A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 585 



not belong to the particular families to which the individual subjects 

 belonged. Therefore family interests in this regard often overbalanced 

 the duty owed to the King. 



The individual families in Babylon were often at eranity with one 

 another, and this antagonism had close relations with external politics. 

 All the powers round about Babylon, as the Elamites, Assyrians, and 

 Kaldi, had their partisans in the city. The partisans, however, belonged 

 respectively to the different families. According as the influence of 

 this or that external power predominated in Babylon, one family was 

 played off against another, and their relative possessions were thus 

 shifted accordingly. The two boundary stones belonging to this period — 

 one dated from Sargon, the other from Merodach-Baladan — are very 

 good illustrations of this condition. 



The relation of children to their parents was at first a rather patri- 

 archal one, traces of which are found down to the latest times. We 

 have a document from which appears the father's right of protest on 

 the occasion of his son's intended marriage. The son might, indeed, 

 marry against his father's will, but in that case the marriage was not 

 of full validity. On the other hand we find phenomena which result 

 from the further development of the family under the influence of private 

 property rights. Documents dated from about 2300 B. C. refer to adop- 

 tion to gain laborers. Another kind of adoption was one for the pur- 

 pose of the fulfillment of obligations imposed by ancestor worship ; that 

 is to say, if there were no sons, a slave might be adopted, who should, 

 after the father's death, bring him the customary offerings. We often 

 see that elderly Babylonians intrusted themselves to a child or adopted 

 slave for care and shelter, and made over their property to the child 

 on condition of being supported by him. This custom is to be regarded 

 already as a result of the evolution from collective to individual prop- 

 erty rights. 



We do not know much about Babylonian education. We can only 

 draw inferences from what Assurbanipal relates concerning his educa- 

 tion in the bit riduti (nursery). He states that he was trained in feats 

 of bodily dexterity, and in reading and writing as well. We may prob- 

 ably assume that the well-to-do families had their children taught in a 

 writing school (bit dupsaruti). We have fragments of tablets in which 

 mention is made of a writing house, and there are still extant copies of 

 historical and epic works prepared by writing pupils and then presented 

 to a library. 



Trades were diligently practiced, and children and slaves were bound 

 apprentices to master craftsmen. The period of apprenticeship lasted 

 several months or several years, according to the difficulty of the trade. 

 This may have been the case among business men as well, for we find 

 slaves who carried on business for their masters. If the slave proved 

 to be true and clever, he might even be manumitted, but he still retained 



