University of Virginia Library

17. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE HISTORICAL VESTIGES OF THE DOMINANCE OF WOMEN

UNDER monosexual dominance there necessarily and invariably prevails a powerful inclination to obliterate all traces of any earlier dominance exercised by the sex that is now subordinate. This tendency is psychologically determined; it is the inevitable outcome of the ideology of monosexual dominance. The members of the ruling sex feel affronted by every reminder of the fact that in former days their sex was under tutelage, and the sentiment is accentuated by the reflection that rule was then exercised by those who are now subordinate. Monosexual dominance, therefore, at its zenith, is always characterised by the spread of a tradition that the hegemony of the sex actually in power is eternal and unalterable. All the historical vestiges that conflict with this tradition are deliberately or unconsciously expunged from the record. Sometimes they are glossed over or falsified; sometimes they are erased; sometimes they are ignored. The inclination to get rid of the evidence somehow or other is stronger in proportion as the monosexual dominance is more absolute.

Furthermore, quite apart from the particular type of monosexual dominance, we all have a natural disposition which imperils the preservation of such reminiscences of the past as conflict with the manners and customs of the present. As Bacon[1] says, we are led by

[1] Novum Organum.

the pressure of current opinion to ignore views which run counter to that opinion. Now, almost universally, men are still the dominant sex, and for a considerable period in the past their dominance has been practically unchallenged. Indications that in still earlier days women held sway arouse an unpleasant sense of instability, and claim from us the recognition that the prevailing opinion is unsound. Hence our tendency to ignore them; hence our desire to expunge such traces from the historical record.

Not merely do we argue from ourselves to others; we also argue from our own times to all earlier epochs. The pictures from the past have to adapt themselves to the minds formed by the present in which we live. The historian Bossier once said of the historian Mommsen, that Mommsen, in his studies of the past, was always guided by the prejudices of the present. The statement may be generalised; it is true of us all, and it is especially true where questions of monosexual dominance are involved. Psychologists, ethnographers, and historians have hitherto regarded the relationships of power between the sexes exclusively from the outlook of masculine dominance. Their minds have been influenced by the prejudices of the present, by Men's-State ideology. For this reason, down to the present day, their accounts of the position of women in earlier times have been coloured by a Men's-State subjectivity. The result is that under an absolutist monosexual dominance the belief generally prevails that the extant type of sexual dominance has always existed.

The foregoing considerations account for the campaign, in our own Men's State, against the historical traces of the dominance of women; they account for the numerous misinterpretations of the evidence of such

dominance, and for the unduly severe criticism of that evidence even on the part of those who admit the historical reality of the Women's State.

A glance at some of the studies made during recent decades will show how strong has been the influence of the Men's-State prejudices characteristic of the society in which the investigators happen to have been born. They take it as self-evident that they are entitled to measure with the yardstick of their own days epochs that lie thousands of years back in the past. For example, Breysig, E. Meyer, and many others, try to prove the impossibility of the dominance of women even in the earliest periods of human history on the ground that, precisely in those ruder times, men must have been more ruthless in taking advantage of their superior bodily strength. L. von Wiese says that the characteristics of women under the conditions of the primal age are explicable on the ground that they had then the cruel and difficult task of adapting themselves to the more powerful males. To-day the average man is physically stronger than the average woman. Inferences from this are uncritically applied to the conditions of the primal age. We have shown, however, that the ratios between the stature of men and women are not constants, but vary concomitantly with changes in the relationships of power between the sexes. We have shown that among many peoples the women were stronger than the men, and that this occurred in periods when women were dominant. It is obvious that these investigators' Men's-State ideology has led them into the fallacy of making what happened to be the conditions of their own day a standard for past times.

