. Again the woman required the consent of her guardian in all formal legal matters, and again she was unable to act as the guardian of her children.

  How did the unusually liberated women of Egypt develop and retain their equal legal status? This is an intriguing question which, as yet, has no entirely satisfactory answer. Early egyptologists, unduly influenced by the pioneering work of Frazer,16 felt that the legal freedom of the Egyptian women provided direct proof that the Egyptian system of government had evolved from a pure matriarchal system.17 This theory is now known to be totally false, and it seems likely that the answer must be sought in a consideration of the more unusual aspects of Egyptian culture. The legal subjugation of women in other societies seems to have been designed to ensure that women were denied the sexual freedom allowed to men, and thereby prevented from indiscriminate breeding. If this was a direct result of the need to provide a pure ruling élite and to restrict the dispersal of family assets, the unique position of the god-king and the absence of a strictly defined ‘citizen’ class made similar considerations irrelevant in Egypt. The rigid nature of the Egyptian class system and the traditional pattern of matchmaking meant that those assets which were held privately were unlikely to be dissipated on marriage, while the remarkable fertility of the Nile valley reduced the competition for access to resources

  Fig. 5 Stela of the child Mery-Sekhmet shown in the arms of his unnamed mother

  experienced in less fortunate societies. The recognition that descent could pass through both the female and the male lines, a characteristic of several African cultures, must also have been instrumental in protecting the rights of women. The Egyptians consistently regarded the female line as an important one, and mothers were frequently honoured in the tombs of their sons.

  Their equal status allowed women full access to the legal system. Women were able to bring actions against fellow citizens and give valid evidence in court, and they were liable to be publicly tried for their crimes. Egyptian justice was based on a court or arbitration system. Both rich and poor were entitled to lodge formal complaints, and each legal case was considered purely on its own merits by a local magistrate. More important cases were heard before a specially convened tribunal or jury of fellow citizens while the vizier, who was in practice the head of the Egyptian judiciary, judged the most grave and complex issues himself. Although bribery of the officials was a recurrent problem, and those from powerful families often held undue influence over the courts, justice was theoretically available to all Egyptians regardless of sex or class. Ostraca recovered from Deir el-Medina indicate that women were, however, generally less likely to be involved in legal action than their menfolk, reflecting the fact that women played a less prominent role in public life. Those women who were forced to make a court appearance were more likely to be defendants than plaintiffs, and we have legal documents dealing with cases where women were tried for non-payment of debts, theft and even the neglect of a sick relative.

  The case of Mose, a bitter legal wrangle involving a complex tangle of forged documents and lying witnesses, clearly demonstrates the woman’s right to inherit property, to act as a trustee and to bring a complaint before the law courts. Mose, a bureaucrat employed in the treasury of Ptah at Memphis, proudly recorded the entire dispute on the wall of his Sakkara tomb.18 He tells us how his ancestor, a certain captain Neshi, received a small estate as a reward for his loyal services to the king. This estate remained intact within the Neshi family for over two hundred years, passing down from generation to generation and always administered by a trustee appointed to act on behalf of the legal heirs. During the reign of King Horemheb a man named Khay was appointed trustee of the estate, but his appointment was challenged by the Lady Wernero, Mose’s grandmother, and the court eventually confirmed Wernero’s position as trustee for her five brothers and sisters. Unfortunately Takharu, one of Wernero’s sisters, made an official objection to this new trusteeship, and so it was decided that the land should be divided into six equal portions and shared out between all the legal heirs. Mose’s father, Huy, and his grandmother, Wernero, both appealed against this judgement, but before the issue could be resolved Huy died and Mose’s mother Nubnofret was evicted by Khay from her one-sixth share of the land. Although Nubnofret immediately lodged a formal complaint before the court she was unable to prove her right to the land as Khay had submitted forged documents in evidence, and therefore Khay retained possession of Mose’s inheritance. It was only when Mose grew old enough to plead his own case, presenting several sworn testimonies to the Grand Court of the vizier, that the dispute was finally settled in Mose’s favour.

  I am a free woman of Egypt. I have raised eight children, and have provided them with everything suitable to their station in life. But now I have grown old and behold, my children don’t look after me any more. I will therefore give my goods to the ones who have taken care of me. I will not give anything to the ones who have neglected me.

