rian tablet, published by
Rawlinson, and translated by Oppert-Menant. Bertin, on the
contrary, takes the same text to be a description of the
principal marriage-rites, and from it he draws the
conclusion that the possibility of divorce was not admitted
in Chaldaea between persons of noble family. Meissner very
rightly returns to Oppert's interpretation, a few details in
which he corrects.

*** This fact was evident from the text of the so-called
_Sumerian Laws concerning the Organization of the Family_,
according to the generally received interpretation:
according to that proposed by Oppert-Menant, it was the
woman who had the right of causing the husband who had
wronged her to be thrown into the river. The publication of
the contracts of Iltani and of Bashtum appear to have shown
conclusively the correctness of the ordinary translation:
uncertainty with regard to one word prevents us from knowing
whether the guilty wife were strangled before being thrown
into the water, or if she were committed to the river alive.

The adulteress was also punished with death, but with death by the
sword: and when the use of iron became widespread, the blade was to be
of that metal. Another ancient custom only spared the criminal to devote
her to a life of infamy: the outraged husband stripped her of her fleecy
garments, giving her merely the loin-cloth in its place, which left her
half naked, and then turned-her out of the house into the street, where
she was at the mercy of the first passer-by. Women of noble or wealthy
families found in their fortune a certain protection from the abuse of
marital authority. The property which they brought with them by their
marriage contract, remained at their own disposal.* They had the entire
management of it, they farmed it out, they sold it, they spent the
income from it as they liked, without interference from any one: the man
enjoyed the comforts which it procured, but he could not touch it, and
his hold upon it was so slight that his creditors could not lay their
hands on it.

* In the documents of the New Chaldaean Empire we find
instances of married women selling their property
themselves, and even of their being present, seated, at the
conclusion of the sale, or of their ceding to a married
daughter some property in their own possession, thus
renouncing the power of d