* A house could be let for various lengths of time—­for three months, for a year, for five years, for an indefinite term, but with a minimum of six months, since the rent is payable at the beginning and in the middle of each year.

The remainder of his goods, farms, gardens, corn-lands, slaves, furniture, and jewels, were divided among the brothers or natural descendants, “from the mouth to the gold;” that is to say, from the moment of announcing the beginning of the business, to that when each one received his share.  In order to invest this act with greater solemnity, it took place usually in the presence of a priest.  Those interested repaired to the temple, “to the gate of the god;” they placed the whole of the inheritance in the hands of the chosen arbitrator, and demanded of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhaps anticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanction the result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawful recipients in the course of the operation.  When this was accomplished, the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no further claims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestly arbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling on the subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against the other.  By dint of these continual redistributions from one generation to another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed:  the individual shares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep a family, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor to have recourse to usurers.  The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, were unacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times the employment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practised among them to an enormous extent.  Though copper and gold were both used, silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed the standard value of all purchaseable objects.  It was never cut into flat rings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian “tabnu;” it was melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from hand to hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction.  “To weigh” was in the ordinary language the equivalent for “payment in metal,” whereas “to measure” denoted that the payment was in grain.  The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name of the weights to which they corresponded.  The lowest unit was a shekel, weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making a mina, and sixty minas a talent.  It is a question whether the Chaldaeanns possessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, two kinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light.  Whether the loan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was very high.* A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmas per mina, per annum—­that is to say, at twenty per cent.—­and more recent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent., it did not appear to them abnormal.