Marriage in Ancient Egypt

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MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
The Egyptians appear to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind.
Women attend markets and are employed in trade, while men stay at home
and do the weaving! Men in Egypt carry loads on their head, women on
their shoulder. Women pass water standing up, men sitting down. To ease
themselves, they go indoors, but eat outside on the streets, on the theory that
what is unseemly, but necessary, should be done in private, and what is not
unseemly should be done openly.
(Herodotus II: 33-37)

Marriage was the normal and most desirable state for Ancient Egyptians of both
genders and all social classes. Athenian men evinced little respect or affection for
women and delayed marriage until well into their thirties, but most Egyptian men
were eager to follow the advice of the wisdom literature urging them to take a wife
while still young so they could found a household and raise a family. Most men were
married by the age of twenty to girls who might have been as young as fifteen. There
was an age difference, but usually not more than two or three years.
One of the more curious mysteries in that civilization is the complete absence
of information on the act of getting married. Legal papyri always identified a woman
as the “wife of …” and there are many documents attesting to a couple’s divorce.
Weddings in Ptolemaic Egypt were often accompanied by very elaborate parties, but
there is nary a word from the Pharaonic period about a marriage ceremony. We may
assume that there was a moment before which a couple was not married and after
which they were married, but we have no clear evidence to tell us what happened.
The Marriage Stele of Ramses II says, “Then his Majesty saw that she was
beautiful of face and like a goddess. It was a great mysterious, wonderful and
fortunate affair.” Thishas been taken as proof by a small handful of scholars that some
sort of ceremony was required to make a marriage, but most would argue that the
“affair” in question was nothing more than the initial meeting of the king and his
future wife. Egyptians loved a party and it is hard to imagine them ignoring such an
obvious excuse, but not only is their no evidence of a ceremony, there is no evidence
of a celebration either.
It would appear that a woman was considered to have married if she took her
belongings from her parents’ house and moved them and herself into the home of a
man who was not already married to someone else. There are records of parents using

the occasion to transfer property to the bride or the groom but there are no other signs
of anything approaching a ceremony or a party.
Athenian men disliked women and put off marriage as long as possible. They
gave in out of a sense of civic responsibility and a desire to produce a legal and
socially acceptable heir. Romans expected to marry first and come to love later.
Egyptian men thought very highly of women and embraced the idea of marriage and
seem to have regarded love as an essential part of it. Love poems attest to very strong
feelings of affection and attraction in couples that appear to be unmarried. We have no
way of knowing how many fell in love first and married second or how many married
first, but it would seem that the ideal, at least in the literature, was that romantic love
came first.
That still leaves the question, did girls need permission to get married. In
theory, at least, Ancient Greek and Roman women needed their guardian’s approval in
order to marry. The evidence for Egypt is hazy. The hairdresser of Thutmosis III
recorded on a statuette, now in the Louvre, that he had freed his slave and given her in
marriage to his niece. A Twentieth Dynasty woman, having adopted the three children
of her female slave, accepted her younger brother as husband of one of those
offspring. In the Late Period, a suitor was told by a girl’s father, “Her time has not yet
come; become a priest and I will give her to you.” The record shows that the couple
did indeed marry a year later. As you can see, the evidence is slim, indeed, since two
of the cases involved an emancipated slave and one concerned an underage child. All
three cases might well be subject to regulations beyond those involved in a normal
marriage. Onchsheshonqy wrote, “Chose a prudent husband for your daughter; do not
choose a rich one for her.” Herodotus wrote that no one wants to give their daughters
in marriage to a swineherd. The remark was meant as a comment on the low social
standing of those who care for pigs, but there is the implication that parents had a
choice in the matter. Since girls usually married at a young age it is likely that they
were very much influenced by their parents’ wishes.
While we really do not know what the law had to say in the Old, Middle, and
New Kingdoms when a girl and her parents disagreed on her choice of mate, the
situation became abundantly clear in the reign of Amasis, in the Twenty-Sixth
Dynasty. From that point on marriage deeds involve only the husband and the wife.
When parents are mentioned it is for purposes of identification only. In the Ptolemaic
period, when Greek and Egyptian laws existed side by side, we regularly find
documents where women with Greek names are marrying with the permission of a
guardian, but women with Egyptian names continued to marry on their own.
If a man and a woman over the age of consent, not already married to someone
else, and no more closely related than first cousins, lived together in the same house,
they were considered to be married, without the need for any legal registration. Just as
the state did not get involved in marriage, it showed no interest in who got divorced.
Either party could initiate a divorce and the reasons, if any, for the marital breakdown
were irrelevant. Written divorce agreements do exist, and it is possible that a woman
seeking to remarry would need to show such a document to her future husband before
he would allow her to move in with him. Divorce was simple enough, but the division
of assets presented the real problem. The ex-wife was entitled to take whatever
personal items she brought with her---clothing, jewelry, cook-ware, etc.---and, of

