Jasmine Sahu (Yale University)
This paper examines the corpus of twenty-five Greek marriage documents from the Ptolemaic period in light of contemporary Egyptian marital instruments and the wider context of Greeks living in Hellenistic Egypt. Whilst Uri Yiftach-Firanko (2003) has discussed the mechanics of the legal type and its development into the Roman period, most scholarly interest focuses on the position of women within these documents. Certain elements seem strikingly empowering. For instance, not only are they consistently framed as an exchange between man and woman (rather than the groom and the bride’s father), but there are also stringent protections for the bride’s dowry (e.g., establishing the husband’s entire property as surety) and equal or greater powers given to the woman to end the relationship. The picture is complicated, however, by the clauses stipulating the moral behaviour of the two spouses. Whilst those clauses pertaining to the husband seem to enhance the robust protection for women (e.g., by precluding them from keeping a concubine or having children with another woman), those directed towards the bride seem to undermine that impression (e.g., by prohibiting women from leaving the marital home without permission).
Numerous attempts have been made to explain these intriguing features. Sarah Pomeroy, for example, argues they reflect a general trend of increasing agency for women across the Hellenistic world. Meanwhile, from outside the world of papyrology and ancient history, Michel Foucault (1990) has utilised the earliest document, P. Eleph 1, to argue for a shift within marital relations towards expectations of fidelity and spousal intimacy. Only rarely have discussions referred to the specific Egyptian context of the material, with most merely acknowledging the greater agency of women in Egyptian law. None have considered them alongside contemporary Demotic marital instruments, even though there are intriguing similarities between the two corpora.
This paper undertakes to amend this situation, utilising the extensive work conducted on Demotic marriage documents (e.g., P. W. Pestman (1961); Sandra Lippert (2008)) to consider what relationship, if any, might exist. The analysis reveals correspondences in both the provisions and spirit of the documents, suggesting that the same motive – protection of inheritance – lay behind both Greek and Demotic agreements. It is argued that Egyptian scribes, who have been shown to operate consistently between the two legal systems (Maria Vierros (2012); Willy Clarysse (1993, 2006) etc), formed the point of connection. This direction of influence is unusual, however, and must be explained. To do so, this paper posits that the position of Greeks as an originally migrant community, drawn from diverse communities across the Greek world, provides the best way to understand this borrowing. Greek marital traditions may well have been incompatible with one another and, combined with a sense of isolation amongst a majority Egyptian population, this may have been enough to drive Hellenes to adapt from an external legal source. The final part of the paper considers the implications of this discussion for women. It is argued that not only does this material not prove anything for wider Hellenistic social history, but it also suggests that even within Egypt, women were not as empowered as previously thought.