Apprenticeship
Slaves were often bound as apprentices to learn a trade or handicraft. A man might adopt a child to teach him his [pg 153] trade, and his duty to him was sufficiently discharged by doing so.
Naming of children
We do not yet know in any authoritative way, when or with what ceremonies children were named. In the case of slaves we have a boy, still at the breast,[366] or a girl of three months, not named.[367] On the other hand, a girl still at the breast is named. Hence Meissner concludes, that at the end of one year, at latest, the child was given a name.[368] But the usage with respect to slaves is hardly a rule, and, as appears from the above, they were not consistently named.
Rearing of babies
A child seems often to have been put out to nurse. From the phrase-book we learn that a father might “give a child to a wet-nurse to be suckled, and give the wet-nurse food and drink, oil for anointing, and clothing for three years.”[369] That this was not only done with adopted children is clear from the Code;[370] where we find a severe penalty laid on a wet-nurse, who substitutes another child for the one intrusted to her, without the parents' consent.
Number of children who could read and write
It will hardly do to interpret the phrase-book[371] as meaning that all children were made to learn writing. But that this was commonly done is evident from the number, both of men and women, who could act as scribes.[372]