EYRE, The Evil Stepmother and The Rithts of A Second Wife

The evil stepmother
and the rights of a second wife
By christopher J. Eyre
Marriage in pharaonic Egypt was characterised by the customary commitment of property to the
children. Only with the birth of children could the implied contract of marriage take full economic
effect. However, this commitment of resources to the offspring of a first marriage meant that the
economic and social status of a second wife, and the prospects of her offspring, were necessarily
inferior. The customary nature of this commitment of resources in marriage — subsistence to the
wife, and inheritance to the children — also means that the practical and legal distinction between a
marriage settlement and a will is blurred.
Asked to account for himself and his travels in Syria, the Doomed Prince of the
Ramesside tale simply says:1
I am the child of a charioteer of the land of Egypt, and my mother died, and my father
took another wife, who came and gave birth,2 and she began to hate me, and so I ran
away from her.
At this point in the story he had already been made welcome by the local princes.
He came driving his own chariot, and with his own ‘follower’ (Smsw), and this was
evidently sufficient guarantee of his status. They treated him as a social equal, and
their question was simply posed ‘in the course of conversation’ (m sxr n sDd).3 His
answer gained their complete sympathy:4
They embraced him, and they kissed him on [all his] li[mbs].
And they invited him to join in their competition for the hand of the ruler’s
daughter.
The necessity of marriage
The evil stepmother is a stock character, who provides a complete alibi for the
prince. There is no originality to her appearance in this narrative, and no individual
characterisation in the way she behaves. Her role is formulaic and structural, reflecting
the conventional social expectation that she will favour her own children, even to
the point of violence. Yet there is no real alternative for a husband but remarriage;5
1
P. Harris 500 (= P. BM EA 10060), 5,11–12; LES, 3.16–4.3.
2
kt Hmt iyt msy; although the construction is problematic, the sense seems clear.
3
P. Harris 500, 5,10.
4
P. Harris 500, 5,12–13.
5
See C. J. Eyre, ‘The Adoption Papyrus in Social Context’, JEA 78 (1992), 218 for the context.
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 93 (2007), 223–43

