usband, acknowledging
the receipt of a sum of money as dowry, and undertaking that if she
deserts or disposes of him, a third part of all her goods, present and
to come, shall be forfeited to him.[210]

The high honour, freedom and proprietary rights enjoyed by the
Egyptian wife can only be explained as being traceable to an early
period of mother-right. Here the ancient privileges of women have
persisted, not as an empty form, but would seem to have been adopted
because of their advantage in the family relationship, and been
incorporated with father-right. This would account for the last-named
contract. Its very ancient date seems clearly to point to this. It is
unlikely that, if it were an exceptional form, it should have chanced
to be one of the very few early contracts that have been
preserved.[211] It would rather seem that property was originally
entirely in the hands of women, as is usual under the matriarchal
system. The Egyptian marriage law was simply a development of this,
enforcing by agreement what would occur naturally under the earlier
custom. The interests of the children's inheritance was the chief
object of the settlement of property on the wife. In the earlier
stage, the daughter inheriting property from her parents, would
marry--the husband would then become its joint administrator, but not
its owner; it would pass by custom to the children with the eldest as
administrator, but if the wife dismissed the husband, as under this
system she could and often did, she would of right retain the family
property in control for the children.[212] As society advanced this
older custom would tend to break up in favour of individual ownership,
property would come to belong to the husband and father, and it would
then be necessary to ensure the position of the wife and children by
contract. The Egyptian marriage may thus be regarded as a development
of the individual relationship arising from father-right modified to
conform with the mother-right custom of transmitting property through
the woman. Under the earlier system the inheritance of the husband
would pass to the children of his sister, and not to his own children.
The contract was, therefore, made to prevent this. The husband's
property was passed over to the wife (at first entirely and later in
part) to secure its inheritance by the children of the marriage. Hence
the formula common to these contracts by which the husband declares to
the wife, "My eldest s