I took you as my wife when I was a young man and you were still my wife when I filled all kinds of offices. I did not divorce you and I did not injure your heart… Everything I acquired was at your feet, did I not receive it on your behalf? I did not hide anything from you during your life. I did not make you suffer pain in anything I did with you as your husband. You did not find me deceiving you like a peasant and making love with another woman. I gave you dresses and clothes and I had many garments made for you.
The legal situation is somewhat easier for us to follow. The new husband assumed the father’s former role of protecting and caring for the bride, although he in no way became her legal guardian. The wife was allowed to retain her independence without becoming legally subservient to her spouse, and was able to continue administering her own property. Although the husband usually controlled the joint property acquired during the marriage, it was acknowledged that a share of this belonged to the wife; she was able to collect her portion when the marriage ended. One Ptolemaic text gives us a very clear picture of the legal equality of women when it records the business deal of an astute wife who lent her spendthrift husband three deben of silver, to be paid back within three years at a hefty annual interest rate of 30 per cent.
I shall not leave him even if they beat me and I have to spend the day in the swamp. Not even if they chase me to Syria with clubs, or to Nubia with palm ribs, or even into the desert with sticks or to the coast with reeds. I will not listen to their plans for me to give up the man I love.
New Kingdom love song
The marriage was ended, as is the case today, either by the death of one of the partners or by divorce. The death of a spouse loomed as an ever-present threat to happiness as life expectancy was not high and reminders of mortality were everywhere. Very few couples survived into middle age without losing most members of their immediate family, and the death of several children would have been accepted with resignation. Young girls married to much older men must frequently have been widowed before they left their teens, while the very real dangers associated with pregnancy and childbirth contributed to the many motherless families. Fortunately, the woman’s right to inherit one-third of her husband’s property meant that a widow was not forced either to rely on the charity of her children or to return to her father’s house, although convention decreed that the bereaved should be cared for by their family whenever necessary. Vulnerable women without the protection of a male were clearly to be pitied, and were regarded as being in need of protection. As the Eloquent Peasant flattered his judge in the New Kingdom fable ‘for you are the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow and the brother of the divorced woman…’ Tomb scenes indicate that loving couples torn apart by death confidently expected to be re-united in the Afterlife. In the meantime remarriage after widowhood was very common, and funerary stelae indicate that some individuals married three, or even four, times. We do not know whether there was a prescribed period of mourning for widows, although most societies impose a waiting period of approximately six months following bereavement which allows proper respect to be paid to the dead husband while ensuring that there is no doubt over the paternity of posthumous children.
Let Nekhemut swear an oath to the lord that he will not desert my daughter… As Amen lives and as the Ruler lives. If ever in the future I desert the daughter of Telmont I will be liable to hundreds of lashes and will lose all that I have acquired with her.
Although many marriages were both stable and happy, some ended in divorce. This was without doubt a serious matter for those involved but, just as the marriage itself was not seen as a matter of legal formality, so the divorce could be brought about by mutual agreement without the costly help of lawyers and courts. Those who had had the foresight to draw up a marriage contract were bound to honour its terms, while those who were involved in acrimonious disputes over the division of joint property could invest in a legal deed to resolve their differences. These legal cases were, however, unusual, and the majority of marriages ended by the couple simply splitting up, with the wife leaving the matrimonial home and returning to her family house, taking her own possessions together with her share of the joint property and occasionally, in cases where she could in no way be regarded as a guilty party, a fine paid by the husband as a form of compensation. In a few rare cases it was the wife who owned the house, and consequently the husband who was expected to leave. This parting, and the returning of all the woman’s property, ended the husband’s obligation to maintain his wife and set both parties free to marry again. We do not know who had custody of the children and who had the duty to pay for their upbringing and education, although it is generally assumed that they were left in the care of their mother. If so this is a further indication of the liberal Egyptian attitude towards women’s rights, which was in marked contrast to accepted practice in Greece or Rome where the male head of the household was the sole guardian of the dependent children and a divorced wife lost all legal rights to her offspring. In patriarchal Rome, a pregnant widow was obliged by law to offer her newborn baby to her dead husband’s family; only if they had no use for the child was she given the chance to raise her baby herself.