A female slave could be made a wife of her master, mak-ing the slave and her off sprmak-ing free.. Th e purpose of marriage was procreation and maintain-ing the family.. Egyptian wisdom
Trang 1signifi cant factor in the survival and resilience of most
an-cient craft s
Aristocratic families had slaves as members In most
cases, these slaves were bought and integrated into the
fam-ily for the purpose of agricultural production Th eoretically,
slave owners had the power to kill or sacrifi ce them to the
gods A female slave could be made a wife of her master,
mak-ing the slave and her off sprmak-ing free
EGYPT
BY KELLY-ANNE DIAMOND REED
Ancient Egyptian society was structured around the family
unit Th e purpose of marriage was procreation and
maintain-ing the family Egyptian wisdom literature, or texts that
con-tain instructions or philosophical dialogue, regularly speaks
of a man prospering, establishing a house, fi nding a wife, and
having children as ideal In the Pharaonic Period marriage
is sparsely documented, with no mention of any formal
cer-emony that recognized marriage It is clear, though, that the
idea of a household permeated society and that the woman
entered into the household of the man From this point on,
the man and woman lived together Very few texts testify to
the idea of “giving a wife” in marriage, so a man may have
found a wife in a variety of ways
Among royalty diplomatic marriages took place Th is ar-rangement either created an alliance between two separate kingdoms or indicated submission on the part of the ruler who provided the daughter Likewise, father-daughter and brother-sister marriages were common within the royal fam-ily as a way of preserving the bloodline and maintaining po-litical power
Evidence is more common for divorce than it is for mar-riage Marriage contracts, which concentrated on the prop-erty rights of each partner but did not, despite their name, comment on the ceremony of marriage, specifi ed grounds for divorce Th ese grounds included the wife’s infi delity or infer-tility, the man’s dislike of the wife, or his desire to marry an-other woman It is known that around 500 b.c.e a wife could initiate a divorce, possibly on the grounds of her husband’s infi delity It is not known whether the Egyptians knew the diff erence between impotence and infertility in men Regard-less, women were always blamed for the inability to conceive
a child Both men and women were able to remarry aft er a divorce
Men belonging to the elite class, including royalty, could take more than one wife if they could aff ord to do so and if the wives could contribute to the household Because most women could, by working either in the fi elds or with textiles,
it may have been more profi table to have more than one wife
Papyrus marriage contract between the priest Pagosh and Teteimhotep, from Assiut, Egypt, Ptolemaic Period, 172 b.c.e (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)
family: Egypt 449