  Last will and testament of the Lady Naunakhte

  The right to own property was a very important legal concession, providing a degree of security for all unmarried, widowed and abandoned women and their dependent children. The 20th Dynasty last will and testament of the Lady Naunakhte illustrates the extent to which women were able to dispose of their own goods as they wished. Naunakhte, the mother of eight children, had acquired considerable wealth from her family and from her first husband but had grown old and increasingly dependent upon her offspring. She swo
re her will before a court tribunal, specifying that she wished her property to be split only between the five children who were continuing to care for her in her old age, and specifically disinheriting those children who had ignored her plight. However, recognizing that she could not prevent her husband’s share of the joint property plus his personal possessions from being divided according to his wishes, she conceded that ‘as regards these eight children of mine, they shall come into the division of the possessions of their father to a proportionate part’. Clearly, the families of 3,000 years ago could be as unreliable as those of today.

  The deed of transfer made by the Priest Wah:

  I make this deed of transfer for my wife, Sopdu’s daughter Sheftu, known as Teti, of everything that my brother left to me. She herself shall pass it on to any of the children that she shall bear me, as she wishes. I am giving her the three Asiatics which my brother gave to me, and she may give them to any of her children, as she wishes. As for my tomb, I shall be buried in it and my wife also, without any interference from anyone. Furthermore, my wife shall live in our home which my brother built for me, without being evicted by any person…

  Middle Kingdom last will and testament

  Property acquired by a couple during a marriage was legally regarded as a communal asset, and so in addition to her own possessions a wife was entitled a share of any such joint property.19 This share passed to her children at her death, or to the woman herself if she was divorced, while the remaining two-thirds were divided firstly between the husband’s children and then between his brothers and sisters. In addition, a widow automatically inherited a percentage of her husband’s private property and, indeed, some husbands used their knowledge of the legal system to ensure that their partner would receive the bulk of the joint estate by legally transferring property to their wife before death, somewhat as present-day inheritance tax is avoided by those who resign themselves to giving away their goods during their lifetime.

  A more devious means of preventing brothers or sisters from laying claim to matrimonial property involved the husband adopting his wife as his child; a fascinating Middle Kingdom legal document gives details of the adoption of the woman Nenufer by her husband Nebnufer: ‘My husband made a writing for me and made me his child, having no son or daughter apart from myself.’20 This declaration, made in front of witnesses, was legally binding and Nenufer was able to inherit all Nebnufer’s property as she was both his wife and his daughter. Seventeen years later Nenufer, now a widow, made an important addition to the legal deed, telling how she and her husband had purchased a slave girl to act as a surrogate mother, presumably to Nebnufer’s children. This slave had borne two girls and one boy who had been freed and in turn adopted by Nenufer, and then as Nenufer’s brother had expressed a wish to marry one of the girls, he had also been adopted by his sister so that he might receive his share of the family property. Nenufer’s legal right to inherit property, make a legally binding will, adopt a child and free a slave are all made explicit in this text.

  Unfortunately, during the Graeco-Roman period when the Greek laws, customs and language started to have a profound influence on the Egyptian way of life, the woman’s right to equal status was slowly but surely eroded away. At this time many Greek families settled in Egypt and closely cloistered Greek women protected by the legal guardianship of their kurieia started to live side by side with the free-born Egyptian women. Many Egyptians, seeing the exotic Greek lifestyle as preferable to their own, rushed to embrace the new modes of behaviour; indeed, we have documents confirming that several non-Greek women who had no legal need for a guardian actually applied to have one appointed, perhaps in the hope that others might mistake them for sophisticated Greeks rather than provincial Egyptians. By the Roman period, when Roman traditions were added to the Greek and Egyptian cultural mix, women had lost many of their former rights and privileges, so that although continuing local customs allowed them to remain less suppressed than the women living in Rome, they were nowhere near as emancipated as their Dynastic forebears had been.

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  Married Bliss

  Found your household and love your wife at home as is fitting. Fill her stomach with food and provide clothes for her back… Make her heart glad, as long as you live.

  Old Kingdom Wisdom Text

  Those of an unromantic or cynical disposition may take the view that marriage is little more than a simple economic contract drawn up between a man and a woman, intended to create an efficient working unit and strengthen alliances while protecting interests in property and legitimizing children. Love may, or may not, be an additional bond which unites the participants; it is certainly not fundamental to a successful marriage. For women in particular the wedding ceremony, marking the important change in status from daughter to wife, also represents the recognized transition from child to adult and the start of a new role in society. Very unfairly, married women are almost universally regarded with more respect than their unmarried sisters; indeed, the view that an unmarried woman is a woman who has failed in her main role in life is one which is expressed with monotonous repetition by both men and women of different cultural backgrounds and different historical periods.

  All these generalizations are true of marriage in ancient Egypt, where the formation of a strong and unified family provided much-welcomed protection against the harsh outside world. And yet the Egyptians, far more than any other past civilization, have passed on to us, through their paintings, their statues and, above all, their lyric love songs, their satisfied contentment with the romance of marriage. To marry a wife and beget many children may have been the duty of every right-thinking Egyptian male, but it was a duty which was very much welcomed: the Egyptians were a very uxorious race.

