All these facts attest that women in Egypt enjoyed an exceptionally favourable position. We may compare this position with that held by the Touareg women of the Sahara, who, through the custom of maternal inheritance, for long continued, have in their hands the strong power of wealth, and thus exercise extraordinary authority, giving rise to what I have called “a pecuniary matriarchy.” It is probable that in Egypt property was originally entirely in the hands of women, as is usual under the matriarchal system. Later, a tradition in favour of the old privileges would seem to have persisted after descent was changed from the maternal to the paternal line. The marriage-contracts may thus be regarded as enforcing by agreement what would occur naturally under the maternal customs. The husband’s property was made over by deed to the wife (at first entirely, and afterwards in part) to secure its inheritance by the children of the marriage. It was in such wise way the Egyptians arranged the difficult problem of the fusing of mother-right with father-right. In the very ancient civilisation of Babylon we find women in a position of honour, with privileges similar in many ways to those they enjoyed in Egypt. There are even indications that the earliest customs may have gone beyond those of the Egyptians in exalting women. All the available evidence points to the conclusion that at the opening of Babylonian history women had complete independence and equal rights with their husbands and brothers. It is significant that the most archaic texts in the primitive language are remarkable for the precedence given to the female sex in all formulas of address: “Goddesses and gods;” “Women and men,” are mentioned always in that order; this is in itself a decisive indication of the high status of women in this early period. And there are other traces all pointing to the conclusion that in the civilisation of primitive Babylon mother-right was still in active force. Later (as is shown by the Code of Hammurabi) a woman’s rights, though not her duties, were more circumscribed; in the still later Neo-Babylonian periods, she again acquired, through the favourable conditions with regard to property, full liberty of action and equal rights with her husband.[184] [184] H. Ellis, _Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, p. 393.