The contract tablets throw a good deal of light upon Assyrian law. In its main outlines it did not differ much from our own. Precedents and previous decisions seem to have been held in as high estimation as among our own lawyers. The king was the supreme court of appeal, and copies exist of private petitions preferred to him on a variety of matters. Judges were appointed under the king, and prisons were established in the towns. An old Babylonian code of moral precepts addressed to princes denounces the ruler who listens to the evil advice of his courtiers, and does not deliver judgment 'according to the statutes,' 'the law-book,' and 'the writing of the god Ea.' The earliest existing code of laws is one which goes back to the Accadian epoch, and contains an express enactment for protecting the slave against his master. How far it was made the basis of subsequent Semitic legislation it is difficult to say; in one respect, at all events, it differed considerably from the law which followed it. This was in the position it assigned to women. Among the Accadians, the woman was the equal of man; in fact, she ranked before the husband in matters relating to the family; whereas among the Semites she was degraded to a very inferior rank. It is curious to find the Semitic translator of an Accadian text invariably changing the order in which the words for man and woman, male and female occur in the original. In the Accadian the order is 'woman and man,' in the Assyro-Babylonian translation, 'man and woman.' The high-roads were placed under the charge of commissioners, and in Babylonia, where brick-making was an important occupation, the brick-yards as well. Certain of the taxes, which were raised alike from citizens and aliens, were devoted to the maintenance of them. Unfortunately we know but little at present of the precise way in which the taxes were levied, and the principle on which they were distributed among the various classes of the population. In Babylonia, however, the tenant does not seem to have paid much to the government, since we are told of him that after handing over one-third of the produce of an estate to his landlord, he might keep the rest of it for himself. There is no hint that any portion of it was distrained for the state. As in modern Turkey, the imperial exchequer after the time of Tiglath-Pileser II was supplied by fixed contributions from the separate provinces and large towns. Thus Nineveh itself was assessed at thirty talents. The best way, however, of giving an idea of the assessment is by a translation of the few fragments of the assessment lists of the Second Empire which have been preserved to us.