d in favour of the woman in Hammurabi's code;
for under its provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine,
he was obliged to make proper provision for her maintenance. Whether
she were barren or had borne him children, he was obliged to return
her marriage portion; and in the latter case she had the custody of the
children, for whose maintenance and education he was obliged to furnish
the necessary supplies. Moreover, at the man's death she and her
children would inherit a share of his property. When there had been no
marriage portion, a sum was fixed which the husband was obliged to pay
to his divorced wife, according to his status. In cases where the wife
was proved to have wasted her household and to have entirely failed in
her duty, her husband could divorce her without paying any compensation,
or could make her a slave in his house, and the extreme penalty for
this offence was death. On the other hand, a woman could not be divorced
because she had contracted a permanent disease; and, if she desired to
divorce her husband and could prove that her past life had been seemly,
she could do so, returning to her father's house and taking her marriage
portion with her.

It is not necessary here to go very minutely into the regulations given
by the code with regard to marriage portions, the rights of widows,
the laws of inheritance, and the laws regulating the adoption and
maintenance of children. The customs that already have been described
with regard to marriage and divorce may serve to indicate the spirit
in which the code is drawn up and the recognized status occupied by the
wife in the Babylonian household. The extremely independent position
enjoyed by women in the early Babylonian days is illustrated by the
existence of a special class of women, to which constant reference is
made in the contracts and letters of the period. When the existence of
this class of women was first recognized from the references to them in
the contract-tablets inscribed at the time of the First Dynasty, they
were regarded as priestesses, but the regulations concerning them which
occur in the code of Hammurabi prove that their duties were not strictly
sacerdotal, but that they occupied the position of votaries. The
majority of those referred to in the inscriptions of this period
were vowed to the service of E-bab-bara, the temple of the Sun-god at
Sippara, and of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon, but
it is probable t