d, and they were punished by being kept shut up in their own house,
as long, doubtless, as they persisted in disowning it; but it was a
crime in a son, even if he were an adopted son, to renounce his parents,
and he was punished severely. If he had said to his father, "Thou art
not my father!" the latter marked him with a conspicuous sign and sold
him in the market. If he had said to his mother, "As for thee, thou art
not my mother!" he was similarly branded, and led through the streets or
along the roads, where with hue and cry he was driven from the town and
province.*

* I have adopted the generally received meaning of this
document as a whole, but I am obliged to state that Oppert-
Menant admit quite a different interpretation. According to
them, it would appear to be a sweeping renunciation of
children by parents, and of parents by children, at the
close of a judicial condemnation. Oppert has upheld this
interpretation against Haupt, and still keeps to his
opinion. The documents published by Meissner show that the
text of the ancient Sumerian laws applied equally to adopted
children, but made no distinction between the insult offered
to the father and that offered to the mother: the same
penalty was applicable in both cases.

The slaves were numerous, but distributed in unequal proportion among
the various classes of the population: whilst in the palace they might
be found literally in crowds, it was rare among the middle classes to
meet with any family possessing more than two or three at a time. They
were drawn partly from foreign races; prisoners who had been wounded and
carried from the field of battle, or fugitives who had fallen into the
hands of the victors after a defeat, or Elamites or Gutis who had been
surprised in their own villages during some expedition; not to mention
people of every category carried off by the Bedouin during their raids
in distant parts, such as Syria or Egypt, whom they were continually
bringing for sale to Babylon and Uru, and, indeed, to all those cities
to which they had easy access. The kings, the vicegerents, the temple
administration, and the feudal lords, provided employment for vast
numbers in the construction of their buildings or in the cultivation of
their domains; the work was hard and the mortality great, but gaps were
soon filled up by the influx of fresh gangs. The survivors intermarried,
and their childre