In many cases the fiction of purchase was set aside, and mutual consent took the place of all other formalities, marriage then becoming merely cohabitation, terminating at will. The consent of the father was not required for this irregular union, and many a son contracted a marriage after this fashion, unknown to his relatives, with some young girl either in his own or in an inferior station: but the law refused to allow her any title except that of concubine, and forced her to wear a distinctive mark, perhaps that of servitude, namely, the representation of an olive in some valuable stone or in terra-cotta, bearing her own and her husband’s name, with the date of their union, which she kept hung round her neck by a cord. Whether they were legitimate wives or not, the women of the lower and middle classes enjoyed as much independence as did the Egyptian women of a similar rank. As all the household cares fell to their share, it was necessary that they should be free to go about at all hours of the day: and they could be seen in the streets and the markets, with bare feet, their head and face uncovered, wearing their linen loin-cloth or their long draped garments of hairy texture.* Their whole life was expended in a ceaseless toil for their husbands and children: night and morning they went to fetch water from the public well or the river, they bruised the corn, made the bread, spun, wove, and clothed the entire household in spite of the frequent demands of maternity.** The Chaldæan women of wealth or noble birth, whose civil status gave them a higher position, did not enjoy so much freedom. They were scarcely affected by the cares of daily life, and if they did any work within their houses, it was more from a natural instinct, a sense of duty, or to relieve the tedium of their existence, than from constraint or necessity; but the exigencies of their rank reduced them to the state of prisoners. All the luxuries and comforts which money could procure were lavished on them, or they obtained them for themselves, but all the while they were obliged to remain shut in the harem within their own houses; when they went out, it was only to visit their female friends or their relatives, to go to some temple or festival, and on such occasions they were surrounded with servants, eunuchs, and pages, whose serried ranks shut out the external world.
* For the long garment of the women, see the statue
represented on p. 263 of the present work; for the loin-
cloth, which left the shoulders and bust exposed, see the
bronze figure on p. 262. The latter was no doubt the garment
worn at home by respectable women; we see by the punishment
inflicted on adulteresses that it was an outdoor garment for
courtesans, and also, doubtless, for slaves and women of the
lower classes.
** Women’s occupations are mentioned in several texts and on
several ancient monuments. On the seal, an impress of which
is given on p. 233 of this volume, we see above, on the
left, a woman kneeling and crushing the corn, and before her
a row of little disks, representing, no doubt, the loaves
prepared for baking. The length of time for suckling a child
is fixed at three years by the Sumero-Assyrian tablet
relating the history of the foundling; protracted suckling
was customary also in Egypt.
There was no lack of children in these houses when the man had several mistresses, either simultaneously or successively. Maternity was before all things a woman’s first duty: should she delay in bearing children, or should anything happen to them, she was considered as accursed or possessed, and she was banished from the family lest her presence should be a source of danger to it.* In spite of this many households remained childless, either because a clause inserted in the contract prevented the dismissal of the wife if barren, or because the children had died when the father was stricken in years, and there was little hope of further offspring. In such places adoption filled the gaps left by nature, and furnished the family with desired heirs. For this purpose some chance orphan might be brought into the household—one of those poor little creatures consigned by their mothers to the river, as in the case of Shargani, according to the ancient legend; or who had been exposed at the cross-roads to excite the pity of passers-by,** like the foundling whose story is given us in an old ballad. “He who had neither father nor mother,—he who knew not his father or mother, but whose earliest memory is of a well—whose entry into the world was in the street,” his benefactor “snatched him from the jaws of dogs—and took him from the beaks of ravens.—He seized the seal before witnesses—and he marked him on the sole of the foot with the seal of the witness,—then he entrusted him to a nurse,—and for three years he provided the nurse with flour, oil, and clothing.” When the weaning was accomplished, “he appointed him to be his child,—he brought him up to be his child,—he inscribed him as his child,—and he gave him the education of a scribe.” The rites of adoption in these cases did not differ from those attendant upon birth. On both occasions the newly born infant was shown to witnesses, and it was marked on the soles of its feet to establish its identity; its registration in the family archives did not take place until these precautions had been observed, and children adopted in this manner were regarded thenceforward in the eyes of the world as the legitimate heirs of the family.
* Divorce for sterility was customary in very early times.
Complete sterility or miscarriage was thought to be
occasioned by evil spirits; a woman thus possessed with a
devil came to be looked on as a dangerous being whom it was
necessary to exorcise.
** Many of these children were those of courtesans or women
who had been repudiated, as we learn from the Sumero-
Assyrian tablet of Rawlinson: “She will expose her child
alone in the street, where the serpents in the road may bite
it, and its father and mother will know it no more.”
