Were the sexes, then, really alike in Egypt? I do not know. Such a conception opens up biological considerations of the deepest significance. It is so difficult to be certain here. Is the great boundary line which divides the two halves of life, with the intimate woman's problems that depend upon it, to remain for ever fixed? In sex are we always to be faced with an irresolvable tangle of disharmonies? Again, I do not know. Yet, looking at these seated figures of the Egyptian husband and wife, I felt that the answer might be with them. Do they not seem to have solved that secret which we are so painful in our search of? The statues thus took on a kind of symbolic character, which eloquently spoke of a union of the woman and the man that in freedom had broken down the boundaries of sex, and, therefore, of life that was in harmony with love and joy. And the beautiful words of the Egyptian _Song of the Harper_ came to my memory, and now I understood them-- "Make (thy) day glad! Let there be perfumes and sweet odours for thy nostrils, and let there be flowers and lilies for thy beloved sister (_i.e._ wife) who shall be seated by thy side. Let there be songs and music of the harp before thee, and setting behind thy back unpleasant things of every kind, remember only gladness, until the day cometh wherein thou must travel to the land which loveth silence." II.--_In Babylon_ "The modern view of marriage recognises a relation that love has known from the outset. But this is a relation only possible between free self-governing persons."--HOBHOUSE. If we turn now to the very ancient civilisation of Babylon we shall find women in a position of honour similar in many ways to what we have seen already in Egypt: there are ever indications that the earliest customs may have gone beyond those of the Egyptians in exalting women. The most archaic texts in the primitive language are remarkable for the precedence given to the female sex in all formulas of address: "Goddess" and gods, women and men, are mentioned always in that order, which is in itself a decisive indication of the high status of women in this early period.[241]