Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT HAREM
I. BABYLON
Among the ruins of the noble palaces of Assyria were carvings depicting the leading of men and women captives into the cities. At Khorsabad one of these interesting relics showed plainly the figures of women and eunuchs. "For lo! our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity."
That the harem existed in Nineveh is proved by the testimony of its mural sculpture and the inscriptions deciphered by Colonel Rawlinson and other investigators. This earliest recorded empire came to an end with the great Sardanapalus, probably in 820 B.C., who, upon the sacking of the city by Arbaces, concealed himself in his palace, and set fire to it. With his concubines, eunuchs and slaves he perished; and the Assyrian Empire of Babylon and Nineveh were formed after his death.
Herodotus tells us that the seat of the government, after the downfall of Nineveh, was transferred to Babylon. The city stood in a wide plain, covering a great area, and in its extent and the beauty of its architecture, Babylon surpassed all other cities. A moat and a high wall encompassed the city. In the wall, at the end of each street, were gates of brass. The royal residence and harem stood in the midst of a fortified enclosure.
The temple of Jupiter Belus was an immense square building. In one of the towers was a temple, wherein no mortal might pass the night except a native woman chosen by the deity from the whole nation. This priestess, who was a vestal, was said to be visited by the god himself.
In Babylon women were queens and priestesses, and held other exalted positions. The goddess was more honoured than the god. Women owned property and had equal rights with men. The Queen Semiramis had immense sway; and greater still was the power of Nitocris, who, according to Herodotus, enlarged and fortified the city and showed a wonderful capacity for engineering and the planning of canals and reservoirs.
By the famous Code of Hammurabi, marriage by purchase and polygamy were permitted in Babylon. But wives could not be divorced at the caprice of the husband, and the marriage dowry given to the bride by her father could not be taken from her even though she were divorced. Concubinage was allowed by the Code, the secondary wife, or concubine, ranking as subordinate to the chief wife.
If a man desired a maiden for his wife, he approached her parents first, and the prospective bride had no voice in the contract. Herodotus describes a custom of the Babylonian villagers that recalls the old-time hiring fairs of England. Once a year all the girls of a marriageable age were collected together in an open space, surrounded by a crowd of men. One by one the damsels were put up for sale, the more comely being first offered to the bidders. The wealthiest men naturally secured the most beautiful wives. After the disposal of the handsome women, their plain sisters were sold by auction; but in this case they were given to poor men, and the successful bidder was one who would accept the lowest dowry. This sum was paid out of the sale of the beautiful maidens.
Until the buyer of a girl had given full assurance that he would marry her legally, he was not permitted to carry her away. In the event of disharmony in the married life, the wife could be freed from the tie by the return of the purchase money. "Such," writes the historian, "was their best institution. It has not, however, continued to exist." At a later period, after defeats in warfare and impoverishment, the poorer classes resorted to the selling of their daughters in prostitution.
Herodotus refers to the sacred prostitution of women at the Temple of Mylitta, the Venus of the Babylonians. Generally speaking, prostitution is comparatively uncommon in polygamous countries, and its introduction often arises from the coming of strangers from the monogamous nations. The religious rite observed in the Babylonian temple was by no means a purely commercial transaction. Once in her life every woman in ancient Babylon was compelled to sit in the Temple of Mylitta until chosen by a man. The wealthy women came in carriages attended by their servants. The women sat in a row, and the men passed up and down. When a man had made his choice, he threw a piece of silver into the woman's lap, and she was bound to accompany him. After "absolving herself from her obligation to the goddess," the woman returned home, and was regarded as chaste. The plain-featured and the deformed were often obliged to remain in the temple for a considerable time. "Some wait for a space of three or four years," relates Herodotus. The money given to the women was devoted to the temple of the goddess.
Herodotus describes this custom of the Babylonians as "most disgraceful." But he does not seem to have inquired into its origin and full significance. It was the fervent belief of many ancient societies that procreation is sacred, and a tribute to the gods. They believed also that the rite in the temple favoured the fertility of women.
Professor Frazer, in "Adonis, Attis, Osiris," says: "We may conclude that a great mother goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast."
The rite of Mylitta was designed as a benefit to the woman-devotee. When the man placed the coin in the woman's lap, he said: "May the goddess be auspicious to thee," referring, no doubt, to her increased potentiality as a mother after the sacred ceremony. Similar rites were practised by the Egyptians, the Romans, in the worship of Priapus, the Corinthians, and among the priestesses of Cyprus.
In Lydia it was the custom of girls to prostitute themselves for the purpose of securing a marriage-portion. Frazer is of the opinion that this was a development of sacred prostitution. At first the money is offered to the god, but later it is used by the woman as a marriage-portion. The practice survives to this day in Japan.[1]
The secularisation of prostitution followed gradually upon the decay of religious and symbolic prostitution among the Eastern nations. Once a ceremony of holy and solemn import, it degenerated into a mere traffic for money, and is now a commercial institution of every monogamous country.
In the harems of Babylon, the wives held considerable power and high status. Nor were the concubines the mere chattels of their masters. The Hammurabi Code had important clauses respecting the treatment of inferior wives. If a man determined to dismiss a concubine, he was compelled to pay her "the usufruct of field, garden, and goods," to maintain and educate her children. A bride put away on the ground of sterility, or for another cause, was entitled to the price originally paid for her. If there was no bride-price, the husband paid her one mina of silver; and in the case of a poor man one-third of a mina of silver.
In regard to faithless wives in the harem, the law was not liberal. The woman who had "belittled her husband," or "played the fool," was sent away without compensation or held as the slave of a new wife. An errant wife was condemned to death by drowning, a favourite Oriental punishment for women.