ISSN 0307-5133
224 Christopher J. Eyre JEA 93
social independence requires a man to have a wife. For an Egyptian man to ‘found
a house’, separate from that of his father, he had to marry. A woman had to ‘enter
his house’. These terms are synonymous with marriage, since only a woman can run
a household.6 While in principle a man can remain in his father’s house,7 and his
mother continue to look after him, this leaves him structurally and socially in the
subordinate role of a son,8 and not the adult head of his own household. If then a
widower does not remarry, his status as head of the household may be diminished by
the fact that it is his daughters, or worse his daughters-in-law, who must provide for
him the domestic care that is the core duty of a wife.
The concept of a man living alone, without a woman to look after him, is outside
normal experience, outside normal practicality; it would be both socially disruptive
and at least vaguely immoral.9 There is no alternative life-style. Discussion of
attitudes to homosexuality in ancient Egypt has to address the dichotomy between
the performance of homosexual acts and the practicality of a homosexual lifestyle.
Homosexuality as a sexual act — marked in Egyptian by the phrase ‘to use (a male
partner) as a woman’ — lay within the expected range of human behaviour, however
explicit moral disapproval might be. The concept of a homosexual identity is,
however, an anachronism; a form of modern western social self-identification.10 The
Egyptian social context is one of clear sexual division of roles in the functioning of
the household as an economic unit: a woman must carry out the work of the house; a
house without a woman is inconceivable; and for a man to take on that social role of
a woman — to act socially as a woman — is at a higher level of social disruption than
mere sexual aberrance. That is to say, a male household within which one partner
took on the entire female social role — the permanent female gender role — and not
merely a female sexual position for individual sexual acts, is probably outside the social
6
Cf. J. J. Clère, ‘Un mot pour “mariage” en égyptien de l’époque ramesside’, RdE 20 (1968), 171–5, on cohabi-
tation as the norm.
7
Note particularly Ani 6,1–10 = P. Boulaq 4, 19,1–10 = J. F. Quack, Die Lehren des Ani: Ein neuägyptischer
Weisheitstext in seinem kulturellen Umfeld (OBO 141; Freiburg and Göttingen, 1994), 102–5 and 168–70, stressing
the advantage of building one’s own house — specifically not relying on the existence of a house of your mother’s
father, that may be divided up on inheritance — the paternal house being the proper environment for a man and
his children, whatever his wealth or poverty.
8
Cf. the comparisons made by L. Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in Ancient
Egypt (Oxford, 1999), 88; C. J. Eyre, ‘Children and Literature in Pharaonic Egypt’, in M. Collier and S. Snape
(eds), Ramesside Studies (forthcoming); and for depictions emphasising the subordinacy of the son, see E. Feucht,
Das Kind im Alten Ägypten: Die Stellung des Kindes in Familie und Gesellschaft nach altägyptischen Texten und
Darstellungen (Frankfurt, 1995), 259–66. Note the passage P. Lansing, 2,9 = LEM, 101.12–13: ‘you are a person
(rmT) fit for writing, although you have not yet copulated (bw irit=k nk)’. Here the context is that of a person given
responsibilities at a peculiarly young age, when his literacy can make up for his lack of physical or social matu-
rity; cf. Feucht, Das Kind, 255–8. See also J. H. Johnson, ‘Sex and Marriage in Ancient Egypt’, in N. Grimal, A.
Kamel, and C. May-Sheikholeslami, Hommages à Fayza Haikal (BdE 138; Cairo, 2003), 155 on lack of sexual
experience as a marker of male childhood; and cf. G. Robins, ‘Hair and the Construction of Identity in Ancient
Egypt, c. 1480–1350 b.c.’, JARCE 36 (1999), esp. 58–9 on male hair-style as a sign of subordination of the son
to the father.
9
Cf. E. W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Written in Egypt during the
Years 1833–1835 (London, 1836/1895; reprint Cairo, 1978), chapter VI, 159–66. On the norm of marriage, and
the extreme limitations and unsatisfactory nature of evidence that might point to occasional examples of unmar-
ried men, see A. M. Roth, ‘The Absent Spouse: Patterns and Taboos in Egyptian Tomb Decoration’, JARCE
36 (1999), 37–53.
10
See Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life, 89–95, and also 68–9, 75–7,103, 106, and id., Private Life in New
Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, 2002), 143–7.
2007 the evil stepmother 225
experience. The plausible model for homosexual behaviour is that seen in the story of
Neferkare and Sisene, where the king and his general have separate households, and
the relationship is sexual; a private visit in the night, and not a quasi-marriage.11
Marriage for a woman is the primary marker of her socialisation as an adult. She
requires a man to provide for her. Only then, as ‘mistress of the house’, is she a
full social and economic person; in the New Kingdom the term used is anx n niwt.12
However, that full socialisation is probably marked by childbirth rather than the
mere consummation of her marriage;13 in practice it is natural to expect that a girl
will marry as early as possible at sexual maturity, and look to conceive as rapidly as
possible.14 The Egyptian woman had the right to be provided for in marriage by her
husband: to receive her subsistence (a n anx), without which a marriage ceased to exist.15
Neither the man without a woman, nor the woman without a man, is fully integrated
in society. The woman encountered in public without a husband is suspicious,16 and
the widow or divorced woman is necessarily the object of charity.17 For the woman,
the household of a grown-up son can provide the necessary social context. For the
man, a household managed only by mother or daughter is insufficient. The widower
must remarry. Yet remarriage is structurally a source of conflict, not simply because
of personal jealousy, but because of its implication on property rights and the social
standing of individuals.
11
For the best survey of the relevant material, see R. B. Parkinson, ‘ “Homosexual” Desire and Middle King-
dom Literature’, JEA 81 (1995), 57–76, and for the problem of attitudes distorting translation, see F. Kammerzell
and M. I. Toro Rueda, ‘Nicht der Homosexuele ist pervers: Die Zweiunddreißigste Maxime der Lehre des Ptah-
hotep’, LingAeg 11 (2003), 63–78.
M. Depauw, ‘Notes on Transgressing Gender Boundaries in Ancient Egypt’, ZÄS 130 (2003), 49–59 surveys
evidence for behaviour of both men and women outside the expected role. The material he presents raises the
question of whether the term Hmt TAy might not be best understood to refer, not simply to marital status — ‘married
woman’ — but was rather more like anx n niwt: a status that characteristically derived from marriage, but that in
practice implied some deeper economic and social position. A matriarch could long outlive her husband, but her
status was quite distinct from that of unmarried girl or destitute widow or divorcee.
12
Cf. J. J. Janssen, ‘A Marital Title from the New Kingdom’, in E. Teeter and J. A. Larson (eds), Gold of
Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente (SAOC 58, Chicago, 1999), 185–92.
13
For the fact that many Demotic marriage endowments are written long after the actual marriage, see below
nn. 40 and 64–7; and for recent discussion around the initial status of marriage, see J. Gee, ‘Trial marriage in
Ancient Egypt? P. Louvre E. 7846 reconsidered’, in F. Hoffmann and H. J. Thissen (eds), Res Severa Verum
Gaudium: Festschrift für Karl-Theodor Zauzich zum 65. Geburtstag am 8. Juni 2004 (StudDem 6; Leuven, 2004),
223–31.
14
Cf. the limited comments of J. Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina: A Study of the Status and Roles of
the Female Inhabitants in the Workmen’s Community during the Ramesside Period (EU 15; Leiden, 2001), 52–3; and
also A. von Lieven, ‘Eine punktierte Osirisliturgie’, in K. Ryholt (ed.), Hieratic Texts from the Collection (CNS 30
= CP 7; Copenhagen, 2006), 20 n. 74 for a survey of the evidence on attitudes to virginity.
15
On rights to maintenance, see P. W. Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property in Ancient Egypt: A Con-
tribution to Establishing the Legal Position of the Woman (PLBat 9; Leiden, 1961), 136–9, 144–50, 158–61; H. S.
Smith, ‘Marriage and Family Law’, in M. J. Geller and H. Maehler, Legal Documents of the Hellenistic World:
Papers from a Seminar arranged by the Institute of Classical Studies, the Institute of Jewish Studies and the War-
burg Institute, University of London, February to May 1986 (London, 1995), 53–4; S. L. Lippert, Ein demotisches
juristisches Lehrbuch: Untersuchungen zu Papyrus Berlin P 23757 rto (ÄA 66; Wiesbaden, 2004), esp. 39–40, 64–8,
75–7, 106–10, 146, 155–6.
16
Notably Ani 3,13–17 = P. Boulaq 4, 16,13–17; see Quack, Die Lehren des Ani, 92–5 and 156–8; cf. C. J. Eyre,
‘Crime and Adultery in Ancient Egypt’, JEA 70 (1984), 95; and cf. the comments of Meskell, Archaeologies of
Social Life, 97 on the social ambiguity of female professions.
17
Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina, 90–5 surveys possible references to divorce; on the question of
polygyny, see below.
The expulsion of the primary heirs at remarriage
The search by the second wife for personal and economic status in an established family
is in structural conflict with the fear and resentment of children at the remarriage of
their father; in the extreme, they are in danger of complete rejection and loss of rights
