her relic of some interest is
an ancient statue of a Babylonian woman, not a goddess or a queen, who
is presented alone and not with her husband, as was common in Egypt;
such a monument may suggest, as is pointed out by Simcox, that women
at this period possessed wealth in their own right.

As in Egypt, the mother, the father, and the eldest son seem to have
been the essential members of the family. We find that the compound
substantive translated "family" means literally "children household."
This is very interesting and may betoken a conception of marriage and
the family like that of the Egyptians, in which the union of the wife
and the husband is only fully established by the birth of
children.[244] In the house the wife is "set in honour," "glad and
gladdening like the mid-day sun." The sun-god Merodach is thus
addressed: "Like a wife thou behavest thyself, cheerful and
rejoicing." The sun-god himself is made to say, "May the wife whom
thou lovest come before thee with joy." These examples, and also many
others, such, for instance, as the phrase, "As a woman fashioned for a
mother made beautiful," show that the Babylonians shared the Egyptian
idealism in their conception of the wife and mother and her relation
to the family. Many of the Summerian expressions throw beautiful light
on the happiness of the domestic relationships. The union of the wife
and husband is spoken of as "the undivided half," the idiogram for the
mother signifies the elements "god" and "the house," she is "the
enlarger of the family," the father is "one who is looked up to."

The information that has come down to us is not so full as our
knowledge of the Egyptian family, or, at least, the facts which relate
to women have not yet been so firmly established. We may, however,
accept the statement of Havelock Ellis when he says that "in the
earliest times a Babylonian woman enjoyed complete independence and
equal rights with her brothers and husband."[245]

Later in Babylonian history--though still at an early period--women's
rights were more circumscribed, and we find them in a position of some
subordination. How the change arose is not clear, but it is probable
that in Babylon civilisation followed the usual order of social
development, and that with the rise of military activities, bringing
the male force into prominence, women fell to a position of inferior
power in the family and in the State.

That this was the condition of society in Bab