II. ANCIENT EGYPT
"Among the Egyptians," wrote Diodorus, "the woman rules over the man." The existence of the harem in a nation so distinguished as ancient Egypt for a recognition of sex-equality, is somewhat bewildering at the first thought.
Let us remember that polygamy from the earliest times has been the privilege and the luxury of the rich. It was never the practice of a vast mass of the population in polygamous countries. Therefore, in speaking of such countries, we must not lose sight of the fact that the bulk of women are outside of the harems. It is also necessary that we should recognise the constant recruiting of the inmates of the harem by the importation of alien women.
Hammurabi, the great law-maker of the Babylonians, who held power for forty-three years, published a number of regulations relating to marriage. Adultery was punishable by the death of both persons by drowning. Provision was made for the desertion of wives. "If a man has abandoned his city, and absconded, and after that his wife has entered the house of another, if that man comes back and claims his wife, because he had fled and deserted his city, the wife of the deserter shall not return to her husband." A wife or a concubine who had borne children could not be sent away from the harem without the return of her dowry, and she was at liberty to marry again. Incest incurred a penalty of death, either by drowning or burning, according to the severity of the crime.
The law of Hammurabi was very rigid in regard to the descent of property through the mother.
"If a man has married a wife and she has borne children, and that woman has gone to her fate, then her father has no claim upon her dowry. The dowry is her children's."
Mr. Chilperic Edwards, author of "The Oldest Laws in the World," writes, in his notes on the Hammurabi Code, that many of the stories of Herodotus about the women of Babylon are fables. "The Babylonian woman was given in marriage by her father or brothers. The suitor, or his family, paid a certain sum as 'bride-price,' the amount being often handed over in instalments. The bride's father gave her a 'dowry,' which usually, but not necessarily, included the 'bride-price.' The bridegroom might also make his bride a 'settlement.'"
"The status of the concubine is not clear. She does not seem to be necessarily of lower rank, like the Roman, but was a secondary spouse. Like the chief wife she carried bride-price and dowry, and we may assume that she possessed the same rights as the chief wife in regard to maintenance and participation in the husband's estate."
A humane measure for the annulment of marriage on the ground of incompatibility is recorded in the following clause:
"If a woman hate her husband, and say 'Thou shalt not possess me,' the reason for her dislike shall be inquired into. If she be careful, and has no fault, but her husband takes himself away and neglects her, then that woman is not to blame. She shall take her dowry and go back to her father's house."[2]
In the Egypt of ancient days the mass of the people laboured for the mere maintenance of existence, and bowed beneath the stern common lot of the multitude in most civilised nations. Family life among the humble was on a very different plane from the luxurious lives of the influential and the wealthy. But in happy domesticity the Egyptians excelled all peoples. The women were the beloved of their husbands, the mistresses of the house. Innumerable are the precepts to husbands, urging them to bestow tenderness and affection upon their wives, to cherish them in every manner, and to honour all women.
The marriage contracts, in the days of the highest culture in Egypt, prove conclusively that women were more favoured than men. Purchase-marriage became a form only, for the bride-price was given to her, and the wife's property was entirely her own to enjoy and dispense as she chose. In the event of separation, the wife retained her possessions. A woman who left her husband was entitled to all that was her own, and in some instances the wife was endowed with the whole of her husband's belongings.[3]
Children were carefully and lovingly tended by both parents. Even the child of a slave woman was legitimate and accorded equitable rights. The woman who had wandered from the strict path of chastity was not scorned nor made an outcast. Petah Hotep declared that such misfortune should be softened by the kindness of the man who had consorted with her. He was enjoined to shelter her and "be kind to her for a season," and to "send her not away."
The wives living in polygamy had each their own house; their children were endowed, and their property-rights were well-defined. Instead of being at the beck and call of her husband at any time, the woman received him in her own home as an invited guest.
Three centuries ago, in France, certain sage doctors conferred together in order to decide whether women were of the same species as men. In Egypt, long before the advent of Christianity, society had raised women to dignity and almost to adoration. Before we speak of the inevitable degradation of women under a system of polygamy, it will be well to reflect upon the feminism of the ancient Egyptians.
The splendour of the old palaces of Egypt have been often described. Kings occupied magnificent residences, to which temples were attached. The palace had spacious courts and pavilions, and numerous apartments, beautifully adorned with sculpture in relief and with paintings. In the scented and sequestered gardens, there were bowers and sparkling fountains; and rare trees and imported plants flourished.
Surrounded by his wives, children, concubines and slaves, the monarch lived a complete autocrat and the head of a large family.
Women were in constant attendance on the king. When he went out in the city, slaves bore him in a decorated palaquin, or he rode in a resplendent coach. Musicians, singers, and men and women dancers entertained the sovereign in his leisure hours. We read that the royal parents were much attached to their children, and that the king joined in the games of the nursery.
It is clear that when the Egyptians became pacific, women enjoyed the social, civic and domestic advantages which were denied to them during the militant period. The Greek travellers in Egypt were surprised at the independence of the women. It is doubtful whether, at the highest stage in their culture, the Greeks approached the Egyptian ideal of family life.
With the example of ancient Egypt before us, can we assert justly that the position of women has been always debased under polygamous marriage? Moslem polygamy has its evils. But who can maintain that a sense of justice to women and a true regard for her social and personal well-being has always been a conspicuous virtue of the monogamic communities?
- ↑ See chapter on "Japan."
- ↑ "The Oldest Laws in the World."
- ↑ See "The Truth About Woman," C. Gasquoine Hartley (Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan).