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her home, and the presents which he carried went to Rebekah's mother and brother ; l Laban says to Jacob, " These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children ;" 2 the obligation to blood-vengeance rests apparently on the maternal kindred; 3 Sampson's Philistine wife remained among her people; 4 and the injunction in Gen. 2:24, " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive Hebraic form of marriage. 5 Where the matriarchate prevails we naturally find no prejudice against marriage with a half-sister on the father's side, while union with a uterine sister is incestuous. Sara was a half-sister of Abraham on the father's side, and Tamar could have married her half-brother Amnon, 6 though they were both children of David ; and a similar con- dition prevailed in Athens under the laws of Solon. 7 Herodotus says of the Lycians :
Ask a Lycian who he is, and he will answer by giving his own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line. Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens : but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit all rights of citizenship. 8
Herodotus also relates that when Darius gave to the wife of Intaphernes permission to claim the life of a single man of her kindred, she chose her brother, saying that both husband and children could be replaced. 9 The declaration of the Antigone of Sophocles, 10 that she would have performed for neither husband nor children the toil which she undertook for Polynices, against the will of the citizens, indicates that the tie. of a common womb was stronger than the social tie of marriage. The extraor- dinary honor, privilege, and proprietary rights enjoyed by ancient Egyptian and Babylonian wives 11 are traceable to an earlier maternal organization.
'Gen. 24:5 and 53. * 2 Sam. 13:13.
a Gen. 31 : 43. ^ G. A. WILKEN, Das Matriarchal, p. 41.
- Judges 8:19. 8 Herodotus (RAWLINSON), I, 173.
- Judges 15. 'Herodotus III, 119.
s Cf. SMITH, he. '/., 176. "Lines 905 ff.
11 E. J. SlMCOX, Primitive Civilisations, Vol. I, pp. 200-1 1 ; 233 et passim.
