Possibly because of the mastery of woman over her own affairs, infanticide was rare; Diodorus thought it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child born to them was reared, and tells us that parents guilty of infanticide were required by law to hold the dead child in their arms for three days and nights.106 Families were large, and children swarmed in both hovels and palaces; the well-to-do were hard put to it to keep count of their offspring.107
Even in courtship the woman usually took the initiative. The love poems and letters that have come down to us are generally addressed by the lady to the man; she begs for assignations, she presses her suit directly, she formally proposes marriage.108 “Oh my beautiful friend,†says one letter, “my desire is to become, as thy wife, the mistress of all thy possessions.â€109 Hence modesty, as distinct from fidelity, was not prominent among the Egyptians; they spoke of sexual affairs with a directness alien to our late morality, adorned their very temples with pictures and bas-reliefs of startling anatomical candor, and supplied their dead with obscene literature to amuse them in the grave.110 Blood ran warm along the Nile: girls were nubile at ten, and premarital morals were free and easy; one courtesan, in Ptolemaic days, was reputed to have built a pyramid with her savings; even sodomy had its clientele.111 Dancing-girls, in the manner of Japan, were accepted into the best male society as providers of entertainment and physical edification; they dressed in diaphanous robes, or contented themselves with anklets, bracelets and rings.112 Evidences occur of religious prostitution on a small scale; as late as the Roman occupation the most beautiful girl among the noble families of Thebes was chosen to be consecrated to Amon. When she was too old to satisfy the god she received an honorable discharge, married, and moved in the highest circles.113 It was a civilization with different prejudices from our own.