poor and humble, as their name, muslikenu, implied.  These we may refer to as the middle class.  The highest, or upper class, in the Babylonian community embraced all the officers and ministers attached to the court, the higher officials and servants of the state, and the owners of considerable lands and estates.  The differences which divided and marked off from one another the two great classes of free men in the population of Babylonia is well illustrated by the scale of payments as compensation for injury which they were obliged to make or were entitled to receive.  Thus, if a member of the upper class were guilty of stealing an ox, or a sheep, or an ass, or a pig, or a boat, from a temple or a private house, he had to pay the owner thirty times its value as compensation, whereas if the thief were a member of the middle class he only had to pay ten times its price, but if he had no property and so could not pay compensation he was put to death.  The penalty for manslaughter was less if the assailant was a man of the middle class, and such a man could also divorce his wife more cheaply, and was privileged to pay his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee for a successful operation.

But the privileges enjoyed by a man of the middle class were counterbalanced by a corresponding diminution of the value at which his life and limbs were assessed.  Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an operation unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class, or inflicted a serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the punishment was the amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems to have been exacted if the patient were a member of the middle class.  If, however, the patient were a slave of a member of the middle class, in the event of death under the operation, the doctor had to give the owner another slave, and in the event of the slave losing his eye, he had to pay the owner half the slave’s value.  Penalties for assault were also regulated in accordance with the social position and standing of the parties to the quarrel.  Thus, if one member of the upper class knocked out the eye or the tooth of one of his equals, his own eye or his own tooth was knocked out as a punishment, and if he broke the limb of one of the members of his own class, he had his corresponding limb broken; but if he knocked out the eye of a member of the middle class, or broke his limb, he suffered no punishment in his own person, but was fined one mana of silver, and for knocking out the tooth of such a man he was fined one-third of a mana.  If two members of the same class were engaged in a quarrel, and one of them made a peculiarly improper assault upon the other, the assailant was only fined, the fine being larger if the quarrel was between members of the upper class.  But if such an assault was made by one man upon another who was of higher rank than himself, the assailant was punished by being publicly beaten in the presence of the assembly, when he received sixty stripes from a scourge of ox-hide.  These regulations show the privileges and responsibilities which pertained to the two classes of free men in the Babylonian community, and they indicate the relative social positions which they enjoyed.