You could tell the social class based on how they were dressed. Women of lower class were dressed with white cloths wrapped around, sheath dresses or were shown naked, had simple black hair, and bronze jewelry. The women of higher classes wore gold jewelry and white dresses as well and wore beautiful expensive wigs and hair pieces. Everyone in the collection of paintings wore beautiful black eyeliner makeup, including the men. .
What I found interesting was that there is no evidence of any marriage ceremonies to confirm when one was married but there were divorce documents and marriage contracts. In the MET Museum was a papyrus which recorded the marriage contract by Alexander the Great from the 30th Dynasty. Marriage contracts was more or less assuring that the husband will financially support his family and the right for his children to inherit his wealth. If for whatever reason the marriage ended the wife was guaranteed to her assets up to one third of the joint property collected during marriage in addition to any settlements agreed on in the marriage contract. Once divorced, both partners were able to remarry freely. Unlike other ancient societies, women were allow to choose who they wanted to marry so the idea of marriage was really meaningful. It was usually real genuine love unless it was for royal circumstances. A common thing in Egypt between the royals was marrying in the family such as sister/brother/cousin although incest was disapproved of it was used to safeguard the dynasty. A husband was also legally able to adopt his wife as a child if he did not want to give any of his wealth to his siblings therefore she would be able to inherit everything if they had no children or two thirds if there were children. .
Although the status of women in ancient Egypt was higher than in any other ancient civilization, the assumption that a woman could be king was repulsive to the Egyptians, but it did happened.
