The consent of the legal heirs of the donor to such alienation of their reversionary rights was needed. Thus in one case, when a man gives his daughter a house, his son appears as the first witness.[561] A father and his son give their daughter and sister a house, which she is free to give to her son, “whom she loves.”[562] Had the house merely come to [pg 222] her as her share in the usual way, it must have been shared by her sons. If she had none, then her brother would be the next heir. That she can leave it as she will must be a matter of legal instrument. The brother must consent to the exception to the rule.
Donation in Assyria
In Assyrian times, donation is rarely represented within the group of documents which have reached us. Here is one case:[563]
The household which Bêl-nâ'id gave to his daughter, Baltêa-abate. A house in Nineveh, before the great gate of the temple of Shamash. (Then come the servants, a šaḳu or head man, a washerman, a šaknu, and others, male and female, in all eleven souls.) Dated the fourteenth of Adar, in the Eponymy of Marduk-shar-uṣur. Nine witnesses.
This may be donation, or adoption, or even a marriage-portion.
At all times, a difficulty arises from the phraseology of the deeds of gift. When we are told that “A has given B such and such things,” we do not know the ground of the gift. “To give for money,” nadânu ana kaspi, is the usual expression for “to sell.” In the older documents šarâḳu, “to present,” often occurs, but has in most cases the derived technical sense “to dower,” or “give a marriage-portion.” Hence, we are not able to judge whether what appears as “gift” may not really be “a sale,” or some payment meant to complete the portioning off of a daughter, on marriage or taking vows.
In the Second Babylonian Empire
There are, however, a large number of deeds of gift which have reached us from the Second Babylonian Empire. The characteristic formula may be taken to be ina ḫûd libbišu iknukma pâni ušadgil, “in the joy of his heart (i.e., of his own free will, implying that no consideration was taken per contra) he has sealed and placed at the disposal [pg 223] of.” As a rule, we may suspect these to be “gifts” to which the recipient had a right. Thus, mother to son,[564] brother to sister,[565] man to wife and daughter,[566] mother to daughter,[567] are not free from suspicion. But when a man gives maintenance to wife and son,[568] brother gives dower to sister,[569] father-in-law gives son-in-law arrears of his daughter's dower,[570] and wherever there is a hint that the “gift” was a nudunnû, or a šeriḳtu, we may regard the case as not properly “donation,” but “dower.”
An example
The following example shows the limitations on free gift that still remained in later times.[571] Zêrûtu had married and had a son, Shâpik-zêri. Then he had an intrigue with Nasikâtum, daughter of the Sealand scribe, who bore him a son, Balâṭu. He gave Balâṭu a house, but did not adopt him. After Zêrûtu died, Shâpik-zêri demanded the house as his father's heir. The judges gave it to him and also the deed of gift.