if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to make proper provision for her maintenance.  Whether she were barren or had borne him children, he was obliged to return her marriage portion; and in the latter case she had the custody of the children, for whose maintenance and education he was obliged to furnish the necessary supplies.  Moreover, at the man’s death she and her children would inherit a share of his property.  When there had been no marriage portion, a sum was fixed which the husband was obliged to pay to his divorced wife, according to his status.  In cases where the wife was proved to have wasted her household and to have entirely failed in her duty, her husband could divorce her without paying any compensation, or could make her a slave in his house, and the extreme penalty for this offence was death.  On the other hand, a woman could not be divorced because she had contracted a permanent disease; and, if she desired to divorce her husband and could prove that her past life had been seemly, she could do so, returning to her father’s house and taking her marriage portion with her.

It is not necessary here to go very minutely into the regulations given by the code with regard to marriage portions, the rights of widows, the laws of inheritance, and the laws regulating the adoption and maintenance of children.  The customs that already have been described with regard to marriage and divorce may serve to indicate the spirit in which the code is drawn up and the recognized status occupied by the wife in the Babylonian household.  The extremely independent position enjoyed by women in the early Babylonian days is illustrated by the existence of a special class of women, to which constant reference is made in the contracts and letters of the period.  When the existence of this class of women was first recognized from the references to them in the contract-tablets inscribed at the time of the First Dynasty, they were regarded as priestesses, but the regulations concerning them which occur in the code of Hammurabi prove that their duties were not strictly sacerdotal, but that they occupied the position of votaries.  The majority of those referred to in the inscriptions of this period were vowed to the service of E-bab-bara, the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, and of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon, but it is probable that all the great temples in the country had classes of female votaries attached to them.  From the evidence at present available it may be concluded that the functions of these women bore no resemblance to that of the sacred prostitutes devoted to the service of the goddess Ishtar in the city of Erech.  They seem to have occupied a position of great influence and independence in the community, and their duties and privileges were defined and safeguarded by special legislation.