course, married women always retained separate ownership of land, buildings, slaves,
etc. that they possessed before the marriage. What happened to divorced women who
lacked such income producing property? They must have been the majority, but we do
not know. There are hints that ex-husbands had to continue providing support until
remarriage, but in the absence of that they would presumably have had to rely on
family.
Scholars have long relied on surviving marriage contracts for help in getting
information on Egyptian marital law. Such contracts undoubtedly tell us what was
legal, but too often they have been used to draw blanket conclusions, overlooking the
possibility that such contracts were drawn up expressly to alter what would normally
have happened. Who needs an expensive, written document, if both parties are going
to follow the normal course of events anyway? Think what a distorted view of
Twenty-First century marriage would emerge if a thousand years in the future scholars
had to rely on the so-called pre-nuptial agreements entered into when a very wealthy
person marries a very poor one.
With that caveat in mind, let us look now at the marriage contracts. While
there is considerable variety in the specifics, the contracts fall into two general types.
In the first, the man gives a sum of money so that the woman will become his wife. It
is possible that the practice is a holdover from the old days of “bride price” when a
man had to compensate his wife’s father for the loss of his daughter’s labor, but a
more likely explanation is a simple symbol of serious intent. The value is given and
received as a sign that the parties are serious about entering into an agreement. The
size of the payment varies from a low of a half deben of copper (about a quarter the
cost of a pair of sandals) to a high of 2 silver deben (about the value of a female slave)
While the latter is more than a token (equivalent perhaps to the purchase value
today of one or two major appliances: stove, refrigerator, washing machine, etc.) these
payments are not very much when you consider that only the wealthiest members of
society would bother with such contracts in the first place. If the woman decides to
divorce him, she must return the money. If he wishes to divorce her, he must give that
amount again as a fine. Even at 2 silver deben the sum of money is too small to be a
deterrent to divorce or to provide the woman with the means to support herself, thus
reinforcing the idea that the payment is nothing more than a sign of legal certainty,
particularly since, as noted above, there was no ceremony or registry to confirm that a
marriage or divorce had taken place.
In the second type it is the woman who makes a payment to the husband for
the purchase of a “Maintenance Contract”. He spells out in detail the amount he must
spend on her food and clothing and guarantees her a place to live. All of the worldly
goods of the husband serve as surety for this promise. Any time she wants to leave she
may do so, requiring him to either return her money or continue to support her.
Sometimes there is an out for the husband if she commits adultery, but usually these
contracts require him to continue supporting her even if he wants a divorce.
In these Maintenance Contracts the husband pledges his entire property as a
guarantee he will keep his promise, but in some cases he goes one step further and
gives all of his assets to his wife. Under Egyptian law two documents were required to
complete a sale. He gives his wife the first, ensuring that he cannot sell or give away

