A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN'S WIFE AND CHILD (FROM THE ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA IN 1587)

ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER HOOD (FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, 1587)

Reforms of Urukagina

95

More positive knowledge, however, we have of the Sumerian laws, laws it should be remembered I that tell of a civilization 1000 years before the Chinese.

That there was a sense of justice in Sumer and Akkad long before the period of Hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at Tello by Gerzec. Inscriptions of the year 3500 B.C., according to Cuq, and about the year 2800, according to King, show that Hammurabi was indebted to the reform king, Urukagina, for many of his laws. Urukagina declared that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. We have many tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently, there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his laws which deals with divorce.

In telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, Urukagina records the fact that under the old régime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the patesi five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir.

Undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people, from putting away their wives too easily. In other words there was a desire to hold together the old Sumerian family. In the course of time, however,

this became merely a bribe, for as the economic conditions improved, the money became not so much a deterrent as a bribe. One of the things that Urukagina did was to abolish the fees of divorce, and to attempt to stamp out practices that were growing up.

Wo

Tablets of the time of Urukagina and his predecessor, Lugalanda, translated by M. de Genouillac, give some indication of what the family condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the real attitude toward children. men were important; they could hold property and they were protected in their property rights by law. This in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as exposing or drowning female children. Among these tablets of Tello, is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were attached to the Temple of Bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler prays, as: . . The one that grantest life unto the

I

land. "Thou art the Queen, the mother that founded Lagash." In these tablets the name of each woman is followed with the number of infants belonging to her family, and their sex. In all, two hundred and twenty-nine infants are enumerated, of which ninety-seven are boys and one hundred and thirty-two, girls. Five hundred and fifty-two women are named, but before coming to a conclusion as to the percentage this shows of children ' R. W. Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 162.

Pensions for Mothers!

97

to mothers, it is well, as de Genouillac points out,' to remember that among these five hundred and fifty-two women there were many young girls. Some idea of the size of the Sumerian family may be obtained from the fact that the number of infants charged to a single mother is seldom more than four. Once the number seven occurs, but this is in connection with the wife of the king, and two of these children would seem to have been adopted.

"The education of a large number of infants, concluded de Genouillac, "was encouraged by the pension for mothers." Here indeed was progress! at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere else in the world.

It is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife of the king or the patesi was of great importance, for all documents signed by Lugalanda bear the name of his wife, Barnamtarra, and those under Urukagina have the signature of his wife, Sagsag. It is more than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the Temple of Bau, was for the goddess's representative, the Queen Sagsag. Another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants to fifty-seven women, and in this and other tablets the frequent reference to the orphans who were being

2

1 H. de Genouillac, Tablettes Sumériennes Archaïques, p. xxii. Ibid., p. xxxii, Tablet 12.

2