The importance of estimating woman's position in the great civilisations of the ancient world--The Egyptian civilisation--Women more free and more honoured than in any country to-day--The account given by Herodotus--The Egyptian woman never confined to the home--No restraint upon her actions--She entered into commerce in her own right and made contracts for her own benefit--Abundant material in proof of the high status of Egyptian women--Marriage contracts--Their importance and interest--Numerous examples--The proprietary rights of the wife--An early period of mother-rule--Property originally in the hands of women--The marriage contracts a development of the early system--The Egyptians solved the difficult problem of the fusion of mother-right with father-right--The statement of Dioderus that among the Egyptians the woman rules over the man--The conditions of marriage dependent on the birth of children--M. Paturet's view the Egyptian woman the equal of man--The high status of woman proved by the fact that her child was never illegitimate--The position of the mother secure in every relationship between the sexes--This made possible by the free conditions of the marriage contracts--Polygamy allowed--This practice in Egypt very different from polygamy in a patriarchal society--The husband a privileged guest in the home of the wife--The high ideal of the domestic relationship--Illustrations from the inscriptions of the monuments--Reasons which explain this civilised and human organisation--The Egyptians an agricultural and a conservative people--They were also a pacific race--The significance of the Maxims of the Moralists--Honour to the wife and the mother strongly insisted on--The health and character of the Egyptian mother--Some reflections in the Egyptian Galleries of the British Museum. II.--_In Babylon_ Traces of mother-right in primitive Babylon--The honour paid to women--The position of women in later Babylonian history, though still at an early period--Their rights more circumscribed--The marriage code of Hammurabi--Polygamy permitted, though restricted, by the code--The exacting conditions of divorce--The position of the wife as subject to her husband--The later Neo-Babylonian periods--The position of women continuously improving--They obtain a position equal in law with their husbands--Their freedom in all social relations--They conduct business transactions in their own right--Illustrations from the contract tablets--Remarks and conclusion. III.--_In Greece_