rance on the warriors, they will fight,
if need be, as bravely as the men, and with even greater ferocity"
(_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 133-147, 358). This is no exceptional
case, and is confirmed by the reports of investigators of widely
different peoples. I may mention the ancient Iberian women of Northern
Spain, whose bravery in battle is testified to by Strabo: the
descendants of these women still carry on the greater part of the
active labour connected with agriculture (_Spain Revisited_, pp.
191-292). In our own day we have the witness to the same truth in the
heroic part taken by women in the Balkan army.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII

WOMAN'S POSITION IN THE GREAT CIVILISATIONS OF ANTIQUITY

I.--_In Egypt_

The importance of estimating woman's position in the great
civilisations of the ancient world--The Egyptian
civilisation--Women more free and more honoured than in any
country to-day--The account given by Herodotus--The Egyptian
woman never confined to the home--No restraint upon her
actions--She entered into commerce in her own right and made
contracts for her own benefit--Abundant material in proof of
the high status of Egyptian women--Marriage contracts--Their
importance and interest--Numerous examples--The proprietary
rights of the wife--An early period of mother-rule--Property
originally in the hands of women--The marriage contracts a
development of the early system--The Egyptians solved the
difficult problem of the fusion of mother-right with
father-right--The statement of Dioderus that among the
Egyptians the woman rules over the man--The conditions of
marriage dependent on the birth of children--M. Paturet's view
the Egyptian woman the equal of man--The high status of woman
proved by the fact that her child was never illegitimate--The
position of the mother secure in every relationship between the
sexes--This made possible by the free conditions of the
marriage contracts--Polygamy allowed--This practice in Egypt
very different from polygamy in a patriarchal society--The
husband a privileged guest in the home of the wife--The high
ideal of the domestic relationship--Illustrations from the
inscriptions of the monuments--Reasons which explain this
civilised and human organisation--The Egyptians an agricultural
and a conservative people--The