From this last rule it is logical to infer that women inherited property, as is to-day the case among the Beni-Amer of Africa,[181] where daughters have to provide for their parents. [181] Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 67. Diodorus goes further than Herodotus: he affirms that in the Egyptian family it is the man who is subjected to the woman. “All this explains why the queen receives more power and respect than the king, and why, among private individuals, the woman rules over the man, and that it is stipulated between married couples, by the terms of the dowry-contract, that the man shall obey the woman.”[182] [182] Diodorus, Book I, p. 27. There is probably some exaggeration in this account, nevertheless, the demotic deeds, in a measure, confirm it. By the law of maternal inheritance, an Egyptian wife was often richer than her husband, and enjoyed the dignity and freedom always involved by the possession of property. More than three thousand three hundred years ago men and women were recognised as equal in this land. Under such privileges the wife was entirely preserved from any subjection; she was able to dictate the terms of the marriage. She held the right of making contracts without authorisation; she remained absolute mistress of her dowry. The marriage-contract also specified the sums that the husband was to pay to his wife, either as a nuptial gift or annual pension, or as compensation in case of divorce. In some cases the whole property of the husband was made over to the wife, and when this was done, it was stipulated that she should provide for him during his life, and discharge the expenses of his burial and tomb. These unusual proprietary rights of the Egyptian wife can be explained only as being traceable to an early period of mother-right. Without proof of any absolutely precise text, we have an accumulation of facts that render it probable that, at one time, descent was traced through the mother. It is significant that the word _husband_ never occurs in the marriage deeds before the reign of Philometor. This ruler (it would appear in order to establish the position of the father in the family) decreed that all transfers of property made by the wife should henceforth be authorised by the husband. Up to this time public deeds often mention only the mother, but King Philometor ordered the names of contractors to be registered according to the paternal line. Besides this, the hieroglyphic funeral inscriptions frequently bear the name of the mother, without indicating that of the father.[183] [183] For a fuller account of the position of women in Egypt, see the chapter on this subject in _The Truth about Woman_, pp. 179-201.