Note 7 — Chapter VII · FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS
Reading edition
Picture I.—Two thousand years before the Christian era “woman was more free and more honoured in Egypt than she is in any country of the world to-day. She was the mistress of the house.7... She inherited equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. She could go where she liked, or speak with whom she liked. She was ‘juridically the equal of man,’ says M. Paturet, ‘having the same rights and being treated in the same fashion’; and the same authority observes that it was not as mother, but as woman, as a being equal in dignity, that she was thus honoured. There was polygamy in theory, but the first wife was generally able to exact conditions in her marriage contract which effectually prevented it. The inscriptions show, says Maspéro, that she remained to the end of her life ‘the beloved of her husband and the mistress of the house.’”8