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| Dwarf Seneb and his family, Saqqara |
Marriage would have been regarded as the natural state for both adult women and men, but we know little of how marriage partners were chosen. Most marriages seem to have been monogamous, although there is occasional evidence of a (non-royal) husband having more than one wife. There was no legal or religious ceremony by which marriage was formalized, and marriage occurred when a man and a woman established a household together. Divorce was not uncommon, and took place when couples who had been living together separated. Remarriage was possible for both men and women. Grounds for divorce probably included childlessness, and adultery on the part of the woman. In the latter event, a woman might forfeit the property that she was normally entitled to on divorce. In fact, adultery was taken very seriously by the community, and it was unacceptable for men to have affairs with married women. The reason, ultimately, was that men handed on their property to their children, and wanted to be sure that their heirs were indeed their biological offspring. Maternity, of course, was never in doubt.
A fascinating letter written by a woman of the Twentieth Dynasty who lived at Deir el-Medina, the artisans' village in western Thebes , tells of a community's outrage at a married man who had been carrying on an affair with another woman for eight months without divorcing his wife. A government official only just prevented the wife's supporters from beating up the errant husband and his mistress, and the official makes it clear that the husband must regularize his situation regarding the two women one way or another. The letter indicates that, while marriage and divorce were not matters regulated by the state, they were of great interest to the community, and that social pressure was used to enforce conformity to accepted norms of behavior in relationships between women and men.
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