Curtius makes the same mistake of measuring the past by the standards of the present when he writes

that the tracing of descent through the mother "must be regarded as the vestige of an imperfectly developed condition of society and of family life, a condition that passed away when more orderly conditions became established." The influence of the present in prejudicing Curtius' mind is rendered conspicuous by his own mention of the fact that early writers had held other views. As he justly remarks, to them the practice of tracing descent through the mother seemed proof that in the days when it prevailed the influence of women must have been great. A more dispassionate investigator would have realised that the opinions of these early writers concerning the problems of the past were a better guide to the understanding of the matter than the opinions current at the time when he himself chanced to live. Our forefathers were much nearer to the past, and were therefore in a better position to judge than we of a later and greatly altered generation. But, because Curtius despises the claims of the classical writers to understand the behaviour of their contemporaries, and is himself guided solely by the lights of his own day, his interpretations are as remote from reality as the present is from the past. More recent discoveries in Egypt have proved Curtius' theory to be unfounded. In ancient Egypt descent was traced through the mother alone for thousands of years. Nor did this happen during "an imperfectly developed condition of society and family life," but in an era when social life was very highly evolved, when Egyptian civilisation was at its acme, and when family institutions were of an advanced character and were based on monogamic marriage.

Again, Lewis Morgan's opinion, that paternal authority was at first weak, but that its growth steadily

advanced as the family became more and more individualised, so that finally paternal authority "became fully established under monogamy,"[2] is the typical utterance of one whose judgments are unduly swayed by the spirit of his own time. Because to-day the form of marriage is monogamic, and because the father stands at the head of the family, Morgan imagines that the general development of marriage must necessarily have been along the lines of paternal authority. But our information regarding marriage among many of the peoples who lived under the dominance of women suffices to invalidate this theory. The Egyptians, the Chamorros, and the Cantabri were all strict monogamists, and nevertheless in their married life maternal authority was supreme.

Besides, as we have learned, Diodorus tells us in so many words that the women of Egypt ruled their husbands, for the husbands had to give a pledge of obedience when they married. This passage from Diodorus is a very sore point with our Men's-State investigators, for there is no ambiguity about its implication that wives were absolutely supreme. In many German works on ancient Egypt the passage is completely ignored, as in the writings of Duncker, Wiedemann, Ebers, and Reitzenstein, and in the first edition of Meyer's book. In other works, as in Max Müller's, for instance, the text is referred to as quite incredible —though no reasons are offered for such an assumption. Yet other authorities interpret the passage solely by the standards of modern life.

Wilckens' writings furnish an example of the last method. He says: "In this connexion historiographers have been wrongly supposed to have declared that

[2] Ancient Society, p. 466.

among the Egyptians the husband promised to obey his wife, and have been censured for giving currency to so incomprehensible a view. But Diodorus must not be necessarily understood as having meant that the husband was to obey the wife in everything." In the end Wilckens comes to the conclusion that Diodorus must have written "emphatically," in order to bring the subject into relation with the earlier passage in which he wrote of Isis and Osiris. Even the discovery of the Libbey papyrus, which, in conjunction with the so-called Berlin papyrus, completely confirms Diodorus' statement, has not induced all the Egyptologists to change their tactics.

It is most characteristic that modern authors should have no hesitation in reproducing marriage formulas wherein the wife promises to obey the husband. No one expresses any doubt as to the authenticity of these. Whereas the marriage formulas which accord with the time spirit of the Men's State are regarded as obviously accurate, the marriage formulas of the Women's State, which conflict with the time spirit of the Men's State, are received with the utmost incredulity.

These conflicting standards are almost universally apparent in the reports concerning marriage contracts. The marriage contracts belonging to the pre-Ptolemaic era, when women were dominant, are known to us from the reports of Spiegelberg.[3] They show that women alone had the right to divorce a sexual partner, and that this right could be exercised on payment of an indemnity, and upon the refund of half the dowry which the husband had brought into the marriage. Although in the earlier Egyptian records no evidence has been discovered of any contract giving similar rights to the

[3] Op. cit.

husband, most investigators have endeavoured to represent matters as if such contracts had existed. Reitzenstein adduces in proof of their existence the announcement of the marriage of Amenhotep III, which has nothing whatever to do with the case. The marriage contracts that belong to the days of the dominance of women have led Reitzenstein to make the most amazing assertions in the attempt to deprive them of their Women's-State flavour. He opines that they were all contracts made by wealthy women, by heiresses in fact. But Spiegelberg has proved that one of the contracts was entered into by persons in very moderate circumstances. Here, then, we have a typical instance of the way in which people try to distort facts which conflict with the canons of the Men's State. It is noteworthy, however, that in one case Reitzenstein does reproduce the full text of a matriarchal marriage contract. More recent investigators often omit this text. Mitteis and Wilckens do not give the contents of the papyrus at all, for they question its signification. "It would be premature to infer from it that Egyptian marriage law was the very opposite of our own, and to imagine that there was a period in which the woman was the only important party to the contract, or that there was a period in which the wife was the dominant partner in marriage."

