ritance be added unto the inheritance of the tribe." Marriage in
the tribe is obligatory for daughters. "Let them marry to whom they
think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they
marry. So shall no inheritance of the children of Israel remove from
tribe to tribe."[207] We have here an indication of the close relation
between father-right and property.

[201] Gen. xxx, 18-30; xxxi, 14, 41.

[202] Gen. xxxi, 43.

[203] Gen. xxiv, 5, 53.

[204] Judges xv, 1.

[205] Numb., xxxii, 8-11. See Letourneau, _Evolution of
Marriage_, p. 326.

[206] Gen. xxiii, 13.

[207] Numb. xxxvi, 4-8.

Under mother-right there is naturally no prohibition against marriage
with a half-sister upon the father's side. This explains the marriage
of Abraham with Sarah, his half-sister by the same father. When
reproached for having passed his wife off as his sister to the King of
Egypt, the patriarch replies: "For indeed she is my sister; she is the
daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she
became my wife."[208] In the same way Tamar could have married her
half-brother Amnon, though they were both the children of David:
"Speak to the King, for he will not withhold me from thee." And it was
her uterine brother, Absalom, who revenged the rape of Tamar by
slaying; afterwards he fled to the kindred of his mother.[209] Again,
the father of Moses and Aaron married his father's sister, who legally
was not considered to be related to him.[210] Nabor, the brother of
Abraham, took to wife his fraternal niece, the daughter of his
brother.[211] It was only later that paternal kinship became legally
recognised among the Hebrews by the same titles as the natural kinship
through the mother.

[208] Gen. xii, 10-20.

[209] 2 Sam. xiii, 13-16 and 37.

[210] Exod. vi, 20.

[211] Gen. xi. 26-29.

It is by considering these survivals of mother-right in connection
with similar customs to be found among existing maternal peoples that
we see their true significance. They warrant us in believing that the
patriarchal family, as we know it among the Hebrews and elsewhere, was
a later stage of an evolution, which had for its starting-point the
communal clan, and that these races have passed through the maternal
phase. We come to understand the change in the privileged position of
women. As the husband and father continued to gain in power, with the
reassertion of in