to inheritance. The situation is presented vividly in a Demotic papyrus of the late
Ptolemaic period, that records the prayers of two children driven out and abandoned
on their father’s remarriage.18 They complain that he deprives them of their mother’s
dowry (grk(t)), which they should receive, and they describe their situation as that of
street-children, dependant on those who might take pity on them — ‘he who finds us
in the corners of the walls of the streets’ — to provide them with a meal or temporary
shelter.19 Effectively orphaned, and with no other support, they can only turn to their
local gods — Ibis, Falcon, and Baboon — for help in their distress.
In the story of the Doomed Prince the situation becomes acute when the new wife
gives birth. That same motif is exploited at greater length in the Setna Story of the
Ptolemaic period.20 Setna is consumed with lust for the beautiful Tabubu. She is
willing, but her price is high:21 ‘I am of priestly rank (wab); I am not a low person
(rmT xm)’. And in particular she is not prepared to ‘act like a low woman of the street
(nDst Hat pA xyr)’. Setna offers money, the favours of political patronage, and promises
absolute privacy and secrecy for the act. Tabubu, in contrast, invites Setna to party
openly in her own house — seeking publicity, not secrecy — and there she demands a
full written marriage endowment as her price for consummation:22
If you desire to do what you wish with me, you must make for me a deed of mainte-
nance (wa sX n sanx) and a money transfer (dbA HD) in respect of everything, all goods
belonging to you.
That is to say, her price is public marriage and full marriage settlement. From this
follows the demand:23
You must make your children subscribe to my deed. Do not leave them to contend with
my children over your property.
But even this was insufficient, and she finally demanded that Setna let her murder his
children, to prevent them disputing his inheritance.24
18
Now P. BM EA 10845: G. R. Hughes, ‘The Cruel Father: A Demotic Papyrus in the Library of G.
Michaelides’, in G. E. Kadish (ed.), Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson, September 12, 1969 (SAOC 35; Chicago,
1969), 43–54; J. G. Manning, ‘Egypt: Demotic Law’, in R. Westbrook (ed.), A History of Ancient Near Eastern
Law (HdO I/72; Leiden, 2003), II, 837.
19
The implication is that they have no living relatives on their mother’s side to protect them; for grk(t), see
below n. 46.
20
F. Ll. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis: The Sethon of Herodotus and the Demotic Tales of
Khamuas (Oxford, 1900); convenient translation in M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, III: The Late
Period (Berkeley, 1980), 125–38.
21
5,8–10; the first phrase is a refrain in her negotiation.
22
5,19–20.
23
5,23–4: literally ‘you will cause your children to write under my writing’.
24
5,25–7.
The rights of the primary heirs
Tabubu expected that Setna’s children would in fact contest the settlement, after
Setna’s death, even though they had consented to it in writing on a witnessed
document. Her concern was both real and reasonable. A consent made under compul
sion from the father, in his lifetime, is hardly a free consent. Precisely that case is
seen in a set of Demotic documents of the mid-Ptolemaic period from Siut.25 The
details of the case are complicated, and in many respects obscure, but contain nothing
that is likely to have surprised a contemporary. The father of the family, Petetum,
married twice; he had at least two children — a son and daughter — by each wife. Both
wives are referred to as sHmt n sanx, a term that defines them as endowed women, and
implies that they have property rights to transfer to their children.26 In Year 21 of
Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the eldest son Tuot issued an endowment (sX n sanx) to his wife
Chratianch, with standard guarantees of property rights, confirmed by his father. The
marriage endowment for Tuot’s mother does not survive, although it evidently had
existed — she is referred to as sHmt n sanx, ‘endowed woman’ — and had guaranteed
the line of inheritance in the normal way.27 But in Year 25 Petetum issued a deed (sX
n sanx) for his second wife, recording that he had received a substantial value of silver
from her as dowry, guaranteeing her subsistence in the normal way, and endowing
her with ⅓ of his property.
Close to death,28 Petetum then took care to settle his property in writing, to make
specific provision for the children — and specifically the son — of his second marriage.
His eldest son, from his first marriage, formally subscribed his consent to this.29 For
a long time the inherited property was managed by the eldest son as a joint family
enterprise. Sometimes the brothers cultivated the land personally, and sometimes
they rented it out, and drew appropriate shares of income from it. Eventually,
however, the arrangement broke down in some bitterness; the younger brother seems
to have demanded a physical division of the property, and this was granted in Year 8
of Ptolemy VI Philometor, with the issue by Tuot of an endowment of the disputed
share, specifically approved by his wife Chratianch.30 The driving force in the
ensuing dispute was, then, this elder brother’s wife. Tuot himself explicitly declined
to pursue the case — Chratiankh claimed that this refusal was under severe pressure
from two uncles — and she personally acted as plaintiff in an attempt to overthrow
the settlement.31
25
H. Thompson, A Family Archive from Siut, from Papyri in the British Museum (Oxford, 1934), to which add
the additional texts published by A. F. Shore and H. S. Smith, ‘Two Unpublished Demotic Documents from the
Asyut Archive’, JEA 45 (1959), 52–60. For comments, see Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 43–4,
187–8; J. H. Johnson, ‘The Legal Status of Women in Ancient Egypt’, in A. K. Capel and G. E. Markoe (eds),
Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1996), 181.
26
Thompson, Family Archive, xii; Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 37–9, 42 n. 1, 44, 107–8.
27
See P. BM EA 10591, i,9–17; ii,16.
28
P. BM EA 10591, i,13–14.
29
P. BM EA 10575, 10–11. It is not absolutely clear from the phrasing of the text whether the father endowed
his second wife and her children with his full ⅓ of the existing matrimonial property, or only with the right to
share with children of the first wife.
30
P. BM EA 10591, ix,7–11.
31
Thompson, Family Archive, xiv.
The best guess may be that the two brothers, under family pressure, preferred a
settlement that avoided recourse to outside authority, but the wife wished to pursue
her own financial claims, focussed on her children’s rights: an evil step-aunt rather
than evil step-mother. The final ruling of the judges was, however, clear.32 They
found that the father had made a deed of maintenance for his first wife. They agreed
with her that by ‘the law of Year 21’ he could not then give away property secured
by that deed without the consent of that woman and her eldest son. However, that
requisite consent had actually been given, in writing. The inheritance of the younger
brother — the child of the second marriage — was therefore confirmed by the judges.
The key points are clear. The children’s rights are explicitly tied to the marriage
endowments of their mothers; they were the sole heirs to the property rights of their
individual mothers. Customary inheritance between the children was equal, although
the eldest son had preferential status as head of the family;33 but the children of a
second marriage could only share in the father’s property on the basis of a specific
and formal agreement, since his first marriage had committed his existing property to
the entailed endowment agreed for his first wife. The children of the second marriage
needed, in effect, to be legitimised, even in the normal case of serial monogamy.34
The right to bequeath property, and the limits of customary entail
Both the plaintiff and the judges in the Siut case refer to what was ‘written in the law
(hp) of year 21’.35 The date of this ‘law’ is exactly contemporary with the documents
of the case. If the phrase really does refer to specific legislation, and is not simply a
way to refer to the issue of the document itself, it can only be a formal clarification of
immemorial custom, at a date when the Ptolemaic regime was explicitly attempting to
impose a closer and more intrusive central authority over local land holding and legal
practice.36 It cannot be any sort of legal innovation. The same underlying theme is
seen much earlier, in the late-Ramesside Papyrus Turin 2021 from Medinet Habu.37
32
P. BM EA 10591, x,7–15 and Thompson, Family Archive, xvii–xviii for summary.
33
On the eldest son as leading heir, representative, and head of the family see especially the Demotic Legal
Code col. viii,30–x,10; K. Donker van Heel, The Legal Manual of Hermopolis: [P. Mattha] (UVSLPI 11; Leiden,
1990), 92; Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, esp. 117–18; Eyre, JEA 78, 215–19; Johnson, in Capel
and Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 183–4.
34
On legitimisation, see Eyre, JEA 78, 211, 215; Johnson, in Grimal et al. (eds), Hommages à Fayza Haikal,
154–5.
35
P. BM EA 10591, i,17; ii,20, x,7; on this, and other apparent reference to specific enactments in demotic
legal texts, see Lippert, Ein demotisches juristisches Lehrbuch, 168–70; C. J. Eyre, ‘Judgement to the Satisfaction
of All’, Droit et Cultures 47 (2004) = B. Menu (ed.), La fonction de juger: Égypte ancienne et Mésopotamie (Paris,
2004), 95–8.
36
See e.g. J. G. Manning, Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Structure of Land Tenure (Cambridge,