The marriage contracts of the pre-Ptolemaic era, as made known to us by Spiegelberg, contain another clause which seems incomprehensible or repugnant to those whose minds are dominated by Men's-State ideology. In both these documents the woman promises the man that in the event of divorce she will not merely return to him half of the dowry, but she says "in addition I will pay you a share of everything I may have

earned in conjunction with you during the time in which you will have been married to me." Inasmuch as in Men's-State marriages wives do not as a rule participate in the earning of income, our Egyptologists have either ignored the passage, or else have interpreted it in a way which plainly betrays their Men's-State prejudices. For instance, Wilckens[4] writes: "Let me remark in passing that I consider somewhat puzzling the phrase in the Libbey papyrus `one-third of the property which I may have earned in conjunction with you,' for a woman does not usually earn anything. She must have been engaged in trade of some sort." It becomes all the more obvious that the authorities' doubt as to the accuracy of the text was the outcome of their Men's-State ideology when we recall that there is ample documentary evidence, not merely that the women of Egypt took part in the earning of income, but that they definitely occupied a dominant position. The phrase "everything I may have earned in conjunction with you" is not only found in the Libbey papyrus, but also, as we learn from Spiegelberg, in the Berlin papyrus. We read, moreover, in a marriage contract of about 117 B.C., that the children are to have "everything that belongs to me, and everything that I earn in conjunction with you."[5]

Viktor Marx,[6] who studied the position of women in Babylonia from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Darius (604-485 B.C.), furnishes a similar example. He translates a document in which an unmarried girl has the disposal of a large sum of money, and adds: "It is rather difficult to understand how a Babylonian girl could possess a sum of money and dis-

[4] Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, Vol. ii, p. 211.

[5] Spiegelberg, op. cit.. p. 9.

[6] Op. cit., Vol. iv.

pose of it as she pleased." Yet Viktor Marx himself tells us that married women and girls of this land and time could enter into contracts as independent persons. He would presumably have accepted without demur a document in which an unmarried man was represented as an independent property owner!

In Plato's Menexenus we read that Aspasia was the teacher of many famous orators, and above all of one of the most noted personalities in ancient Greece, Pericles, son of Xanthippus. But Diehlmann[7] assures us that "the irony is manifest" when, in Plato's Menexenus, Aspasia is described as training Pericles in oratory and as even writing his speeches for him. Still more trenchantly does Karl Steinhart[8] endeavour to show that there can have been no warrant for Aspasia's reputation in this matter. He writes: "The idle chatter to the effect that Aspasia used to help Pericles prepare his speeches was doubtless a popular witticism, the outcome of the universal inclination to take the shine off a splendid reputation." To possess a "splendid reputation" is self-evidently a purely masculine prerogative, and it is mortifying to the male sentiment of dominance that any mention should be made of feminine achievements which seem to put those of a man into the shade. Steinhart does not realise that he is himself playing the detractor's part that he ascribes to the common people, is himself taking the shine off a splendid reputation. According to the testimony of the ancients, Aspasia was fully Pericles' equal in capacity, her genius being no less outstanding than his. Ebers says of her: "But for the aid of her wings, Pericles would never have reached the heights which in her

[7] Forsebungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte.

[8] Einleitung zu Platons Werken.

company and partly through her help he was able to attain." The reason why Steinhart remains unaware of his own inclination to take the shine off a splendid reputation is simply this, that he is belittling a woman in favour of a man. Conversely when he studies Menexenus the inclination seems to him obvious enough, for the "popular witticism" he reads into the dialogue is one that belittles a man in favour of a woman. Here also, then, we see in vigorous operation the tendency to suppress reports that are out of harmony with the prevailing canons of the dominant males.

