* The change in the condition of women would be due to the
     influence of Semitic ideas and customs in Chaldaea.

He offered the household worship to the gods of his race, in accordance with special rites which had come down to him from his father; he made at the tombs of his ancestors, at such times as were customary, the offerings and prayers which assured their repose in the other world, and his powers were as extensive in civil as in religious matters.  He had absolute authority over all the members of his household, and anything undertaken by them without his consent was held invalid in the eyes of the law; his sons could not marry unless he had duly authorized them to do so.  For this purpose he appeared before the magistrate with the future couple, and the projected union could not be held as an actual marriage, until he had affixed his seal or made his nail-mark on the contract tablet.  It amounted, in fact, to a formal deed of sale, and the parents of the girl parted with her only in exchange for a proportionate gift from the bridegroom.  One girl would be valued at a silver shekel by weight, while another was worth a mina, another much less;* the handing over of the price was accompanied with a certain solemnity.  When the young man possessed no property as yet of his own, his family advanced him the sum needed for the purchase.  On her side, the maiden did not enter upon her new life empty handed; her father, or, in the case of his death, the head of the family at the time being, provided her with a dowry suited to her social position, which was often augmented by considerable presents from her grandmother, aunts, and cousins.**

     * Shamashnazir receives, as the price of his daughter, ten
     shekels of silver, which appears to have been an average
     price in the class of life to which he belonged.

** The nature of the dowry in ancient times is clear from the Sumero-Assyrian tablets in which the old legal texts are explained, and again from the contents of the contracts of Tell-Sifr, and the documents on stone, such as the Micliaux stone, in which we see women bringing their possessions into the community by marriage, and yet retaining the entire disposition of them.

The dowry would consist of a carefully marked out field of corn, a grove of date-palms, a house in the town, a trousseau, furniture, slaves, or ready money; the whole would be committed to clay, of which there would be three copies at least, two being given by the scribe to the contracting parties, while the third would be deposited in the hands of the magistrate.  When the bride and bridegroom both belonged to the same class, or were possessed of equal fortunes, the relatives of the woman could exact an oath from the man that he would abstain from taking a second wife during her lifetime; a special article of the marriage agreement permitted the woman to go free should the husband break his faith, and bound him to pay an indemnity