So far as we know there was no specific ceremony or ritual for marriage in Dynastic Egypt which sounds crazy but it is important to keep in mind that even in the West the elaborate and iconic wedding with the cake, rings, champagne and all is a relatively recent phenomenon. Marriage for both the elites and the common people consisted of cohabitation, with no additional legal or religious qualifications. Once a man and woman had moved in together they could consider themselves to be married despite not apparently going through any legal process. As a matter of fact the terminology surrounding marriage is a bit complicated, because there is no term for it, although the term for wife, hemet is well attested, sometimes “marriage” is not described as taking a wife/husband but simply being “with” them, and this might indicate the lack of a marriage contract or prenuptial agreement but for the purposes of adultery and familial relationships there does not seem to have been any difference and they may very well be two ways of saying the same thing. This would probably have been marked by some form of celebratory party and letters from the Ptolemaic and Roman period list details of the preparation of such events, namely the invitation of guests (usually family and close friends), the providing of a dinner, and in a few cases the acquisition of large amounts of flowers usually hyacinths or roses (some things never change do they). Processions which accompanied the bride to her husband’s house are well attested in the Hellenistic and Roman world and were practiced to some extent by these groups in Egypt but if similar customs ever developed within Egypt they left no trace in the historical record. More rarely, men went to live in the house of their wife but generally it was the woman who entered the house of the man.
It has been suggested that a Hellenistic Egyptian ceremony in honour of pubescent girls, referred to as therapeuteria, marked either the onset of puberty and/or menstruation or perhaps premarital circumcision. However the relative lack of evidence for female circumcision makes the second interpretation seem unlikely, but it was in any case a similar celebration among the Hellenised population as the marriage dinner.
Marriage contracts are not attested to until the Late Period and even then they were by no means a prerequisite for marriage, some marriage contracts were even drawn up after the couple had cohabitated for years and had multiple children. Naturally the Hellenistic and Roman settlers of Egypt brought their own ideas of more institutionalised marriage with them although this did not prevent Egyptian attitudes towards premarital sexuality and the woman’s involvement in arranging her own marriage from taking root among the immigrant population. Contracts are more frequently attested to by the upper classes who would have naturally engaged in more economically and politically motivated unions which along with the need to perform and display wealth and status meant their marriages tended to be more formalised. That said, this meant little more than a carefully negotiated contract and an expensive celebration.
First time marriages were on average between women in their early to mid teens and men in their late teens to mid twenties, however this is by no means a universal age estimate, and there are plenty of recorded instances of young women marrying men who would have been considerably older, as well as legal restrictions on the inheritances of women who sought to marry while in their fifties which indicate that yes, 50+ year old Egyptian women got married but this was likely an uncommon occurrence as fertility would have been an important goal for marriages and these women would almost certainly have been previously married. Given the young age of Egyptian women when they first married it is likely that they would have had little previous sexual experience and generally a woman was deemed suitable for marriage when she had her first menses which marked the departure from childhood while marriage marked the beginning of adulthood. However, there is plenty of evidence that Egyptian girls, even those of high status, engaged in premarital and even prepubescent sexual activity as well as a few instances of girls as young as 8-10 marrying, so it is possible that even young brides would have acquired some sexual experience by the time of their marriage. Men, who may have previously had access to prostitutes and servants even if not lovers of a similar social status, would likely have had more sexual experience than their prospective brides, although Dominic Montserrat has suggested quite appropriately that this was likely more the case for affluent, urban men than their poorer more rural counterparts who simply would have had fewer opportunities for sexual interactions. Given the looser restrictions around Egyptian marriage it is entirely possible that you and your spouse would have had intercourse multiple times before entering a more stable relationship.
The ideal of marriage in Egyptian culture is generally likened to the relationship between a brother and sister (this is part of why the same affectionate term can be used for brother/husband or sister/wife), with mutual affection being considered a necessity and a worthy goal for men and women. Funerary art, love poetry, and letters from private individuals indicate that friendships and mutually affectionate relationships were expected in marriage and that they were something that was achieved by many couples. Paintings and statuary also depicts couples sharing affection in numerous ways such as holding hands, sitting together, embracing or otherwise engaging with each other, while Egyptian wisdom literature encourages men to make their wives happy with gifts (jewelry, clothing, food etc) and to treat them gently while encouraging women to be faithful, supportive and loving towards their husbands, so you would expect and be expected to contribute towards building a relationship that ideally would be lifelong and happy.