Strabo[9] records that in his day there were numerous nations in which the division of labour between the sexes was the reverse of that with which we are familiar to-day and which prevailed in the geographer's own land. The women, he says, worked away from the home, whilst the men attended to domestic affairs. The present authors have never come across any comment on this observation. It has been utterly ignored.

Here is another instance. Plutarch, in his account of the prosecution of Phocion, tells us that recourse was had to the law by which women voted as well as men. It follows that at that date women must still to a degree have functioned as co-rulers in Greece. But modern histories of Hellas are silent as to the point; Bachofen, the jurist, is the only writer who refers to it. A similar silence prevails anent the participation of women in the popular assemblies under Cecrops. It is noteworthy, by contrast, that the writers of much earlier days, when the phase of the dominance of women was less remote, did not fail to allude to the matter. For example, there is a reference to it in Augustine's De Civitate Dei. The philosopher Mein-

[9] IV, 2.

ers, who published his Geschichte des weiblichen Geschlechts in 1788, at a time when male dominance was at its height, does indeed record the fact, but only to refute it. No subsequent writer considered it worth mentioning until it was disinterred by Bachofen. This shows how the vestiges of the dominance of women, historical items which seem repugnant and incredible when men have risen to power, tend to be obliterated from the record. Inasmuch as the star of men was already in the ascendant when history began to be written, the data concerning the dominance of women were primarily sparse. At first, however, such data as were extant were recorded without prejudice or distortion. But when the influence of women diminished yet further, and when power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of men, the truth of the records of the dominance of women seemed ever more questionable. Argument was hardly needed, for we are all prone to think there must be some mistake about a statement, however true it may be, when its truth appears incomprehensible. "Refutation" of this sort is the first step towards oblivion.

Even more dangerous to the recognition that women were formerly dominant is the distortion of meaning in the translation of ancient texts. To misinterpret is worse than to ignore. Here is an instructive illustration. Strabo[10] reports that among the Medes, not only did the kings have a plurality of wives, but the custom of polygamy prevailed also among the common people, and that it was considered desirable for a man to have at least five wives. But Strabo goes on to say that it was likewise a point of honour with the women to have many husbands, and that a woman who had

[10] XI, 13.

fewer than five husbands deemed herself unfortunate. Now Groskurd, the German translator of Strabo, holds that "it is an unheard of custom in the East that women should, as it were, keep male harems." He therefore twists the passage in Strabo to give it a sense more accordant with his own Men's-State ideology, and makes it run as follows: "Likewise the women deem it an honour to them that the men should have numerous wives, and they consider it unfortunate that there should be less than five." Groskurd actually tells us in a footnote that he has followed other translators in reading πλειστας for πλειστους. That is to say, he has arbitrarily substituted the feminine for the masculine of the original text, and has interpolated τους before ανδπας, "so that it may be made plainer that men are spoken of and not women." Thus translators do not shrink from modifying their texts, as by changing an object into a subject, in order to give the translation a sense which harmonises with Men's-State prejudices, even though the amended version be absurd. The reader need not be a philologist to perceive that the "amended" translations must be erroneous. Inasmuch as the numbers of men and women are approximately equal, it is obviously impossible that throughout an entire population every man should have at least five wives. As Rauber points out, nature only provides enough women to give the men one wife apiece. The emendation makes nonsense of Strabo's text.

Another instructive example of a Men's-State gloss is found in the writings of Erman.[11] He says: "Once only does a king of Egypt give us any light on the life of his wives. In the portico of the great temple of Medeenet Haboo, King Rameses III had himself de-

[11] Aegypten, vol. i, p. 115.

