Middle Assyrian Laws

Historical source page 11

10 Morris Jastrow, Jr. debt cannot hand her over to a third party without the consent of the father. In case the father is dead, the opportunity must be offered to the brothers to redeem their sister and a period of one month must be allowed to any brother who is desirous of doing so. As a further protection to the unfortunate daughter, it is provided that if the man who holds her for her father's debts treats her badly (§ 38) she may be rescued by any one, who, however, must pay the full value of the girl to the creditor, in order to marry the girl. The unquestionably harsher aspects of the Assyrian Code as a whole in comparison with the Hammurabi Code must not blind us to the tendency to be noted towards protecting those whose position is dependent upon others. So, e. g., Text No. 1, § 45 imposes on the sons to support their widowed mother in case the father has failed to make provision for her; and it is added they should do so tenderly as one treats 'a bride whom one loves'. If she happens to be a second wife, and has no children of her own, then the duty of support falls upon the children of the first wife. She is to have a home with one of the children. The woman abandoned by her husband who has deliberately gone away or who has been captured while in government service is taken care of. The duty is imposed on her to remain faithful to her husband for a term of years — two (Text No. 1, § 44) or five (Text No. 1, § 35) according to the conditions of the deser- tion — and if the husband has left her without maintenance, the woman can appeal to the state to step in (Text No. 1, §44), which makes over to her during her husband's absence the 'field and house', as the phrase runs, for her support. If, however, she marries within the interval, her husband on his return can claim his wife, while the children born to the second husband belong to the latter. From the sociological point of view the new code is of extra- ordinary interest. It reveals a state of society in which sexual immorality had become sufficiently rampant to necessitate the large number of paragraphs — no less than 14 in the preserved portions of the Code — that deal with the various degrees of illicit and unnatural sexual intercourse and the varying circumstances under which it takes place. The 'procuress' appears by the side of the 'adulterer'. The harlot is a fixed institution (Text No. 1, §§ 39 and 50). Sodomy and malpractice find a place in the Code (Text No. 1, §§ 18, 19 and 51). On the other hand