tribes of Australia, the woman formerly took a much greater share in the performance of sacred ceremonies which are now regarded as coming almost exclusively within the masculine province, and in at least one tribe which seems to retain ancient practices the women still actually take part in these ceremonies.[277] It seems to have been much the same in Europe.  We observe, too, both in the Celtic pantheon and among Mediterranean peoples, that while all the ancient divinities have receded into the dim background yet the goddesses loom larger than the gods.[278] In Ireland, where ancient custom and tradition have always been very tenaciously preserved, women retained a very high position, and much freedom both before and after marriage.  “Every woman,” it was said, “is to go the way she willeth freely,” and after marriage she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or the English common law.[279] There is less difficulty in recognizing that mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high status of women when we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist successfully the attempts to tyrannize over them.[280]

If we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity we find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women tend to occupy a favorable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of predominating military organization on a patriarchal basis, women occupy a less favorable position.  This cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural law of the development of great social groups.  It was apparently well marked in the very stable and orderly growth of Babylonia.  In the earliest times a Babylonian woman had complete independence and equal rights with her brothers and her husband; later (as shown by the code of Hamurabi) a woman’s rights, though not her duties, were more circumscribed; in the still later Neo-Babylonian periods, she again acquired equal rights with her husband.[281]

In Egypt the position of women stood highest at the end, but it seems to have been high throughout the whole of the long course of Egyptian history, and continuously improving, while the fact that little regard was paid to prenuptial chastity and that marriage contracts placed no stress on virginity indicate the absence of the conception of women as property.  More than three thousand five hundred years ago men and women were recognized as equal in Egypt.  The high position of the Egyptian woman is significantly indicated by the fact that her child was never illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognized even in the case of a slave woman’s child.[282] “It is the glory of Egyptian morality,” says Amelineau, “to have been the first to express the Dignity of Woman."[283] The idea of marital authority was altogether unknown in Egypt.  There can be no doubt that the high status of woman in two civilizations so stable, so vital, so long-lived, and so influential on human culture as Babylonia and Egypt, is a fact of much significance.