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hated her—a small price to pay for her family’s honor.
    Given the differences in marriage value between virgins and non-virgins, it was illegal everywhere even to spread rumors that a bride was something less than intact on her wedding day. The laws of Lipit-Ishtar, another Sumerian ruler (circa 1900 BC) who predated Hammurabi, required a man making such an accusation to pay a fine if proven wrong. The question is how such proof was made. The Hebrews and others used bloody bedclothes, but that was not a universal test. Neighboring cultures were not nearly as convinced that blood always resulted from a female’s first intercourse. The only way to prove conclusively that a girl had had sex was either to catch her in the act or to observe her belly swollen with child.
    Why was it so critical for men to marry untouched women? It makes sense that adultery should have been forbidden, as husbands wanted to be assured that their children were actually their own, but there is no corresponding concern with marrying sexually experienced brides. If a wife gave birth less than eight or nine months after the wedding, it would have been simple enough to allow the husband to disown the child. But ancient law did not go in that direction; rather, it barricaded women and girls from sexual opportunities and punished them if they transgressed. Explanations for the virginity obsession seem to be limited to men’s desire for a “tight fit,” as well as the assurance that the human property they purchased was truly brand new. Most likely, though, the fixation on virginity—which never existed where men were concerned and has persisted to this day in many cultures—was simply one more avenue for men to control and dominate females. Having a virgin for a bride was power incarnate for a husband, and keeping her untouched before marriage was a test of control for her fathers and brothers. 6

THE JOYS OF MARRIAGE
     
    The sexual restrictions ancient societies placed on girls and women did not loosen with their marriages. The restraint fathers expected of their daughters was merely training for their duty of fidelity as wives. Everywhere, married women were kept on short leashes and disciplined. The Assyrian law mentioned above that allowed husbands to beat, whip, and mutilate their wives for misbehaving extended to anything short of killing them. Presumably, qualifying offenses included going about town unveiled. If only sexually available women, such as prostitutes and slaves, uncovered their heads in public, a respectable wife who did so would therefore be signaling her availability and, even worse, that her husband had lost control over her. For that, wives would suffer violence.
    Married Assyrian women who kept their veils on but associated with other men were also running big risks, as were the men. Any man who “traveled” with an unrelated woman had to pay money to her husband and prove—sometimes by jumping into a swiftly flowing river and surviving—that he had not taken the woman as a sexual partner. Palace females were completely off-limits. It was a capital offense for a woman of the royal court and a man to stand together with no one else present. If another palace woman were to witness such an encounter without reporting it at once, she would be thrown into an oven.
    The Code of Hammurabi made wives’ lives no less hazardous. Married women who were “not circumspect” or who shamed their husbands by disparaging them or leaving their houses without permission risked death by drowning. This penalty accomplished two purposes: It got rid of a troublesome wife and it washed away the husband’s dishonor. If a wife was so impudent as to steal her husband’s property or denigrate him in public, then he had the choice of either casting her out of his house or—in a delicious gesture of revenge—keeping her around as a slave while he remarried.
    The overriding goal of these laws was to prevent even the appearance that a wife was