"If we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity, we find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women tend to occupy a favourable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of predominating military organisation on a patriarchal basis, women usually occupy a less favourable position. This cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural law of development of great social groups."--HAVELOCK ELLIS. The civilisations through which I am now going to follow the history of woman, in so far as they offer any special features of interest to our inquiry into woman's character and her true place in the social order, belong to the great civilisations of the ancient world, civilisations, moreover, that have deeply influenced human culture. It forms the second part of our historical investigation. There can be no doubt of its interest to us, for if we can prove that women have exercised unquestioned and direct authority in the family and in the State, not only among primitive peoples, but in stable civilisations of vital culture, we shall be in a position to answer those who wish to set limits to women's present activities. It is necessary to enter into this inquiry with caution: the difficulties before me are very great. Again, it is not in any scarcity of evidence, but in its superabundance that the trouble rests. It is hard to condense the social habits of peoples into a few dozen pages. Nothing would be easier than from the mass of material available to pile up facts in furnishing a picture of the high status of woman that would unnerve any upholders of female subordination. It is just possible, on the other hand, to interpret these facts from a fixed point of thought, and then to argue that, in spite of her power, woman was still regarded as the inferior of man.[199] I wish to do neither. It is my purpose to outline the domestic relationships and the family law and customs as they existed in Egypt and in Babylon, in Greece and in Rome; to touch the features of social life only in so far as they illustrate this, and so to discover to what extent the mother was still regarded as the natural transmitter of property and head of the household. The subject is an immensely complicated and seductive one, so that I must keep strictly to the path set by this inquiry. Let us turn first to Egypt.