his wealth to anyone else, but the sale does not become complete until he signs the
second document saying that he no longer has an interest in the property in question.
The end result is the same whether he pledges his wealth or gives it away. In both
cases he continues to administer the property as before: he just can’t dispose of it
without first getting her permission.
Marriage contracts invariably contained a list of “the goods of a woman” that
the wife brought with her to the marital home. These items were very personal--clothing, jewelry, utensils etc.---the sorts of thing that would get mixed in with the
miscellany that is found in every home. Each item was valued and the husband
promised to return them or their value if she should decide to leave.
Some marriage contracts contained a clause binding the husband to distribute,
at death, some or all of his property in a certain way. The commitment did not usually
survive a divorce that had been initiated by the wife, but it could impose serious
financial hardship on a husband who wanted to get rid of one wife and marry
another. The following are examples:
1. You are the sharer with my children already born and sill to be born in
all that I possess and that I shall acquire.
2. The children which you will bear to me are the sharers with my
children in all that I possess and that I shall acquire
3. One third of all that I possess and shall acquire belongs to you for the
children you bear to me.
4. The children which you will bear to me are the masters of all and
everything that I possess and that I shall acquire.
These marriage contracts placed far more restriction on the behavior of the husband
than they did on the wife. Even without a contract, women had the legal ability to
leave anytime they wanted, and were free to take their personal belongings with them.
She would give up her right to be supported or to inherit, but that would have
happened with or without a contract, and presumably she would not leave of her own
accord anyway, unless she had some place to go.
It was the husband who lost his rights and freedom when he signed. Without
the contract he could divorce her and marry someone else. There are hints that
Egyptian law required husbands to support divorced wives until they remarried, but
there is no definitive proof. Many of the marriage contracts not only mandated
continuous support, but also required the husband to divide his entire estate among the
children of a wife even if he had divorced her.
Unfortunately there is little or no information available to tell us why one
husband was left free to divorce a wife with no financial penalty and another
committed himself to divide everything he had on the day of the wedding and
everything he might subsequently acquire amongst the children of a particular wife. It
should be noted, however, that many, if not most, of the surviving contracts were
signed many years after the wedding and the birth of children. It is quite possible,

then, that what appears to be a marriage contract is actually the means by which the
husband obligates his estate to continue supporting his wife after he dies.
What happens to a man’s property after he dies? The law was quite clear on
one point: an heir was obliged to provide an appropriate burial. There is enough
evidence to tell us what else was normal, but not enough to tell us what the law
required. We certainly have wills that clearly deviate from the norm, but the following
is what was most likely:
1. The wife received one third of her husband’s estate.
2. When she died her third would be divided equally among the children
she had by that husband.
3. The balance of the husband’s estate was divided among all the children
he sired, whether by this wife or another.
An interesting look at the human side of marriage can be found in a letter written by a
desperate husband to his deceased wife. He believed she was tormenting him from the
grave and he wanted her to stop. He describes all the ways he was a good husband to
her. He also describes the deeds of a bad husband that he did not do.
What have I ever done against you? I took you as my wife when I was a young man.
We stayed together through all the different offices I held. I did not repudiate you or
injure your heart. I filled all kinds of important offices for the Pharaoh---Life,
Prosperity, Health!---without repudiating you. Everything I got was at your feet. Did I
not receive it on your behalf?
But behold, you do not leave my heart in peace…I did not
make you suffer pain in all I did with you as your master.
You did not find me while I deceived you like a peasant
entering into another house…When they placed me in the
post where I am now and I was in a situation in which I
could not go out according to my habit, I did what
somebody like me does…concerning your oil, bread and
clothes. It was brought to you. I did not let it be brought to
another place…
Behold, you do not know the good I did to you. I write you
in order to make you see what you are doing. When you
were ill I got the chief physician and he treated you and he
did everything of which you said: do it…
Behold I have lived alone for three years without entering a
house although it is not suitable that such a one is
compelled to do that. Behold I have done it for your
sake….The women in the house, I had no intercourse with
any of them.

SUMMARY

Ancient Egyptian marriage was a social and economic arrangement, not a
legal one. At least in theory, a woman needed her parent’s permission to marry until
the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic Period a quarter of all marriages were
between full or step siblings. Beyond these three points Ancient Egyptian marriage
does not seem to have been very dissimilar to that in most English speaking countries
today. The following indicates the norm, but it should be remembered that there were
always exceptions.
1. Marriages were monogamous.
2. People married within their social class, and except in the Ptolemaic
Period they married someone unrelated or no more closely related than
cousin.
3. Men and women retained separate ownership of any property they
brought into the marriage.
4. Either party could initiate a divorce. No reason need be given.
5. A wife was generally entitled to a third of her husband’s property
when he died. Beyond that, men and women generally divided their
estate among their children.

:Resources

Douglas J. Brewer & Emily Teeter : Ancient Egyptian Society and Family
Life 2002
Jaroslav ČernýConsanguineous: Marriages in Pharaonic Egypt 1954

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