2003), 40, 130–1, 171–7, 230–7.
37
P. Turin 2021 + P. Genf. D 409; J. Černý and T. E. Peet, ‘A Marriage Settlement of the Twentieth Dynasty:
An Unpublished Document from Turin’, JEA 13 (1927), 30–9; J. Černý, ‘La constitution d’un avoir conjugal
en Égypte’, BIFAO 37 (1937), 41–8; A. Théodoridès, ‘Le testament d’Imenkhâou’, JEA 54 (1968), 149–54;
S. Allam, Hieratische Ostraka und Papyri aus der Ramessidenzeit (URAÄ 1; Tübingen, 1973), pls cxii–cxix and
cxxi (no. 280); KRI VI, 738–42; page and line numbering here follows Allam’s edition. For specific discussion of
the cases see also Johnson, in Capel and Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 181; J. Toivari-
Viitala, ‘On DeM 764: A Note Concerning Property Rights’, GM 195 (2003), 92–4; R. Jasnow, ‘Egypt: New
Kingdom’, in Westbrook (ed.), History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, I, 324–5, 327–8, 333.
Here, as in the later Siut case, the father has settled a proportion of his property on a
new, second wife. The purpose of his declaration is explicit:38
to cause that each should know his share among my children, [and also] this arrange-
ment (pAy sxr) I will make for the lady Anoksunedjem, this woman (st-Hmt) who is in
my house on this day; for Pharaoh, l.p.h. has said, ‘Cause that every man does what he
wants with his property!’
I am giving all that I have acquired ([pA] iry<=i> nb) with the lady Anoksunedjem,
the woman (st-Hmt) who is in my house on this day: 2 male slaves and 2 female slaves,
total 4, together with (their) children, being the ⅔ on top of her ⅓.
And I will give these 9 slaves, which came down to me as my ⅔ with the lady Tatjary,
to my children; and the house of the father of their mother is in their possession as
well. They are not [miss]ing anything I acquired (bn st A[ty] pA ini<=i> nb) together with
their mother, and I would have given them from what I have acquired (pA ini=i) with the
lady Anoksunedjem; but Pharaoh has said, ‘Give every woman her sfr!’
Two grown up sons then appeared before the vizier and court, acting as ‘the elder
brothers (sn aA) of his children’. In response to the vizier’s specific enquiry, they
confirm the details of the property — a list of what it consisted of — and then the
vizier asked:
‘[What have you to say about] this arrangement your father has made for the lady
Anoksunedjem, the Hbst-(wife) of his?’
They said, ‘[We have heard(?)] what our father has done. As for what he has done,
who can challenge it? That is his property. Let him give it [to whoever] he [wants].’
And the vizier said, ‘If it were not his Hmt-(wife), but a Syrian or a Nubian, whom
he had loved, and to whom he had given his property, [who] would have nullified what
he did? Give [her the] 4 slaves which [he has acquired ini(?) w]ith Anoksunedjem, and
[all he has acquired iri(?)] with her, of which he has said, “I am giving her my ⅔ [on top
of h]er ⅓, and no male of female child shall challenge this arrangement I have made
for her today”.’
The general principles that here underlie the constitution of matrimonial property
are relatively clear. The property brought to the family by each wife is kept separate
from the property of the husband, and it does not pass to stepchildren. A majority
of the father’s property is here designated as inheritance for the children of the first
marriage, and it is here stressed that they do not lose out on anything that he has
‘brought’ (iny) with their mother. The first wife — their mother — seems to be dead.
There is no mention of children of the second marriage, living or expected.
The second wife is said to be living in her husband’s house ‘on this day’, but it
is not clear whether this marks a long-standing marital relationship or is simply
an acknowledgement that the formal act of cohabitation — the key indicator of
marriage — was publicised and recognised on that day; written marriage settlements
of a later period are frequently dated some time after the original consummation of
the marriage.40
38
2,9–3,4.
39
3,9–12.
40
Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, esp. 27–9, and see below nn. 64–7.
The entailment of property in marriage
There is a clear stress here on the balance of property in each marriage, of ⅓ to the
woman and ⅔ to the man.41 Here the issue was not simply a division of the shares in
the total property of both partners on the dissolution of the marriage — at death or
divorce — but a recognition of the matched and balanced investment — the recognised
individual share — in the joint matrimonial partnership. That is to say, these sums do
not necessarily represent the total personal property of the husband, or the wife, but
the dowry and marriage endowment that are necessarily committed as inheritance
to the children of the marriage.42 It was normal, however, to commit all current and
future property to the heirs.43 To endow the second marriage, the man here has to
provide separately identified and marked resources, to match the ⅓ of the second
wife.
A small ostracon from Deir el Medina seems to throw light on this balance in the
division of property shares in the nuclear family:44
If the children shall be small (ir wn(n) nA aDd Sri), make the property (nA xt) in 3 shares
(dnit): one for the children, one for the man (pA aHwty), and one for the woman (st-Hmt).
And if he will look after the children (ir wn(n) iw=f r irit xrt n nA aDd), give to him the ⅔
of all the property, and the ⅓ is for the woman.
The text is complete; no context is given for this instruction, and the tenses are difficult,
so it is unclear whether it represents some general statement of law and custom at
the dissolution of a marriage, or the specific resolution of an individual case. It does,
however, seem to throw light on the repeated expectation that matrimonial property
is divided unequally — ⅔ to the man and ⅓ to the woman — since it implies that the
man takes financial responsibility for the children; a responsibility that necessarily
includes their subsistence when they are small, and financial support at marriage.
A first marriage is characteristically between social equals, and expensive for their
families. The Ramesside will of Naunakhte45 specifically refers to the fact that each of
41
For the ⅓ – ⅔ matrimonial division see also O. Gardiner 55 = HO, pl. lxvi, 2 + cxv, 1 = Allam, Hieratische
Ostraka und Papyri, no. 157, and see below. On the general principle of separation of matrimonial property, see
Allam, JEA 67, esp. 118–20.
42
Toivari-Viitala, GM 195, 89 and n. 17; Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 139, 143–5, and P. W.
Pestman, ‘The Law of Succession in Ancient Egypt’, in J. Brugman, M. David, F. R. Kraus, P. W. Pestman,
and M. H. van der Valk, Essays on Oriental Laws of Succession (Studia et Documenta ad Iura Orientis Antiqua
Pertinentia 9; Leiden, 1969), 58–77, esp. 59–68; and cf. Manning, in Westbrook (ed.), History of Ancient Near
Eastern Law, II, 835–8. Property acquisitions made after marriage fall into a separate category, for which specific
arrangements may be required.
43
E.g. Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 117–24.
44
O. DeM 764; P. Grandet, Catalogue des ostraca hiératiques non littéraires de Deîr el-Médînéh, VIII: Nos 706–
830 (DFIFAO 39; Cairo, 2000), 6–7, 48, and 166; Toivari-Viitala, GM 195, 87–96. For the sequence of tenses
and the apparently generalising mood of the statement — the writing out of a law perhaps — see J.-M. Kruchten,
‘Derechef l’ostracon DM 764’, GM 198 (2004), 39–42, and cf. M. Collier, ‘Reading Conditionals in the Heqa
nakhte Documents’, LingAeg 13 (2005), 1–29.
45
P. Ashmolean Museum 1945.97; J. Černý, ‘The Will of Naunakhte and the Related Documents’, JEA 31
(1945), 29–53: KRI VI, 237–40; Allam, Hieratische Ostraka und Papyri, 295–7 (no. 270); partial translation and
discussion in A. G. McDowell, Village Life in Ancient Egypt: Laundry Lists and Love Songs (Oxford, 1999), 38–40
(no. 14).
her eight children had been provided with a grgt-pr;46 each son needed the resources
to set up the separate residence that marked the independence of his nuclear family
from that of his father, and each daughter needed a dowry to take to this new home
on marriage. Actual arrangements will have been complex, since families would avoid
the actual division of agricultural holdings, to operate so far as possible as a joint
family enterprise managed by the head of the family, and to provide shares of the
income; the father was succeeded by the ‘eldest son’ as preferential heir and head of
the extended family.47
The ability to invest significant resources in a second marriage may have been
relatively unusual in practice.48 It is only readily envisaged if the man has prospered
in his career, and his wealth has outgrown the assumptions of his marriage.49 And
such assignment of resources will always be open to challenge and dispute; it is
normal in Egyptian legal documents to include specific clauses forbidding challenge
from the children or other potential customary heirs. The Siut case stresses that the
arrangements follow specific ‘law’. In P. Turin 2021 the propriety of the settlement
is based on the fact that it accords with specific legislative utterances of Pharaoh, and
it is guaranteed by the specific agreement of the children, witnessed by a long list of
the leading inhabitants of Medinet Habu. The settlement and family consent to it
were given the maximum publicity. The vizier also ordered:50
Have this settlement (sxr) which I have made put (mn) onto a roll of papyrus in the
Temple of Usermaatre-Meryamon, l.p.h.
Evidently this is the document that survives. It appears to be a settlement associated

