oundling whose story is given us in an old ballad. "He who had neither
father nor mother,--he who knew not his father or mother, but whose
earliest memory is of a well--whose entry into the world was in the
street," his benefactor "snatched him from the jaws of dogs--and took
him from the beaks of ravens.--He seized the seal before witnesses--and
he marked him on the sole of the foot with the seal of the
witness,--then he entrusted him to a nurse,--and for three years he
provided the nurse with flour, oil, and clothing." When the weaning was
accomplished, "he appointed him to be his child,--he brought him up
to be his child,--he inscribed him as his child,--and he gave him the
education of a scribe." The rites of adoption in these cases did not
differ from those attendant upon birth. On both occasions the newly born
infant was shown to witnesses, and it was marked on the soles of its
feet to establish its identity; its registration in the family archives
did not take place until these precautions had been observed, and
children adopted in this manner were regarded thenceforward in the eyes
of the world as the legitimate heirs of the family.

* Divorce for sterility was customary in very early times.
Complete sterility or miscarriage was thought to be
occasioned by evil spirits; a woman thus possessed with a
devil came to be looked on as a dangerous being whom it was
necessary to exorcise.

** Many of these children were those of courtesans or women
who had been repudiated, as we learn from the Sumero-
Assyrian tablet of Rawlinson: "She will expose her child
alone in the street, where the serpents in the road may bite
it, and its father and mother will know it no more."

People desiring to adopt a child usually made inquiries among their
acquaintances, or poor friends, or cousins who might consent to give up
one of their sons, in the hope of securing a better future for him. When
he happened to be a minor, the real father and mother, or, in the case
of the death of one, the surviving parent, appeared before the scribe,
and relinquished all their rights in favour of the adopting parents; the
latter, in accepting this act of renunciation, promised henceforth to
treat the child as if he were of their own flesh and blood, and often
settled upon him, at the same time, a certain sum chargeable on their
own patrimony. When the adopted son was of age, his consent to the
agre