Contracts of marriage by purchase became very rare. It
appears from the later contracts that a wife could protect herself
from divorce or the taking of another wife by special penalties
imposed on the husband by the conditions of the deed, thus giving her
a position of security similar to that of the Egyptian wife.

In all social relations the Babylonian women had remarkable freedom.
They could conduct business in their own right. Their power to dispose
of property is proved by numerous contract tablets, and, at any rate
in later periods, they were held to possess a full legal personality
equal in all points with their husbands. In many contracts husband and
wife are conjoined as debtors, creditors, and as together taking
pledges. The wife, as in Egypt, is made a party to any action of the
husband in which her dowry is involved. The wife could also act
independently; women appear by themselves as creditors, and in some
contracts we find a wife standing in that relation to her husband. In
one case a woman acts as security for a man's debts to another woman.
In a suit about a slave a woman, who was proved by witnesses to have
made a wrongful claim, was compelled to pay a sum of money equivalent
to the value of the slave. We find, too, a married woman joining with
a man to sell a house. In another case, in which a mother and son had
a sum of money owing to them, the debt was cancelled by giving a bill
on the mother. The rich woman, by name Gugua, disposes her property
among her children, but she reserves the right of taking it back into
her own hands if she should so wish, and stipulates that it may not be
mortgaged to any one without her consent.[250] There is another
interesting deed[251] by which a father who, it is suggested, was a
spendthrift, assigns the remnant of his property to his daughter under
the stipulation "thou shalt measure to me, and as long as thou livest
give me maintenance, food, ointment and clothing."

It would be easy to multiply such cases.[252] All these contract
tablets have interest for us. The active participation of the
Babylonian women in property transactions is the more instructive when
we consider that in the development of commercial enterprise the
Babylonians were in advance of all the rest of the world. One is
tempted to suggest that the assistance of women may have brought an
element into commerce beneficial to its growth. There is ample
evidence to show the administrative and financi