  Tradition and biology combined to ensure that marriage followed by motherhood would be the inevitable career-path for almost all Egyptian women, and mothers trained their young daughters in domestic skills accordingly. Once a girl had reached adolescence she had no real social role, being neither child nor wife, and so she remained in a kind of protective limbo, living in her father’s house until a suitable match could be found. The best marriages were widely agreed to be those arranged between members of the same family, or between neighbours of the same social standing and professional class, and scribe Ankhsheshonq advised parents ‘don’t let your son marry a bride from another town, in case he is taken away from you’. Just as modern Egyptian peasants acknowledge the right of a paternal male cousin to claim the hand of his father’s brother’s daughter, so their ancient forebears gave preference to marriage between first cousins or uncles and nieces which would prevent the splitting of family property and the inherited right to work land, an important consideration in an agricultural community. The genetic implications of inbreeding do not seem to have worried the Egyptians unduly, although several examples of congenitally deformed skeletons recovered from local cemeteries suggest that occasional problems did occur.

  The state itself was remarkably relaxed in its attitude to marriage and, unlike almost all other ancient civilizations, the Egyptians placed no official restriction on unions with foreigners. There was no perceived need to preserve the purity of the Egyptian race, so exotic beauties were frequently included in the New Kingdom royal harem, while a stela found at Amarna shows an Egyptian woman and her foreign husband, easily identified by his unusual hairstyle and dress, sitting peacefully

  Fig. 6 Foreign women and their children

  together sipping beer through straws. In marked contrast, both the Greeks and the Romans placed a very high value on the inherited right of citizenship which was legally confined to the upper echelons of society, and it was at least in part due to their desire to protect the purity of the bloodline that the tradition of segregating women from men developed. The Egyptian tolerance of mixed marriages extended to unrestricted slave-marriages, both between two slaves or between a free person and a slave:

  Year 27 of the reign of Tuthmosis III. The royal
barber Sabestet appeared before the tribunal of the royal house testifying: my slave, my property, his name is Imenjui. I fetched him with my own strength when I accompanied the sovereign. I have given to him the daughter of my sister Nebta as a wife, her name is Takamenet.

  New Kingdom legal document

  This approach is in sharp contrast to the complex inheritance rules which were enforced in Egypt during the period of Roman control, when it was clearly regarded as desirable that people should be pressured to marry only within their own caste:

  Children born to a townswoman by an Egyptian husband have the status of Egyptians and inherit from both parents. If a Roman of either sex marries anyone of the status of a townsman or of an Egyptian without being aware of their status, their children take the status of the inferior parent. If a Roman or a townsman marries an Egyptian wife in ignorance of her status, the children may take the status of the father after erroris probatio. If a townswoman marries an Egyptian husband in the mistaken belief that he is a townsman she is not to blame, and if the declaration of birth of children is made by both the status of citizen is granted to the offspring…1

  The most unusual aspect of the state’s lenient attitude towards marriage was the complete lack of any taboo against the marriage of close relations. Most societies feel that the union of children with parents, or brothers with sisters, is undesirable and take steps to ensure that it does not occur. Egypt was a notable exception to this rule. However, incest was certainly not as rife as popular fiction would suggest. With the exception of the royal family who intermarried to safeguard the dynastic succession and to emphasize their divine status, there is no real evidence for widespread brother–sister marriages until the Roman period, while parent–child incest is virtually unrecorded. The brother–sister marriages which are recorded are more likely to be between half-brothers and half-sisters than full siblings. Unfortunately for modern observers, the Egyptians employed a relatively restricted kinship terminology, and only the basic nuclear family were classified by precise kinship terms (father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter). All others had to be identified in a more laborious manner, such as ‘mother of the mother’ (maternal grandmother) or ‘sister of the mother’ (maternal aunt). To make matters even more confusing the precise family names could also be applied to non-family members, so that ‘father’ could be correctly used to indicate a grandfather, stepfather, ancestor or patron, while ‘mother’ could describe either a grandmother or even a great-grandmother. The use of the affectionate term ‘sister’ to encompass a wide group of loved women, including wife, mistress, cousin, niece and aunt, taken in conjunction with a theology which condones the brother–sister marriage of principal deities such as Isis and Osiris, has contributed to our misunderstanding of the prevalence of brother–sister incest, and there has been a general reluctance to lose the image of the intriguingly decadent Egyptian lifestyle conveyed by these errors in interpretation.