with remarriage, rather than a will,51 but in Egyptian practice the two necessarily
46
Col. 2,3. Cf. above n. 19; Clère, RdE 20, 174–5 on grg(t) as a term for ‘dowry’ or ‘trousseau’. The crucial
passage, published in J. J. Clère, Les chauves d’Hathor (OLA 63; Leuven, 1995), 110–11 = statue Cairo JE 89783,
D 2–8, categorises the women who might enter the temple to make offerings and pray as ‘the ladies (Spswt), the
marriageable (rnwt literally ‘fresh’)-women, the freshly-married (? nA grg-pr), and all women (Hmwt) of the entire
land’, and it then characterises the goddess as one who ‘gives a husband to the widow, and a dowry (grgt) to the
marriageable-woman (rnwt)’. It is a reasonable guess that the focus here is on women seeking help from the
goddess in the issues of marriage and conception. For the possibility of a girl receiving her entire inheritance in
advance as dowry, see P. W. Pestman, ‘ “Inheriting” in the Archive of the Theban Choachytes (2nd cent. b.c.)’,
in S. P. Vleeming (ed.), Aspects of Demotic Lexicography: Acts of the Second International Conference for Demotic
Studies, Leiden, 19–21 September, 1984 (StudDem 1; Leuven, 1987), 59.
47
See above n. 33, and cf. Eyre, ‘Feudal Tenure and Absentee Landlords’, in S. Allam (ed.), Grund und Boden
in Altägypten (rechtliche und sozio-ökonomische Verhältnisse): Akten des internationalen Symposions Tübingen 18.–
20. Juni 1990 (URAÄ 2; Tübingen, 1994), esp. 116–19, 130, 132; id., ‘How Relevant was Personal Status to the
Functioning of the Rural Economy in Pharaonic Egypt?’, in B. Menu (ed.), La dépendance rurale dans l’Antiquité
égyptienne et proche-orientale (BdE 140; Cairo, 2004), esp. 175–6.
48
The overlap between underlying socio-economic pressure and individual situation is thoroughly examined
for current Egypt by Laila S. Shahd, An Investigation of the Phenomenon of Polygyny in Rural Egypt (Cairo Papers
in Social Science 24/3; Cairo, 2001), and note especially 42–3, 80–4 on the lower status of a second wife, and the
disadvantages of her children in respect of inheritance of land.
49
Note, for instance, the letter to the dead wife P. Leiden I, 371, where the husband claims credit for not
leaving his wife behind as his career took off: M. Guilmot, ‘Lettre à une épouse défunte (Pap. Leiden I, 371)’,
ZÄS 99 (1973), 94–103; E. F. Wente, Letters from Ancient Egypt (WAW 1; Atlanta, 1990), 216–17 (no. 352); with
discussion in this context by Johnson, in N. Grimal et al. (eds), Hommages à Fayza Haikal, 152 n. 19; for specific
example see Shahd, Polygyny in Rural Egypt, 30–1.
50
4,2–3.
51
Théodoridès, JEA 54, 149–54 in effect interprets this text as a will. Cf. my comment JEA 78, 209–10 that
the Adoption Papyrus is both will and marriage settlement presented through the device of an adoption; the
overlap, since any property settlement at marriage necessarily guarantees the future
inheritance, subject to revocation.
The endowment of family property: wills vs marriage endowments
The key point in both the Ramesside document from Medinet Habu and the Ptolemaic
document from Siut is that the revocation or variation of a settlement made for a
wife required formal and explicit assent; both her own and that of her direct heir.52
As family circumstances change, it is not only death that makes the activation or
variation of a settlement appropriate. For instance, the imyt-pr of the controller of
the phyle Kebi, from late Middle Kingdom Kahun, records his gift of his office to
his son Iuseneb, to act as his ‘staff of old age’ with immediate effect.53 At the same
time Kebi revokes the imyt-pr made for Iuseneb’s (unnamed) mother. He declares
that his house in a given location, and all that is in it, are to be the property of his
children by a lady called Nebetneninesu. Iuseneb was evidently his primary heir;
it is not clear whether Nebetneninesu was his mother, or a second wife with whom
Kebi had further children. What is clear is that when Kebi went into retirement,
finding his office physically too much for him, he put into effect a settlement that
divided his property before death;54 the old settlement for his wife was not so much
revoked as varied in detail in order to be put into effect. That first imyt-pr is then best
understood as a standard settlement associated with marriage and the production of
an heir, and not in the modern sense a will.
Also from Kahun, the closely comparable ‘will’ of Ihyseneb/Wah is best understood
in a similar way.55 Wah’s brother Ihyseneb/Ankhreni had settled property on him by
imyt-pr — ‘all my property (xt) in countryside or town’ — in a Year 44. Then, in a Year
2, Wah himself settled this property by imyt-pr on his wife Teti, with the stipulation
that she may give it to any she chooses among her children by him. Here the property
is specified as moveables (Hnw), 4 Asiatics (slaves), and the buildings his brother had
erected for him (nA n at qd.n n=j sn=i), from which she may not be evicted;56 he also
point that the documents are not different categories is explicitly generalised here; they are not necessarily made
at marriage or at death, but when publicity and clarification of arrangements is required to prevent dispute; on
Demotic documents, see also the comments of C. J. Martin, ‘Marriages, Wills and Leases of Land: Some Notes
on the Formulae of Demotic Contracts’, in Geller and Maehler (eds), Legal Documents of the Hellenistic World,
59–60, and W. Clarysse, ‘Ptolemaic Wills’, in ibid., 95–8.
52
Cf. Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 38–9, 43–4, 138.
53
P. Kah. VII.1 = P. UC 32037: M. Collier and S. Quirke, The UCL Lahun Papyri: Religious, Literary, Legal,
Mathematical and Medical (BAR IS 1209; Oxford, 2004), 100–1; T. Logan, ‘The imyt-pr Document: Form,
Function, and Significance’, JARCE 37 (2000), 57–8. On the imyt-pr as a category of marriage endowment with
reversion to the children, see Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 121–2, 136–9; A. Théodoridès, ‘Du
rapport entre un contrat et un acte de disposition appelé “imyt-per” en égyptien’, RIDA 39 (1993), 81–4. On these
Kahun documents, see also J. H. Johnson, ‘Speculations on Middle Kingdom Marriage’, in A. Leahy and J. Tait
(eds), Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H. S. Smith (EES OP 13; London, 1999), 169–72.
54
Théodoridès, JEA 54, 149 also interprets P. Turin 2021 in this way, as the actual transfer of property to sons
of his first marriage as part of the arrangement, but there the case is not so clear.
55
P. Kah. I.1 = P. UC 32058: Collier and Quirke, The UCL Lahun Papyri: Religious, Literary, Legal, Math-
ematical and Medical, 104–5 and unnumbered fold-out; convenient translation by Johnson, in Capel and Markoe
(eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 178; most recent commentary Logan, JARCE 37, 58–9, and see
also A. Théodoridès, ‘Le testament dans l’Égypte ancienne’, RIDA 17 (1970), 117–216.
56
On the implications of a wife’s lifetime interest in the property, see Eyre, JEA 78, 219; Pestman, Marriage
and Matrimonial Property, 60, and 120–2.
stresses her unchallengable right to burial with him in his tomb.57 As a final clause, he
appoints the deputy Gebu as guardian (Sd-nxn) for his son: a clause that appears to be
a later addition to the text in a different hand.58
The exact circumstances of these deeds are a matter of guesswork, but the
likelihood is that Wah succeeded a childless elder brother as head of the family;59
and despite the mention of his place of burial, the deed we have is more in the nature
of a marriage endowment than a will. As in the deed of Kebi, the carefully phrased
text is not explicit about whether the children — the eventual beneficiaries of the
settlement — have already been born, or whether they are simply expected for the
future; in these documents the tense is consistently and deliberately unmarked in the
clauses that define the terms of the endowment. The final line of the deed of Wah
might, indeed, be taken to imply that the birth of a son had followed the making of
the deed, but equally it might simply mean that Wah was seriously concerned about
his health and wished to make specific arrangements for his (eldest) son and heir.
Egyptian custom involved so full a commitment of resources to the line of inher
itance at marriage, and so clearly defined expectations of shares at inheritance, that
the concept of the last will and testament, central to Anglo-American legal traditions,
is inappropriate;60 a man’s ability freely to bequeath his property was so limited by
custom that the concept of the will is largely irrelevant.61 The process associated
with the imyt-pr 62 is more like that of a formal endowment,63 made at a time when,
for whatever reason, the head of the joint household needed to define specific shares
due to individual members. In that sense an imyt-pr can be particularly valuable to
a woman; not simply a marriage contract, nor a property settlement, nor a will, but
a mixture of all three. It clarified her rights to property in the joint enterprise of a
marriage, but it did not necessarily involve an actual distribution of resources until
the eventual dissolution of the marriage through death or divorce. In the context of
a marriage, a settlement quantified the subsistence due to the wife — the a n anx — and
the commitment of resources to the children as a long-term property agreement. No
57
See also below n. 97.
58
The implications of the term are unclear, since the institution of guardianship is not satisfactorily docu-
mented. A similar situation may be at issue in the late Old Kingdom papyrus Berlin 9010 from Elephantine. The
defendant, Sobekhotep, claims to act on the basis of a written record of the words of a certain User, to act as
trustee in usufruct (m wnm n zbnn=f) for ‘his wife, his children, all his property in it(?), until [all] the children of
this User are settled (shr), the elder according to his seniority, the younger according to his juniority’. This was,
however, challenged by a son of User; evidently a grown-up son, since he carries the same title of mr aw as his
father; see K. Sethe, ‘Ein Prozeßurteil aus dem alten Reich’, ZÄS 61 (1925), 67–79; H. Goedicke, ‘Zum Papyrus
Berlin 9010’, ZÄS 101 (1976), 90–5; N. C. Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age (WAW 16; Leiden, 2005),
186–7 (no. 103).
59
A model example is probably seen in the career of the Overseer of Works Nekhebu, in the reign of Pepi I;
Urk. I, 215–21; Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 267 (no. 198).
60
Eyre, Droit et Cultures 47, 104–5, specifically Urk. I, 133.4–5, and cf. Urk. IV, 967.3; 1199.8.
61
Cf. Eyre, JEA 78, 209–10; Manning, in Westbrook (ed.), History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, II, 840.
62
For the most recent survey of such deeds, see Logan, JARCE 37, 49–73, although his collection of examples
is not complete, and his translations are not independently authoritative. G. P. F. van den Boorn, The Duties of
the Vizier: Civil Administration in the Early New Kingdom (SiE; London, 1988), 180–3 provides a clear overview
of earlier discussions of the term. Johnson, in Capel and Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven,
177 defines them as ‘documents used to transfer property to someone other than the person(s) who would inherit
that property if the owner dies intestate’.
63
As with the Old Kingdom tomb endowments presented under this heading; see H. Goedicke, Die privaten
Rechtsinschriften aus dem Alten Reich (BWZKM 5; Vienna, 1970).
respectable father would marry his daughter without implied property settlement,
but that arrangement did not need to be written. Indeed, the fact that the written
document was the exception and not the rule implies that it was only used when
there was an element of distrust — for instance, the threat of divorce — or the desire
to obviate a challenge and family dispute over property rights: cases when, without
the protection of a document, the arrangement could be challenged, varied, or
abrogated.64
The demotic document — the sX n sanx — was not strictly a marriage document,65
although that is the normal context, nor was it a freely given guarantee of matrimonial
provision. It defined underlying property rights — characteristically the endowment
of the married woman, based on the property she brought into the marriage — and
then the provision that had to be made in return for control of that property. Typically
it was controlled by the husband, but after his death a similar arrangement could be
made with children.66 The principle is the same as that familiar in Egyptian cult
endowments; the donation of property carries with it the requirement of service
from the beneficiary. These settlements for the wife were not, characteristically,
written at the time of marriage, but at a date when it was felt important to clarify
property arrangements. They can be closely concerned with the property that will go
to existing and future children,67 and in some cases are likely to mark the significant
change in the pattern of legal rights that came with parenthood.
A variation on the theme of the imyt-pr to provide for a daughter is seen in the
Third Intermediate Period in the arrangements made by the Fourth Priest of Amon
at Karnak, Djeddjehutyiuefankh called Nekhtefmut. His wife Nesmut is depicted on
the base of his seated statue, to his left;68 here she declares that that she will be with
him for ever, inseparable. His daughter Tashesenmut/Shepenese is depicted on the
other side; she declares that she will see them every day; she will have the reputation
of one who will not go missing for her father and mother; she will carry out their cult
as their heir. Another kneeling statue of the same man holds a stela, that again shows
64
Cf. e.g. Eyre, JEA 78, 209–11.
65
On marriage contracts in general, see Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 167–81 and passim;
E. Lüddeckens, LÄ I, 1181–3; id., Ägyptische Eheverträge (ÄA 1; Wiesbaden, 1960); J. H. Johnson, ‘ “Annuity
Contracts” and Marriage’, in D. P. Silverman (ed.), For his Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer (SAOC
55; Chicago, 1994), 113–32. Cf. also J. H. Johnson, ‘The Legal Status of Women in Ancient Egypt’, in Capel and
Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 180–3. She argues n. 62, pp. 216–17 for possible foreign
influences and changes in the post-Ramesside period, largely following B. Porten, ‘Aramaic-Demotic Equiva-
lents: Who is the Borrower and Who the Lender?’, in J. H. Johnson (ed.), Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt
from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (SAOC 51; Chicago, 1992), 259–64, but one should be very cautious
about attributing direct causative results from foreign influence on social behaviour that may be a widespread
cultural norm; see Eyre, JEA 78, 207–21; id., JEA 70, 92–105; and note, for instance, the parallel scepticism of
M. Smith, ‘Egyptian Invective’, JEA 86 (2000), 173–87 about attribution of direct influence of Greek models on
demotic literary creation.
66
Lippert, Ein demotisches juristisches Lehrbuch, 67, 92–7, and for an example, see A. Farid, ‘Two Demotic
Annuity Contracts’, in K. Daoud, S. Bedier, and S. abd El-Fatah, Studies in Honor of Ali Radwan (CASAE 34;
Cairo, 2006), I, 323–46, with an example, following the normal format, in which it is the son, and not the hus-
band, who assures the annuity for a woman in return for transfer of property to his control.
67
Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 24–32, esp. 27–9; Manning, in Westbrook (ed.), History of
Ancient Near Eastern Law, II, 835–6, 840–1; S. Allam, ‘Quelques aspects du mariage dans l’Égypte ancienne’,
JEA 67 (1981), 117–19, 122, 132; Lüddeckens, LÄ I, 1181–3; id., Ägyptische Eheverträge; Eyre, JEA 78, 209–10.
68
Cairo statue CG42206/JdE 36704 = K. Jansen-Winkeln, Ägyptische Biographien der 22. und 23. Dynastie
(ÄAT 8; Wiesbaden, 1985), Text A2, pls v–vii.
his wife and daughter on the sides. The main text here is an adoration of Amon,
followed by the prayer that he protect the imyt-pr done for their daughter, to protect
her and her children.69 Her property seems to include temple endowments (lines
11–12):
consisting of all that I have given her, in your chapels (Hwwt), in town and country,
including labourers (Hsbw) and flocks, household property and all valuables, which are
done for her on water and land. No other son or daughter may(?) say (n Dd ky sA sAt),
‘Give me the same!’
He justifies this (line 14):

