The high honour, freedom and proprietary rights enjoyed by the Egyptian wife can only be explained as being traceable to an early period of mother-right. Here the ancient privileges of women have persisted, not as an empty form, but would seem to have been adopted because of their advantage in the family relationship, and been incorporated with father-right. This would account for the last-named contract. Its very ancient date seems clearly to point to this. It is unlikely that, if it were an exceptional form, it should have chanced to be one of the very few early contracts that have been preserved.[211] It would rather seem that property was originally entirely in the hands of women, as is usual under the matriarchal system. The Egyptian marriage law was simply a development of this, enforcing by agreement what would occur naturally under the earlier custom. The interests of the children's inheritance was the chief object of the settlement of property on the wife. In the earlier stage, the daughter inheriting property from her parents, would marry--the husband would then become its joint administrator, but not its owner; it would pass by custom to the children with the eldest as administrator, but if the wife dismissed the husband, as under this system she could and often did, she would of right retain the family property in control for the children.[212] As society advanced this older custom would tend to break up in favour of individual ownership, property would come to belong to the husband and father, and it would then be necessary to ensure the position of the wife and children by contract. The Egyptian marriage may thus be regarded as a development of the individual relationship arising from father-right modified to conform with the mother-right custom of transmitting property through the woman. Under the earlier system the inheritance of the husband would pass to the children of his sister, and not to his own children. The contract was, therefore, made to prevent this. The husband's property was passed over to the wife (at first entirely and later in part) to secure its inheritance by the children of the marriage. Hence the formula common to these contracts by which the husband declares to the wife, "My eldest son, thy eldest son, shall be the heir to all my property present and to come." The only difference to the earlier custom was the prominence given to the eldest child (a son) in the contract.