The teacher had no fee, but only the apprentice's work for his trouble. The owner was therefore bound to allow the apprentice to remain a fair time.
Relative proportion of slaves to free men
A question of considerable interest which needs to be worked out is the relative number of slaves in the population. In early times the impression one gets is that they were few. Even in the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, the evidence at the disposal of Dr. Meissner in 1892 did not allow him to exceed four as the number in the possession of one man at a time. But since then further evidence is available. Thus we read of twelve slaves at once, seven males and five females, given by a father to his daughter, at Sippara.[459] In Assyrian times the number in an average household rarely exceeds one or two, but we have as many as thirty mentioned at one time.[460] So in later times there are generally only one or two in a household, but the number is occasionally much more.
Price of a slave
As to the value of a slave, we have in very early times an average set down as twenty shekels, with examples as low as thirteen shekels. In the time of the Second Dynasty prices varied from as low as four and a half shekels for a maid, or ten shekels for a man, up to eighty-four shekels.[461] The Code estimates the average value of a slave as twenty [pg 183] shekels.[462] In Assyrian times the price of a single male slave varies from twenty to one hundred and thirty shekels, but the usual price is thirty shekels. A female slave could be had for as little as two and a half shekels, but might cost as much as ninety shekels. A common price was thirty shekels. In later Babylonian times also, prices vary widely, but the commonest price and usual pledge-value was twenty shekels.
XVIII. Land Tenure In Babylonia
Distinction between real and personal property
The idea of real as opposed to personal property is common in Babylonian law; for we notice that in the Code, while certain persons may inherit from the goods of their parents, they may not inherit land, garden, or house.[463] He then had no share in his father's house; he was not one of the family. The distinction is important, for, as we shall see later, the word “house” had a wider signification than mere bricks and mortar.[464] It was the ancestral estate. Over it the family had rights. It went back in default of heirs to the family of the last owner. We are therefore confronted with private ownership of land, but also with a sort of entail.