according to what the great god has said: ‘Have every man arrange his own property!’
(imi iri s nb sxr iSt=f)
His property is defined as (lines 14–15):

things of my father and my mother and the weary (labour) of my hands; the rest is
favours of the kings I followed in my days — no fault was found with me — I have done
what I want with them.
He also specifies that his daughter is to profit from her share in any increase in his
household after his death.
The terms of this imyt-pr provide for the cult of the mother and father as a unity,
by providing for the daughter. There is a strong emphasis on their coherence as a
nuclear family; the wife stresses her total loyalty, and the daughter stresses that she
is carrying out, and will carry out, the cult role expected of an eldest son, but which
would fall to a daughter if there were no son,70 and no son is named on these statues.
The bar on claims from any other son or daughter can in principle be taken to refer to
collateral relatives — cousins, nephews and nieces — within a wider extended family,
but Djeddjehutyiuefankh did have a son — the second priest Harsiese — and despite
the terms of the imyt-pr his offices seem to have passed down through Harsiese to his
descendants.71 It may simply be that a father wished to provide appropriately for a
son and daughter, but it may also be significant that the mother of Harsiese is never
named on the monuments. The terms of the imyt-pr are consistent with the formal
arrangements that might be expected to clarify inheritance where the heirs are born of
different mothers. This would explain both the emphasis on the responsibility of the
daughter for the family cult, and the stress that the property given to the daughter was
personally acquired, while the son seems to have succeeded to the official functions.
69
Cairo statue CG42208/JdE 36697 = Jansen-Winkeln, Ägyptische Biographien, Text A4, stela, lines 9–19,
pls xii–xiv; see also Johnson, in Capel and Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 182; Logan,
JARCE 37, 66.
70
See Eyre, JEA 78, 215–17 on the implications of this, and especially Donker van Heel, Legal Manual of
Hermopolis, 92; Pestman, in Vleeming (ed.), Aspects of Demotic Lexicography, 61–3.
71
Karnak T 35 = P. Barguet and J. Leclant, Karnak Nord, IV: 1949–1951 (FIFAO 25; Cairo, 1954), 145–50 and
fig. 142, which also mentions the daughter Tashesenmut/Shepenese, but not the mother; also Jansen-Winkeln,
Ägyptische Biographien, A5 = CG 42210 and A6 = CG 42211, again without mention of his mother; for the family
and its history, see K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 b.c.) (2nd edn; Warminster,
1986), 217–24 (§§ 183–9) and 561 (§ 477); M. L. Bierbrier, The Late New Kingdom in Egypt (c. 1300–664 b.c.):
A Genealogical and Chronological Investigation (Warminster, 1975), 79–85.
At the very least, the concerns expressed in such a text illustrate the real worries of
individuals, that make them want a document.
The social contexts of second marriage and the status of the second wife
At the death or divorce of a first wife, a man’s choice of second wife was necessarily
constrained by his individual circumstances. If there are no children at the end of a
marriage, the collateral family of the first wife will at least expect the dowry she took
into the marriage to be returned to them: as her own property if she is divorced, or
inheritance if she has died.72 There will then be no further financial constraint on the
husband’s ability to negotiate a new marriage settlement. Where there are children of
the first marriage, most of the property — all of the wife’s share, and most if not all
of the husband’s — is explicitly mortgaged as the inheritance of his children, and his
choice of a marriage partner is constrained by the level of provision he can make for
her; but remarriage is expected.
The lady Taimhotep, in her stela from very late in the Ptolemaic period, tells
how she had married young in the priestly community to which she was born; her
husband was High Priest. She gave birth to three daughters and a son, and then died
aged just over 30. Speaking from the tomb, from the misery of the other world, she
tells her husband to enjoy the physical pleasures of life to the full. Having buried her
in his tomb, and provided her cult, he has performed his duty by her. In return she
urges:73
O my brother, my husband, (my) friend, High Priest, you shall not tire of drinking and
eating; of drunkenness and love-making.
The dead wife is explicit in her advice against celibacy.74 This passage falls in the
genre of the harpers’ songs, with their discourse about the nature of death, that are
preserved in New Kingdom tomb decoration in the context of the mortuary feast.75
The voice is that of the widower rather that the woman herself, but here it provides
an assertion of the need for closure after the death of the partner, while placing the
rest of his life in the context of a need for pleasure and not simply physical care.
72
Cf. Eyre, JEA 78, 209, 211; S. Allam, JEA 67, 118–21; id., ‘��
Les obligations et la famille dans la société égyp-
tienne ancienne��’, OrAnt 16 (1977), 89–97.
73
BM EA 147, 15–16; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature III, 59–65; E. A. E. Reymond, From the Records
of a Priestly Family from Memphis (ÄA 38; Wiesbaden, 1981), 165–94 also edits the partner Demotic stela.
74
Cf. P. Derchain, ‘Le pique-nique de l’aulète’, in W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and H. Willems (eds), Egyptian
Religion: The Last Thousand Years. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur (OLA 84–85; Leuven,
1998), II, esp. 1155–7 and 1164–6; J. H. Johnson, ‘Women, Wealth and Work in Egyptian Society of the Ptole-
maic Period’, in ibid., 1397–8; M. Depauw and M. Smith, ‘Visions of Ecstasy: Cultic Revelry before the Goddess
Ai/Nehemanit: Ostraca Faculteit Letteren (K. U. Leuven) dem. 1–2’, in Hoffmann and Thissen (eds), Res Severa
Verum Gaudium: Festschrift Zauzich, 86–90 for the festival context. See also below, n. 94. P. J. Frandsen, ‘On
Fear of Death and the Three bwts Connected with Hathor’, in Teeter and Larson (eds), Gold of Praise: Studies
Wente, 136–7 places this passage specifically in the wider context of fear of hunger and thirst in the afterlife, and
Derchain also notes the conventional connection between sexuality and resurrection, for which cf. Roth, JARCE
36, 37–53.
75
For recent discussions of context, see J. Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, tr. D. Lorton
(Ithaca, 2005), 119–21, 201–3; M. K. Hartwig, Tomb Painting and Identity in Ancient Thebes, 1419–1372 bce
(MonAeg Série Imago 10; Tournhout, 2004), 102; P. A. Bochi, ‘Gender and Genre in Ancient Egyptian Poetry:
The Rhetoric of Performance in the Harpers’ Songs’, JARCE 35 (1998) 89–95 stresses the learned, masculine
literary-wisdom context of these texts.
The romantic image of the second wife — the Hbst-wife — is that of a young girl,
taken for pleasure, and it is this superficial image of the second wife as young,
pretty, and socially negligible, that provides the characteristic interpretation of the
best documented example in the early Middle Kingdom letters of Heqanakhte.76
Heqanakhte complains bitterly about the attitude and behaviour of his grown-up
sons towards his Hbst.77 These letters do not, of course, make the full details explicit
for the modern reader, but the jealousy and resentment against the woman come
through strongly. At the end of the first letter Heqanakhte warns his son Merisu:78
Also act to put this female house-servant (tA bAkt nt pr) Senen out from my house — pay
attention — on whatever day Sahathor reaches you (with this letter). Look — if she
spends a single day in my house! Act! You are the one letting her act badly towards
my Hbsyt. Look, why should I give you pain? What does she do to (the lot of) you, you
enemy of hers?79
And greet my mother Ipi — a thousand times, a million times. And greet Hetpet, and
all my household. And Nefret. (And I ask you),80 as for the bad behaviour to my Hbsyt,
pack it in! Are you an (equal) partner with me? You be quiet (gr=k), and it will be fine!
The sequence of thought here, at the end in the letter, seems to run backwards and
forwards through Heqanakhte’s personal concerns about the female members of his
family. He ends the second letter with similar concerns:81
I have said to you (pl.), ‘Do not keep a friend (xnmst) of Hetpet away from her, whether
her hairdresser (nSwt) or her prt.’82 Pay attention (pl.) to it! If only you (pl.) would be
firm in everything this way. But you (sing.) have not liked her, so you (sing.) should
have Iutenheb brought to me. By the life of this man — I mean Ipi — he who shall be
involved in any case of hostility(?) towards (my) Hbsyt,83 I am against him. Look (pl.),
76
Indeed, this begins in print with the early fictionalisation of the letters in Agatha Christie’s Death Comes as
the End (London, 1945), published before the letters themselves.
77
On the title, see W. A. Ward, Essays on Feminine Titles of the Middle Kingdom and Related Subjects (Beirut,
1986), 65–9; id., ‘Reflections on Some Terms Presumed to Mean “Harem, Haremwoman, Concubine” ’, Berytus
31 (1983), 73; G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (London, 1993), 61–2; Eyre, JEA 78, 212; Toivari-Viitala,
Women at Deir el-Medina, 32–8. J. P. Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri (PMMA 27; New York, 2002), 108–10 specu-
lates that the etymology of the term might be ‘she who is clothed’.
78
Letter I, vs. 14–17; Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri, 16 and 35–7.
79
Despite the difficulties, Allen’s reading (partly after Goedicke) of pA msD s(y) (or possibly pA msD=s) is palaeo-
graphically superior to the original reading of pA ms 5, ‘you 5 children’, in T. G. H. James, The @eqanakhte Papers
and other Early Middle Kingdom Documents (PMMA 19; New York, 1962), 30 n. 82.
80
The letter here simply has the interrogative word in, which indicates an interrogative tone for what follows,
although the presence of an imperative there means that it cannot readily be translated as a direct question in
English. The free translation here represents my understanding of the communicative sense.
81
Letter II, 38–44; Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri, 17 and 44–7 provides a significantly improved reading of this
passage over earlier commentators, although I do not follow his understanding in all details of either grammar
or lexicon.
82
Commentators have generally followed James, @eqanakhte Papers, 42 in deriving the term from pr, ‘house’,
and taking it to refer to a form of domestic servant; Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri, 44 extends this to an assertion
that the term xnmst must refer to a person of lower social status, and the argument (pp. 38–9) that Hetpet paid for
her hairdresser and other service out of her own resources, but there is no secure textual basis for these interpreta-
tions, and his argument is not compelling.
83
Reading irity.fy sp nb Hr pgA, ‘he who shall do any case on the battlefield’, after Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri,
46 and 110, and rejecting readings that assume an obscene sense for pgA ‘open up’. The verb pgA also appears in a
potentially relevant context on statue Fitzwilliam Museum E. 31-1973, B 3 (= J. J. Clère, Les chauves d’Hathor,
143: Hmw Hr pgA tA nb(t) n nA knf, ‘(male and female) slaves pgA the mistress of the (?)-women(?)’). The context is,
however, broken and obscure.
this is my Hbsyt! It is (well) known how to behave towards a man’s Hbsyt! Look (sing.),
as for anybody who will do (anything) to her — it’s the same that’s done to me! Will any
one of you really put up with his wife (Hmt) being denounced to him? Then I will put
up with it! In what way can I be with you (pl.) in one unit?84 Not when you (pl.) won’t
respect (my) Hbsyt for me!
Hetpet and Iuetenheb appear to be different names for the same woman: Heqanakhte’s
Hbsyt.85 There is a repeated switch in these passages between use of ‘you’ in the
singular, to address Merisu as the temporary head of the household, and the plural
‘you’ to refer more generally to the members of the household, as the focus of
Heqankahte’s thinking varies in his composition of the letters. One obscure phrase
in the passage quoted here has usually been taken to imply that Heqanakhte was
concerned that the abuse of the woman may have been of a sexual nature, rather than
a simple expression of hostility. That interpretation derives more from a modern
fictionalisation of the scenario than the actual wording of the text, but the violence of
feeling — if not the nature of the physical abuse — is clear. The behaviour of the sons
marks their disrespect for the Hbsyt — their step-mother — and is in marked contrast
to the extremes of respect that would be expected for their actual mother.
The particular harassment of the Hbsyt here takes the form of isolating her from
normal female social contacts. One should stress here a particular focus in women’s
society — indeed individual women’s social and emotional dependence — on personal
friendship. In this context, friendship should not be treated simply as a random
personal convenience and luxury, but as a structural part of the social integration of
the individual woman, that gives her some individuality independent of her status
of wife, and that is vital to her emotional and social well-being.86 The focus is not on
house-visiting as an activity or end in itself, but the fact that where a woman’s natural
territory is the home, any form of contact among women — and particularly the joint
performance of domestic tasks such as baking or washing clothes, never mind petty
domestic loans or assistance — implies access to personal (female) friendship as a
norm and a necessary context of support and self-help. This seems to be the context
of a passage in the New Kingdom Story of Two Brothers. The younger brother was
sent home, unexpected, in the course of the working day, to fetch seed-grain:87
84
Tt, literally ‘table’, used in the sense of a group that works, lives, and eats as a unit. The term does not simply
refer to an extended family, or a patrimonial household, but a mutually dependant social, economic, produc-
ing, and consuming unit: see James, @eqanakhte Papers, 44 ‘establishment’; Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri, 47;
D. Franke, ‘Die Stele Inv. Nr. 4403 im Landesmuseum in Oldenburg’, SAK 10 (1983), 172–3.
85
Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri, 109–10. The situation is complicated, in that there are two ladies in the house-
