The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
The Egyptians beheld the woman, that she was very fair ... and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. The fears of Abram were well founded. What he apprehended did take place; but in a way which he was entirely unprepared for. The monuments show that women appeared unveiled in ancient Egypt, and enjoyed generally as great an amount of freedom as that gender does in European countries; also that the ancient courtiers exhibited a spirit of abject servility, and were much given to flattery and adulation-of which we have a fair specimen in those 'princes of Pharaoh,' who were ready to pander to the tastes and passions of their royal master by carrying high-coloured reports of Sarai's charms to the palace.
Although it was customary for Egyptians to have only one wife, the higher and wealthier classes were in the habit of taking several concubines, who, though inferior to the principal wife, were publicly acknowledged and received in their households. The kings of ancient Egypt, like those of Persia and other eastern countries, claimed the privilege of choosing any unmarried woman in their dominions for their concubine (cf. Esther 2:1-23), and taking her into the palace, so that she is seldom or never heard of more. Her father or brother may deplore the removal as a calamity, but the royal right is never resisted nor questioned.