People desiring to adopt a child usually made inquiries among their acquaintances, or poor friends, or cousins who might consent to give up one of their sons, in the hope of securing a better future for him. When he happened to be a minor, the real father and mother, or, in the case of the death of one, the surviving parent, appeared before the scribe, and relinquished all their rights in favour of the adopting parents; the latter, in accepting this act of renunciation, promised henceforth to treat the child as if he were of their own flesh and blood, and often settled upon him, at the same time, a certain sum chargeable on their own patrimony. When the adopted son was of age, his consent to the agreement was required, in addition to that of his parents. The adoption was sometimes prompted by an interested motive, and not merely by the desire for posterity or its semblance. Labour was expensive, slaves were scarce, and children, by working for their father, took the place of hired servants, and were content, like them, with food and clothing. The adoption of adults was, therefore, most frequent in ancient times. The introduction of a person into a fresh household severed the ties which bound him to the old one; he became a stranger to those who had borne him; he had no filial obligations to discharge to them, nor had he any right to whatever property they might possess, unless, indeed, any unforeseen circumstance prevented the carrying out of the agreement, and legally obliged him to return to the status of his birth. In return, he undertook all the duties and enjoyed the privileges of his new position; he owed to his adopted parents the same amount of work, obedience, and respect that he would have given to his natural parents; he shared in their condition, whether for good or ill, and he inherited their possessions. Provision was made for him in case of his repudiation by those who had adopted him, and they had to make him compensation: he received the portion which would have accrued to him after their death, and he then left them. Families appear to have been fairly united, in spite of the elasticity of the laws which governed them, and of the divers elements of which they were sometimes composed. No doubt polygamy and frequently divorce exercised here as elsewhere a deleterious influence; the harems of Babylon were constantly the scenes of endless intrigues and quarrels among the women and children of varied condition and different parentage who filled them. Among the people of the middle classes, where restricted means necessarily prevented a man having many wives, the course of family life appears to have been as calm and affectionate as in Egypt, under the unquestioned supremacy of the father: and in the event of his early death, the widow, and later the son or son-in-law, took the direction of affairs. Should quarrels arise and reach the point of bringing about a complete rupture between parents and children, the law intervened, not to reconcile them, but to repress any violence of which either side might be guilty towards the other. It was reckoned as a misdemeanour for any father or mother to disown a child, and they were punished by being kept shut up in their own house, as long, doubtless, as they persisted in disowning it; but it was a crime in a son, even if he were an adopted son, to renounce his parents, and he was punished severely. If he had said to his father, “Thou art not my father!” the latter marked him with a conspicuous sign and sold him in the market. If he had said to his mother, “As for thee, thou art not my mother!” he was similarly branded, and led through the streets or along the roads, where with hue and cry he was driven from the town and province.*
* I have adopted the generally received meaning of this
document as a whole, but I am obliged to state that Oppert-
Menant admit quite a different interpretation. According to
them, it would appear to be a sweeping renunciation of
children by parents, and of parents by children, at the
close of a judicial condemnation. Oppert has upheld this
interpretation against Haupt, and still keeps to his
opinion. The documents published by Meissner show that the
text of the ancient Sumerian laws applied equally to adopted
children, but made no distinction between the insult offered
to the father and that offered to the mother: the same
penalty was applicable in both cases.
The slaves were numerous, but distributed in unequal proportion among the various classes of the population: whilst in the palace they might be found literally in crowds, it was rare among the middle classes to meet with any family possessing more than two or three at a time. They were drawn partly from foreign races; prisoners who had been wounded and carried from the field of battle, or fugitives who had fallen into the hands of the victors after a defeat, or Elamites or Gutis who had been surprised in their own villages during some expedition; not to mention people of every category carried off by the Bedouin during their raids in distant parts, such as Syria or Egypt, whom they were continually bringing for sale to Babylon and Uru, and, indeed, to all those cities to which they had easy access. The kings, the vicegerents, the temple administration, and the feudal lords, provided employment for vast numbers in the construction of their buildings or in the cultivation of their domains; the work was hard and the mortality great, but gaps were soon filled up by the influx of fresh gangs. The survivors intermarried, and their children, brought up to speak the Chaldæan tongue and conforming to the customs of the country, became assimilated to the ruling race; they formed, beneath the superior native Semite and Sumerian population,an inferior servile class, spread alike throughout the towns and country, who were continually reinforced by individuals of the native race, such as foundlings, women and children sold by husband or father, debtors deprived by creditors of their liberty, and criminals judicially condemned. The law took no individual account of them, but counted them by heads, as so many cattle: they belonged to their respective masters in the same fashion as did the beasts of his flock or the trees of his garden, and their life or death was dependent upon his will, though the exercise of his rights was naturally restrained by interest and custom. He could use them as pledges or for payment of debt, could exchange them or sell them in the market. The price of a slave never rose very high: a woman might be bought for four and a half shekels of silver by weight, and the value of a male adult fluctuated between ten shekels and the third of a mina. The bill of sale was inscribed on clay, and given to the purchaser at the time of payment: the tablets which were the vouchers of the rights of the former proprietor were then broken, and the transfer was completed. The master seldom ill-treated his slaves, except in cases of reiterated disobedience, rebellion, or flight; he could arrest his runaway slaves wherever he could lay his hands on them; he could shackle their ankles, fetter their wrists, and whip them mercilessly. As a rule, he permitted them to marry and bring up a family; he apprenticed their children, and as soon as they knew a trade, he set them up in business in his own name, allowing them a share in the profits. The more intelligent among them were trained to be clerks or stewards; they were taught to read, write, and calculate, the essential accomplishments of a skilful scribe; they were appointed as superintendents over their former comrades, or overseers of the administration of property, and they ended by becoming confidential servants in the household. The savings which they had accumulated in their earlier years furnished them with the means of procuring some few consolations: they could hire themselves out for wages, and could even acquire slaves who would go out to work for them, in the same way as they themselves had been a source of income to their proprietors. If they followed a lucrative profession and were successful in it, their savings sometimes permitted them to buy their own freedom, and, if they were married, to pay the ransom of their wife and children. At times, their master, desirous of rewarding long and faithful service, liberated them of his own accord, without waiting till they had saved up the necessary money or goods for their enfranchisement: in such cases they remained his dependants, and continued in his service as freemen to perform the services they had formerly rendered as slaves. They then enjoyed the same rights and advantages as the old native race; they could leave legacies, inherit property, claim legal rights, and acquire and possess houses and lands. Their sons could make good matches among the daughters of the middle classes, according to their education and fortune; when they were intelligent, active, and industrious, there was nothing to prevent them from rising to the highest offices about the person of the sovereign.
