True Nature of Contracts. The documents that Egyptologists call marriage contracts in reality were not made to legitimate a marriage or the children born of a union. These contracts listed the husband's and wife's economic responsibilities to each other and their future children at the beginning of the relationship, during the marriage, and in the event of the marriage ending either by divorce or the death of one of the parties. Egyptologist Janet H. Johnson has suggested they ought really to be called annuity contracts.

Bride and Groom Make the Contract. Though these marriage or annuity agreements might have originally been negotiated between the bride's father and the groom, the preserved examples were all made between the bride and groom. This fact is remarkable when compared to the legal status of women in other parts of the contemporary world. In...