cluded more and more, and they lost their primitive independence of status. In Chaldea all women of the higher classes were cloistered in the harem and never appeared by the side of husbands and brothers as they did in Egypt.[1] The harem system, at least for Western Asia and Europe, originated here. The contracts of the period of Babylonian and Assyrian glory show that wives were then rarely bought; one such contract only from that period is known, but the terms in it are more crassly commercial than in the contracts of the old Babylonian period.[2] A wife brought a dowry to her husband, or there were no gifts, or each father stated in the contract what he would give to the young people; if there was a dowry the ownership remained in the wife, but the husband had the use; if a man refused his approval to the marriage of his son, the woman whom the son took became a slave. Married women could do business and make contracts without the intervention of their husbands in any way.[3] A very important device, which helped to produce monogamy, was the stipulation in the contract that, if the man took a second wife, he should pay a specified amercement. Many contracts have been found in which slave concubinage and prostitution are provided for in the most matter-of-fact, commercial terms.[4] The Assyrians were fierce and cruel; the Babylonians were more poetical, industrial, and artistic.[5] The former represent on their monuments very rarely any domestic scenes; a queen is once shown feasting with the king,[6] but the only other women on the monuments are
- ↑ Maspero: l.c., I, 707.
- ↑ Marx, V.: Die Stellung der Frauen in Babylonien gemäss den Kontrakten aus der Zeit von Nebukadnesar bis Darius, in Beiträge zur Assyriologie, IV, 6.
- ↑ Ibid., 11, 30, 49.
- ↑ Kohler, J., und Peiser, F. E., Aus dem babylonischen Rechtsleben, I, 7, 8; IV, 28 ff.
- ↑ Rogers, R. W.: A History of Babylonia and Assyria, II, 316.
- ↑ Rawlinson, G.: Five Great Monarchies, I, 492.
