How long after sale objection could be raised is not stated. In early times a month was allowed for fever to develop; in Assyrian contracts a hundred days were allowed for fever or seizure. But a sartu, or “vice,” could be pleaded, at any time, as ground for returning the slave. Here it is clear that time was allowed for a slave to bear one or more children, before the repudiation lost effect. It is noteworthy that the seller had to buy back such children. The maid may have been bought to bear her master children, and if these were not sound, the master had ground for complaint and could not be held responsible for them. Also it was objectionable to separate mother and children. The price named is trifling. Compare § 278 of the Code, where, however, no mention is made of the children of a maid.
The next law is unintelligible at present, owing to the lacunae, and doubtful readings of the text, which, moreover, is only given in transcription. It appears to concern a woman and her interests in a field or plantation and the trees in it, and its produce.
Permanent settlements at marriage between father of bride and the bridegroom
Law C. [Col. III. 3-15.]
A man has given his daughter to a freeborn man and the father has fixed something in a deed and given to his son, and the first-named has fixed a marriage-portion for his daughter and they have mutually executed deeds of settlement. They shall not alter their deeds. The father shall give in full the settlement (nuṣurru), which he had promised his son by deed, to the father-in-law, and deliver it.
The father here named appears to be the father of the bridegroom. He must make a settlement on his son, as well as the father of the bride on his daughter. The point of the law seems to be that these settlements on the part of the parents to the young couple are irrevocable. No subsequent engagements entered into can affect them. This settlement by the bridegroom's father on his son, which he has to pay over to the bride's father, evidently takes the place of the terḫatu, or “bride-price” of the Code. The obligation of a father to find his son the means for a bride-price appears in the Code, § 166; but there is no section which answers directly to this law. The marriage-portion is now nudunnu, in the Code it was šeriktu, while nudunnu was the husband's gift to the wife.
Inheritance rights of children of second marriage
Law D. [Col. III. 16-22.]
When the father [of the bridegroom] has had his wife taken away by fate, has taken to himself a second wife, and she has borne him sons, the sons of the second wife shall take a third of his property remaining.
This appears as part of the same section as Law C, and is enacted again in Law K, page 69. It is not easy to see why it is here, except to make plain that settlements on [pg 072] marriages of the sons of the first family are a first charge on the father's property. The second family takes a third, not of all the father once had, but of what is left after these gifts by deed have been taken out. The married sons of the first family are not disinherited by virtue of these gifts, but take among them two-thirds of what is left. This is against the Code, § 167.