hold with the name Hetpet, creating potential confusion in reconstructing the events and family structure.
86
For the comparative perspective, see U. Wikan, Life among the Poor in Cairo, tr. A. Hemming (London,
1980), esp. 6–9, 56–63, 125–35. For an application to pharaonic Egypt see Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life,
202–3. See McDowell, Village Life, 40–4 for specific examples of women’s support; and for wider exemplified
discussion of the role of friendship in social relationships in Egypt see D. Sweeney, ‘Friendship and Frustration:
A Study in Papyri Deir el-Medina IV–VI’, JEA 84 (1998), 101–22, esp. 112–13 and id., ‘Letters of Reconcili-
ation from Ancient Egypt’, in I. Shirun-Grumach (ed.), Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology (ÄAT 40; Wiesbaden,
1998), 353–69.
87
P. d’Orbiney 2,9–3,3; LES, 11.13–12.2. The passage is normally translated to present the woman doing her
own hair, as in M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II (Berkeley, 1976), 204, but the impersonal construc-
tion in the first clause, and the absence of a written suffix pronoun as subject to the verb ‘abandon, leave off ’
(emended to include this by Gardiner, LES, 12, note to 3,2) fit better a picture in which the wife is attended by
an unnamed female.
His younger brother found the wife of his elder brother, and one was sitting plaiting
her (hair).
He asked her to let him have the seed without delay. Her response was to tell him:
Open the grain-bin, and take what you want! Don’t make my hairdresser(?) leave off
incomplete!
The picture here is of the wife absorbed in a characteristic female social activity,
but one that is frivolous and time-wasting to the male view: it marks a male moral
judgement over her neglect of serious domestic duty. The underlying lack of gravity
in her behaviour — this apparently trivial self-absorption in her own female social
interest — provides an appropriate backdrop in male judgement to her self-indulgent
attempt to seduce the younger brother88 when he comes back out carrying the seed
on his back. This exemplifies the clichéed male attitude that women — other than the
mother — cannot be trusted, and provides a context for the behaviour and attitudes
of the sons of Heqanakhte. For his Hbsyt, the attempt by the family to bar her from
outside female society implies a social confinement in the household, and restriction
of her personal identity into an essentially dependent role. Whether it is a matter
simply of personal meanness, or, more structurally speaking, a family interest to
emphasise the subordinate status of the second wife, it is behaviour that isolates the
woman from her natural social support.
A woman does not need to be young or attractive for the sons of a first marriage
to be resentful about her usurping the position of their mother, or threatening their
inheritance. The socio-economic pressures for remarriage are as strong as those for
a first marriage, but the context is often different, and the choice of partner likely
to be more restricted. Where the man already has grown-up family, the pressure to
produce children is reduced; indeed the existing children are likely to resent a fertile
remarriage more strongly. At the same time the need for the woman to bring resources
to the marriage may be reduced. A woman less attractive economically, or physically,
or a woman thought infertile may find a social role as second wife, although each case
is individual; to be a second wife does not necessarily imply that a woman is destitute
and without resources of her own, although structurally the role is socially inferior.
Marriage to a widow or divorcee
I know of no case that documents arrangements made for the remarriage of a widow or
divorced woman with children. It is no more than a plausible guess that a living father
would have primary claim to the children. It is a natural assumption that property
rights inherited from a dead father should be protected from claims by children of a
woman’s second marriage. And it is to be expected that a man’s property should be
transferred to his own children, and not stepchildren. A possible illustration of this is
seen in a Demotic marriage endowment, where the husband declares to his wife:89
88
In which, of course, the display of hair plays its culturally symbolic role; cf. Robins, JARCE 36, esp. 63–5.
89
Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property, 121, 190 A no. 14 = P. Cairo 31177 = Lüddeckens, Eheverträge,
24–7, and 278–9 for this and other comparable clauses.
while you will not be able to give it to another child than the children which you will
[bear] to me.
At the least, this envisages a woman bringing children into the marriage, or the possi-
bility of her remarriage at a later date, following death or divorce. In practice, however,
behaviour will be idiosyncratic, and depend on specific personal circumstances.
The financial arrangements of a widow following remarriage are best seen in the
case of the lady Naunakhte, from Ramesside Deir el Medina, although she had no
children from her first marriage. Discussion of her case is interesting, however, in
the way that it has invoked modern prejudices as much as explained ancient attitudes.
Married first to the scribe Qeniherkhopeshef, when he must have been fairly old and
childless,90 Naunakhte is naturally envisaged as an unfortunate pretty young girl mar
ried off to the rich old man. At his death she inherited property from him — moveables
(Axt) and immovables (swt) — before marrying the workman Khaiemnun, with whom
she had eight children surviving at the end of her life. The fact that, as a formidable
old lady, who had fallen out with four of these children, she barred them from as
much of her inheritance as she could, somehow leaves the impression that this widow
was the dominant figure in her second marriage.91 On the grounds that they had
not supported her properly, Naunakhte barred one son — Neferhotep — and three
daughters from shares in the property she had received from Qeniherkhopeshef,
from the property she had received from her own father, and from her personal ⅓
share of the joint matrimonial property. She accepted that they would still share
equally in her husband’s ⅔ share of the joint matrimonial property, and have a single
division of all their father’s property.92
Naunakhte’s property assignment has more the character of a genuine will, although
its terms are to bar customary heirs for good reason, and it does not represent a free
disposal of property. Written by the scribe Amonnakhte, it records her declarations
made in front of a court that included the two foremen and another 11 leading
members of the community. It was certainly made at the end of her life; she was dead
within the year.93 A year and 12 days after the original declaration, Khaiemnun and his
children appeared in front of another court, and swore their assent to the writing, and
specifically their assent to the stipulation that her son Neferhotep should not inherit.
90
J. Černý, A Community of Workmen at Thebes in the Ramesside Period (BdE 50; Cairo, 1973), 329–37;
Bierbrier, The Late New Kingdom in Egypt, 26–9; B. G. Davies, Who’s Who at Deir el-Medina: A Prosopographic
Study of the Royal Workmen’s Community (EU 13; Leiden, 1999), 84–6, and chart 25. On any estimate the age
difference must be at least 40 years, and probably more. In contrast Naunakhte and Khaiemnun appear to be
fairly close contemporaries in age. No earlier wife is attested for Qeniherkhopeshef, nor can other close relatives
be identified; he appears to have succeeded to the office of scribe as a pupil and, in effect, adopted son of his
predecessor Ramose, which may imply that he had no extended family, whatever that may imply in the tight local
community. Naunakhte’s mother appears to have been a lady Henutshenu (iv), but the name of her father is not
currently known. It may well be that Naunakhte inherited from Qeniherkhopeshef in default of other relatives;
the alternative suggestion is that her property from her first marriage simply consists of her ⅓ share of a joint
matrimonial property, cf. Černý, JEA 31, 49–50.
91
For example, Černý, JEA 31, 51.
92
For comments on this division see Toivari-Viitala, GM 195, 91–2.
93
P. W. Pestman, ‘The “Last Will of Naunakhte” and the Accession Date of Ramesses V’, in R. J. Demarée
and J. J. Janssen (eds), Gleanings from Deir el-Medîna (EU 1; Leiden, 1982), 173–81: the rest of the dossier deals
with the distribution of moveable property and the maintenance of the father after her death, so that this addition
seems to relate to the implementation rather than the original declaration of the arrangement.
In truth the young Naunakhte needed a suitable marriage. Age difference is less
significant in marriage where financial and social security are primary considerations,
and when youth at marriage provides no sort of guarantee of life expectancy. Nau
nakhte was not a penniless girl; her will includes personal property (wDA) that had
come from her father. Her marriage to Qeniherkhopeshef may simply represent a
family alliance, in which a daughter is married as she reaches child-bearing age, with
full dowry, to the most prestigious suitor, with no serious regard paid to age difference.
The precise circumstances of her second marriage are a matter of guesswork.
Khaiemnun was not one of the village headmen, as Qeniherkhopeshef had been,
but as one of the workmen of the Tomb he came in the category of a socially and
financially respectable marriage for any local girl.
Concubinage and polygyny
The assumption is made throughout this discussion that serial monogamy was the
norm in pharaonic Egypt, following death or divorce. Polygyny falls into the difficult
category of a practice against which there is no evidence, but which is not actually
documented in any clear way.94 The issue is not one of sexual practice — whether a man
may have sexual relations with more than one partner living in his household — but the
social status of wife, and consequent property rights.95 For instance, the Ramesside
Adoption Papyrus describes a situation where a concubine seems to serve as surrogate
mother for a married couple. Here a childless wife is not herself divorced, but
shares with her husband in the purchase of a slave girl, who provides the necessary
heirs: two girls and one boy. This is a special case, where property resources were
substantial on both sides. They belong to cavalry families, with all that implies about
solid family wealth, and the wife specifically has inheritance rights to land. In this
case the imperative seems to be the provision of children, a contrast to the opposite
case where children exist and the wifeless father requires household management.
The Adoption Papyrus contrasts strongly with the earliest dated Greek document
from Egypt, a marriage contract between a Greek couple. This includes a clause
forbidding the husband:
to bring home another woman (gunai`ka a[llhn) in insult of Demetria, nor to have chil-
dren by another woman (ejx a[llh~ gunaiko;~).96
94
For the most recent comments, see W. Clarysse and D. J. Thompson, Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt
(Cambridge, 2006), II, 297–300; they focus on the claim of the Ptolemaic high Priest Psenptais — that is, the
husband of Taimhotep (see above) — to have had a ‘harem(?) of beauties’ (xnr nfrw: BM EA 886, 12; see Reymond,
From the Records of a Priestly Family, 136–50) — in effect a quasi-royal situation — and list a small number of
possible examples of polygyny from the papyri, but the examples are not compelling as evidence of polygyny on
any basis of economic equity. Derchain, in Clarysse et al. (eds), Egyptian Religion: Studies Quaegebeur, II, 1164–5
translates the crucial phrase ‘de très belles danseuses’, although also assuming that Psenptais’ interest was sexual
and not merely aesthetic (cf. above n. 74). The Hittite treaty of Ramesses II (KRI II, 231.8) refers to ‘wives’ in
the plural in discussion of arrangements to extradite fugitives and their families, but the significance of this for
Egyptian practice is wholly obscure.
95
Eyre, JEA 78, esp. 212, 214; see also Shahd, Polygyny in Rural Egypt, 19–23, stressing the importance of
polygyny in modern Egypt, when it is impossible for social or financial reasons to divorce the first wife; in general
see Johnson, in Grimal et al. (eds), Hommages à Fayza Haikal, 154–5; Robins, Women, 64–7.
96
P. Eleph. 1: A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri, I: Non-literary Papyri, Private Affairs (Loeb Classical
Library 266; London, 1932), 2–5; P. W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden, 1990), 67–9; B. Porten,
Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Berkeley, 1968), 297–8; id., The
The clause is unique, but the situation was unusual: the small new community of
Greek colonists in the far south at Elephantine. It may be intended to guarantee
against previous relationships as much as future possibilities. There is nothing in
the textual record from the pharaonic period that discusses the practice of polygyny,
or defines property rights and inheritance in a polygynous marriage. This at least
implies that social norms and financial pressures excluded the possibility of making
the sort of property commitment that is the marker of recognised socially balanced
marriage to more than one woman. It is relatively common at certain periods for
a man to appear with more than one wife on his funerary monuments, but this is
normally, and most naturally, taken to document serial monogamy rather than
genuine polygyny. A number of contradictory motivations are at play here. On one
side, the burial of a woman — its place and wealth — shows a close correlation to her
marital status; women are normally buried with their husband,97 so that a sequence of
wives predeceasing the husband may best hope for burial together in a family tomb,
whatever this may say about the timing of tomb preparation by an Egyptian official.
On the other side, the representation of the wife in the tomb is not simply an issue of
personal commemoration, but is also of symbolic importance as a motif asserting the
rebirth and continuing posterity of the tomb owner; the style and frequency of such
depiction varies considerably from period to period, and the presence of multiple
wives may be more complicated than the simple depiction of serial monogamy.
Summary
Within an Egyptian marriage it is possible to distinguish three categories of property,

