The rights and egalitarian conditions enjoyed by Egyptian women shocked the conquering Greeks. In 450 BC, Greek historian Herodotus noted:.
They Egyptians, in their manners and customs, seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind. For instance, women attend market and are employed in trade, while men stay at home and do the weaving. Athenian Democracy mandated that the female's role in the domestic economy was the production of heirs and service of the family. The Egyptian state took no direct part in either marriage nor divorce and made no efforts to regulate the family. The purpose of the Egyptian family was apparently not the production of heirs for the patriarchal head of household, but the shared life and the pleasures and comfort it had to offer.
The legal subjugation of women in other societies seems to have been designed to ensure that women were denied sexual freedom to prevent them from indiscriminate breeding. Often, this was a direct result of the need to provide a pure ruling elite and to restrict the dispersal of family assets within a caste. The unique position of the god-king and the absence of a strictly defined "citizen" class made similar considerations irrelevant in Egypt. Modern Scholars are thoroughly aware that Egypt was greatly mixed, racially, and that.
no written evidence exists of racial tensions or bias. This was most likely the cause of lax sexual restrictions. The Egyptians simply did not care about maintaining racial purity.
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With the exception of the Pharaoh, all marriages were monogamous and women had the right to arrange the terms of the marriage contract.
Realistically, marriages were not polygamous. Many records survive of men raising children born to them of the household servants. Social stigma against married men having affairs was mild, yet married women were socially obligated to be faithful to their husbands. Unlike most societies, however, men having sex with married women were persecuted more severely than their partners.
