as a compensation for the insult he had offered her.  This engagement on the part of the man, however, did not affect his relations with his female servants.  In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, and indeed in the whole of the ancient world, they were always completely at the mercy of their purchaser, and the permission to treat them as he would had become so much of a custom that the begetting of children by their master was desired rather than otherwise:  the complaints of the despised slave, who had not been taken into her master’s favour, formed one of the themes of popular poetry at a very early period.  When the contract tablet was finally sealed, one of the witnesses, who was required to be a free man, joined the hands of the young couple; nothing then remained to be done but to invite the blessing of the gods, and to end the day by a feast, which would unite both families and their guests.  The evil spirits, however, always in quest of an easy prey, were liable to find their way into the nuptial chamber, favoured by the confusion inseparable from all household rejoicing:  prudence demanded that their attempts should be frustrated, and that the newly married couple should be protected from their attacks.  The companions of the bridegroom took possession of him, and, hand to hand and foot to foot, formed as it were a rampart round him with their bodies, and carried him off solemnly to his expectant bride.  He then again repeated the words which he had said in the morning:  “I am the son of a prince, gold and silver shall fill thy bosom; thou, even thou, shalt be my wife, I myself will be thy husband;” and he continued:  “As the fruits borne by an orchard, so great shall be the abundance which I shall pour out upon this woman."* The priest then called down upon him benedictions from on high:  “Therefore, O ye (gods), all that is bad and that is not good in this man, drive it far from him and give him strength.  As for thee, O man, exhibit thy manhood, that this woman may be thy wife; thou, O woman, give that which makes thy womanhood, that this man may be thy husband.”  On the following morning, a thanksgiving sacrifice celebrated the completion of the marriage, and by purifying the new household drove from it the host of evil spirits.**

* This part of the ceremony is described on a Sumero- Assyrian tablet, of which two copies exist, discovered and translated by Pinches.  The interpretation appears to me to result from the fact that mention is made, at the commencement of the column, of impious beings without gods, who might approach the man; in other places magical exorcisms indicate how much those spirits were dreaded “who deprived the bride of the embraces of the man.”  As Pinches remarks, the formula is also found in the part of the poem of Gilgames, where Ishtar wishes to marry the hero, which shows that the rite and its accompanying words belong to a remote past.

** The text that describes these ceremonies