picted with his wives. The ladies, like their lord, are clad only in sandals and necklace. Their hair is dressed like that of the children of the royal house, and for this reason some have considered that the figures represent the king's daughters. But why should Rameses III want to depict his daughters while ignoring his sons? Besides, it was not the Egyptian custom to represent members of the royal family without giving their names." Erman goes on to say that for the foregoing reasons he feels entitled "with a good conscience" to describe the female figures in this picture as those of ladies of the harem. Although the way the hair of the two girls is dressed shows plainly that they were children of the royal house, and although their lineaments are definitely those of children, Erman cannot admit them to have been the king's daughters, for the king would never have thought of depicting his daughters and ignoring his sons! Yet Erman would have fancied it perfectly natural for a father to have himself represented with his sons while ignoring his daughters. What we have to remember is that the social conditions of ancient Egypt were very different from those of modern Germany, and that in the former the girls did not play a subordinate part. There is abundant evidence that, in the days of Rameses III, Egyptian girls were, to say the least of it, the equals of Egyptian boys. Erman's second reason for transforming the king's daughters into ladies of the harem is that it was contrary to Egyptian custom to depict members of the royal family without giving their names. Yet by Erman's own showing it would have been just as much a breach of etiquette to depict the king with ladies of the harem. We have Erman's word for it that once only does a king of Egypt give a glimpse into the life of his wives—and that is the case we are now considering. The best comment on such arguments is Margulies'[12] epigram: "Our understanding of past happenings is limited by what we ourselves are."

Among some of the peoples where women held sway, the mothers chose wives for their sons without consulting the latter. Bancroft remarks in this connexion that it seems incredible the sons should have complied. We do not find that any investigators express incredulity when they read of daughters being married off by their fathers and accepting their lot without demur. This use of the power of masculine dominance seems quite a natural thing, because it accords with Men's-State sentiments.

Wilkinson and Westermarck both question the accuracy of Herodotus' statement that in Egypt sons were not responsible for the maintenance of their parents. Inasmuch as filial duties were held in high regard, we may assume (say these modern critics) that sons in especial were educated to respect the obligation. But it would not have occurred to Wilkinson or Westermarck to express any doubt if Herodotus had written that daughters were under no obligation to maintain their parents. Such doubts do not arise unless the incident conflicts with the familiar canons of the Men's State.

Let us give another instance. Bunsen[13] says that according to the hieroglyphs "Osiris" signified "Hes-Iri," that is, "the Eye of Isis." "But in this case the chief deity, the leading embodiment of the divine spirit,

[12] Der Kampf zwischen Bagdad und Suez im Altertum.

[13] Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte.

would be named after Isis. Thus Isis would take precedence of Osiris, although she can have been nothing more than the female complement of his personality. This would be preposterous and unprecedented." Bunsen's ideology is purely that of the Men's State. Other canons than those of the Men's State are to him simply inconceivable. By these canons the supreme deity must have been a male. Goddesses perforce occupy a subordinate position as mere complements of the masculine deity. Any other view is absurd and therefore incredible!

Still more misleading than the suppressions and misinterpretations of facts that bear witness to unfamiliar relationships of power between the sexes, is the way in which reports that bear a Women's-State complexion are filled out in the spirit of the Men's-State ideology. In such cases it is extremely difficult to get at the truth. When an author who tendentiously expands his reports is good enough to mention the original sources, an independent examination of these is possible. Thus Max Müller:[14] writes of the Egyptians: "The Greeks mockingly relate concerning the common people that the women left their homes on business affairs, for petty trade presumably, whilst the men did the housework." In a footnote Max Müller adds: "Cf. the description of this topsy-turvy world in Herodotus, ii, 35." When we turn up the passage in the original we find, first, that there is no trace of mockery, and, secondly, that there is not a word to show that the historian is speaking only of "the common people." Both of these are interpolations by Max Müller, but it would have been difficult, nay, impossible, to prove the fact had he failed to refer his readers to the original. We see, then, how

[14] Die Liebespoesie der alten Aegypter, p. 6.

much caution is needed in accepting the accounts of matters which fail to harmonise with current views concerning sex domination.