that remain formally distinct until the dissolution of the marriage: property brought
to the marriage by the husband, property brought by the wife, and property acquired
during the partnership. On contracting the marriage — an implicit and customary
contract, not written down in the pharaonic period — the husband expected to manage
the wife’s property, but had committed his property to her subsistence. However,
this contract was, in an economic sense, provisional until the birth of children; their
acquisition of rights, at birth, over their parents’ matrimonial property, validated the
underlying contract between the married partners, and limited the parents’ ability to
dispose of such property. While the category of acquired property seems to provide
some room for special arrangements, it is clear that the right of free disposal of
property, that is at the heart of the concept of a will in Anglo-Saxon law, is wholly
inappropriate in pharaonic Egypt. The marriage endowment is not a matter of free
choice, but of custom over which there is little room for manoeuvre. There are closer
comparisons with other jurisdictions, such as those derived from Roman law, or
Islamic law, where the distribution of inherited property is closely defined by custom
Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-cultural Continuity and Change (DMOA 22; Leiden,
1996), 408–11.
97
Cf. the comments of Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life, 155–68 on the essential dependence of women
on their husbands for burial; cf. Roth, JARCE 36, esp. 37 on the specific role of the wife in the resurrection and
afterlife of the husband, and the iconographic and archaeological difficulties related to joint or separate possession
of funerary monuments; for specific example see above n. 57 on the Will of Wah from Kahun.
and statute, and cannot be varied on the basis of individual whim, but only for good
cause.
In Egypt, however, it seems that the rights to family property, established by the
birth of children — the customary entail of property to children — was peculiarly
strong, and focussed entirely on the children of a first marriage. Yet with relatively
low life expectancy, and the practical as well as social necessity for a woman to manage
a house, quite high rates of remarriage must be envisaged. The social context of
a second marriage is necessarily more varied, more individual, than that of a first
marriage, but the customary division of property rights defined the status of the
second wife as structurally subordinate, and the ability of a father to provide for a
second family was tightly constrained by the rights of his primary heirs. This is seen,
on the one side, in the conflict between the second wife — the stepmother — and the
children of the first marriage, and on the other side in the attempts by fathers to
transfer property and rights, with the forced consent of all involved, to their second
wives and to the children of their second families: in effect, to exploit the practice of
endowment at marriage into a sort of bequest by will. The use of a written imyt-pr in
family contexts does not, however, represent either a will or a marriage contract, but a
written record of specific agreements, that seem to extend or modify custom in order
to address a specific family situation, where the customary restrictions on property
disposal seem extremely tight.
Where the nuclear family provides the primary socio-economic unit, within a wider
kinship structure of property rights, the position of a second wife is structurally
anomalous. Remarriage is a common social necessity, but the result is a structural
tension, that is visible in the contradictions inherent in the status of the second wife.
The underlying issues are not trivial, even if they are common to many societies.
The actions of individuals, seen in the Egyptian record, reflect the particular modes
of social and economic behaviour that characterise pharaonic society. It is not simply
that there are individually good or bad stepmothers, but that the role of stepmother
is structurally problematic for the individual. This is the context for the cultural
cliché of the evil stepmother, the enemy of the innocent rightful heir, who steals
the inheritance. She is a stock character who receives little sympathy in society or
literature, particularly if she is younger, beautiful, and so by definition scheming.
The evil stepson, who persecutes the innocent stepmother, is still felt to have a sort of
right on his side; the second wife is more likely to be a figure of fun, pity, or contempt,
however common the experience may in fact be.

EYRE, The Evil Stepmother and The Rithts of A Second Wife

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EYRE, The Evil Stepmother and The Rithts of A Second Wife

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The evil stepmother

and the rights of a second wife

The necessity of marriage

The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 93 (2007), 223–43

The right to bequeath property, and the limits of customary entail

Evidently this is the document that survives. It appears to be a settlement associated

The endowment of family property: wills vs marriage endowments

He justifies this (line 14):

His property is defined as (lines 14–15):

Marriage to a widow or divorcee

Concubinage and polygyny

Within an Egyptian marriage it is possible to distinguish three categories of property,

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