and it, did not interfere with the domestic
relationships; there was no one fixed rule that must be followed.
Marriage was a matter of mutual agreement by contract. All that was
required (and this was enforced by custom and by public opinion) was
that the position of the woman and the children was made secure. Each
party entered on the marriage without any constraint, and each party
could cancel the contract and thereby the marriage. No legal judgment
was required for divorce. It is a significant fact that in all the
documents cancelling the marriage contracts that have come down to us,
no mention is made of the reason which led to the annulling of the
contract, only in one case it is suggested that "some evil daimon" may
be at the bottom of it.[223]

Polygamy was allowed in Egypt, though, as in all polygamous countries,
its practice was confined to the rich. This has been thought by some
to exclude the idea of the woman's power in the family.[224] But such
an opinion seems to me to arise from a want of understanding of the
Egyptian conception of the sexual tie. Under polygamy each wife had a
house, her proprietary rights and those of her children were
established, the husband visiting her there as a privileged guest on
equal footing.[225] This is very different from polygamy in a
patriarchal society, and would carry with it no social dishonour to
the woman. It would seem, too, in later Egyptian history that
polygamy, though legal in theory, in practice died out, the fidelity
of the husband, as we have seen, being claimed by the wife in the
conditions of the marriage contract.[226]

That the Egyptians had a high ideal of the domestic relations--and had
this, let it be remembered, more than four thousand years ago--is
abundantly illustrated by their inscriptions. In one epitaph of the
Hykos period, the speaker, who boasts a family of sixty children, says
of himself, "I loved my father, I honoured my mother, my brothers and
my sisters loved me."[227] The commonest formula, which continued in
use as long as Egyptian civilisation survived, was one describing the
deceased as "loving his father, reverencing his mother, and being
beloved by his brothers," and there can be no doubt that this
sentiment represented the maturest convictions of the Egyptians as to
the sentiments necessary for the felicitous working of the family
relationships.[228] It is, indeed, significant to find this reversal
of the usual sentiments towards t