A few typical examples may be adduced, in conclusion, to show how quickly, when men become dominant, the memories of the antecedent dominance of women are expunged. By the time of Aristophanes, the remembrance that women had once held sway in Athens was so utterly extinct that the dramatist assures us in his Ecclesiazusœ, (The Parliament of Women) that gynecocracy was the only "cracy" which Athens had never known. Bachofen's comment is: "Gynecocracy had in fact been the first form of rule in Athens." We learn from Meiners (who wrote, it will be remembered, in 1788) that women were then dominant among the Kamchadales. Kennan[15] when he visited Kamchatka about a century later, found among the Kamchadales "a far more chivalrous regard for the wishes and views of the fair sex than might have been expected in such a condition of society." The memory of the absolute dominance of women that prevailed in Meiners' day had been so completely obliterated (at any rate to the eye of the foreign observer) at the time of Kennan's visit that the latter could discern nothing more than an unexpected chivalry in the men's attitude towards the women.

We may learn another very important lesson from the foregoing incident. It shows how imperfectly travellers are able at times to understand the characteristics of the peoples they are studying, for the simple reason that they measure all manners and customs by their Men's-State standards. Just as historians tend to modify the records of the dominance of women so

[15] Tent Life in Siberia.

as to fit them to the ideology of the Men's State, so do travellers incline to view the manners and customs of foreign peoples through Men's-State spectacles. Take Kennan's remark that he was surprised to find so much chivalry towards women in such a condition of society, and recall the fact that the aforesaid chivalry is known to have been the sequel of a phase in which women held absolute sway! Since men, in the days when males are dominant, find it difficult to believe that the dominance of women could ever have existed, it seems to them that any freedoms women may possess can only have been conceded by the chivalry of men. Such a conqueror's outlook often conflicts with the simplest rules of logic. Thus Ebers[16] informs us that Sophocles justly ridiculed the men of Egypt as the "women's slaves of the Nile," seeing that many papyri show how Egyptian husbands conceded a great many rights to their wives. Ebers does not explain the process of logic-chopping which makes it possible for him to think that slaves can concede rights to their masters.

Kennan is merely voicing a general opinion when he implies that the chivalry of men towards women is the the outcome of advanced civilisation. What we know of the Kamchadales is enough to prove the theory erroneous. The "chivalry" displayed by one sex towards the other is quite independent of the level of civilisation. It is a product of monosexual dominance, and it varies as power waxes or wanes.

The instances we have given of the campaign which is carried on during the phase of masculine dominance for the obliteration of the vestiges of feminine dominance will give an idea of the difficulties encountered in founding the new science of the comparative psy-

[16] Aegyptische Studien.

chology of monosexual dominance. The elements of this science are based upon a comparison between the respective peculiarities of masculine and feminine dominance. The characteristics of masculine dominance are familiar to us from actual experience, and still more from the records of a very recent past. But it is extremely difficult to study the characteristics of feminine dominance, for the ascendancy of males is accompanied by a tendency to obliterate the traces of the converse type of monosexual rule. In the formulation of the psychology of monosexual dominance, the investigator must never lose sight of this tendency. The aphorism of Bacon[17] applies to all human wisdom: "Human reason is not a pure light, but is clouded by caprice and emotion. Consequently it makes of the sciences what it will."

This utterance applies with especial force to monosexual dominance, which tends in the highest degree to stimulate caprice and emotion. Such dominance is prone to develop caprice among the dominants; and monosexual dominance in a society of persons composed of both sexes fosters the growth of strong emotional bias. Hence monosexual dominance always modifies the records of the past in the light of its own caprice. By a psychological determinism, male dominants perforce demand of history that it shall be the history of male dominance. Perchance this is why extant historical records extend back for so few thousand years. Winckler[18] has shown that history really began much earlier than we usually suppose: "Every one inclines to look for the beginnings of civilised States in that grey primal age (3000 B.C.), which is in

[17] Novum Organum.

[18] Op. cit., p. 76.

fact the limit to which our knowledge extends as far as it is based upon written documents, so that we naturally incline to regard it as the initial period in the development of State systems and civilised communities. But such a view is erroneous, for the period in question was not the beginning but the end of the first era of civilised life to which history bears witness." Inasmuch as it seems to be a law of monosexual dominance that there is a slow but sure movement in the direction of obliterating the historical traces of an antecedent obverse type of monosexual dominance, we see that monosexual dominance definitely imperils the general integrity of the historical record.