Marrying and having children is evidently one of the life goals that was emphasised in Egyptian wisdom literature, along with social responsibility and prosperity. Having children and a spouse to contribute to your household’s economic output through agricultural labour or textile production and to support you in old age would be of paramount importance, so marriage and conception would be an integral aspect of your life. Contraceptive aids were known so limiting the size of your family in that way would have been a possibility depending on your means but infanticide and especially female infanticide which was common in Greece and Rome was not widely practiced in Egypt. Egyptian medical papyri and spell texts frequently include medicaments, charms and spells to increase sexual potency and pleasure, and the Turin Papyrus depicts a range of sexual positions and acts although it is not clear whether the text is pornographic, satiric or instructive but it indicates an awareness of sexuality that is rarely overtly apparent in other Egyptian art.
The act of procreation and sexual intercourse was important in Egyptian culture as it represented rebirth and was wrapped up in the process of reincarnation and the afterlife, begetting children was supposed to be one method for entering the afterlife and Egyptian inscriptions and texts often reference that individuals hoped to reuite with their spouses after death and both spend time together and copulate in the afterlife.
On a personal and legal level there was a surprising emphasis on equality, with each retaining whatever property they acquired before marriage and any property acquired within marriage being shared jointly by the man and woman. Custody of children is never clearly defined but in general matrilineal descent is emphasised indicating that regardless of the father, the child was secure in its relationship to the mother’s family and inheritance. The preoccupation with legitimacy that is found in other ancient societies is not evidenced in Egypt, and children not born from a man’s wife do not seem to have been valued any lower than children born to him within wedlock. Children born of adultery were excluded from inheriting from their mother’s husband and his family however.
divorces could be initiated by either party in a marriage (unless of course either agreed to give up this right in a marriage contract) for reasons ranging from infidelity, infertility, abuse or simple incompatibility and they did not come with any social stigma attached. In the case of a preexisting marriage contract both parties would then follow whatever the agreed upon divisions of property and income were, but otherwise they would usually come to an agreement between each other and their families. In some cases, courts and legal officials had to be involved to reach a settlement, and the outcome depended on the reasons for divorce and the nature of the relationship, for instance in the case of a wife who committed adultery she would often be sent away with only what property and income she brought into the marriage and would be frowned upon but if the husband divorced her for fickle reasons or due to her inability to conceive he would often owe her some form of financial reparation and would be the stigmatised party. Following divorce, ex-spouses sometimes continued to cohabitate with each other because it was either convenient or economic, and this was evidently not a strange arrangement given the nature of its attestations in letters from the Ptolemaic period although the practice is likely much older than that.
Adultery was a heavy crime when committed by women in Egyptian society, and the harshest penalty known from Egyptian texts was death although lighter punishments seem much more common, with such women being stripped of their property within the marriage. Men who had intercourse with married women were viewed harshly and also often severely punished, with death being the harshest punishment but again this was likely more often achieved by less severe means such as flogging, and out of the 41 Negative Confessions which Egyptians had to be able to make truthfully to avoid destruction in the underworld and enter the afterlife, women had to be able to state that they did not commit adultery and men had to be able to state that they did not lay with another man’s wife. In Egyptian literature, a man killing either another man or his wife after discovering adultery or attempted adultery is a recurring motif, but these are generally dramatised works and most likely in the case of adultery the main consequence would divorce and ostracisation. Outside of married women, men were generally free to engage in relations with women outside of marriage although some marriage contracts stipulate that he not bring another woman or a concubine into their house. Men who engaged in long-term intimate affairs with women while married, and unmarried men who sought out affairs with strange women or associated with prostitutes were also frowned upon however so it is clear that some societal restrictions were placed on men’s sexual encounters as well.
Polygyny was often practiced by the aristocracy, so an elite Egyptian man might have multiple wives but this is not as well attested to in the lower classes who seem to have been mostly monogamous. In any case it was not common although it is not always clear when written evidence refers to situations where a man has divorced and remarried or is in a polygamous relationship. Polyandry is not attested however, and married women were monogamous in theory.
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