(M383) The mother was in much the same position of authority as the father. A son who repudiated his mother was branded and expelled from house and city. He was not, however, sold as a slave. The Sumerian laws also reserved to the mother the right to repudiate her son, and he must quit house and property. The Code gives no such power to mothers. Indeed, we find examples of a son disputing with a mother.(362) Mothers took up the father’s place toward the children on the death of the father as regards marriage-portions, bride-price, and other family affairs. But they usually acted in concert with the elder children. (M384) The repudiation of adoptive parents was a very grievous sin, especially on the part of those who were children of parents who were forbidden to have children. Something worse than illegitimacy was their lot. The penalties of having the eye torn out, or the tongue cut out,(363) show the abhorrence felt for their ingratitude. XIV. The Education And Early Life Of Children (M385) Much has been made of the knowledge of writing shown by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The ability to draw up deeds and write letters seems at first sight to have been widely diffused. In the times of the First Dynasty of Babylon almost every tablet seems to have a fresh _tupšar_, or scribe. Many show the handiwork of women scribes.(364) But most of the persons concerned in these documents were of the priestly rank. There is no evidence that the shepherds or workpeople could write. In the Assyrian times the scribe was a professional man. We find _aba_ or _tupšar_ used as a title. So, too, in later Babylonian times. The witnesses to a document can only be said to sign their names in so far as that they impressed their seals. This was done, at any rate, in early times. In the Assyrian period the only parties who sealed were the owners of the property transferred to a new owner. The whole of a tablet shows the same handwriting throughout. Anyone who reads carefully through the facsimile copies in _Cuneiform Texts_ can readily see this. Different scribes, especially in early times, wrote differently, but this was still the case in Assyrian days. Yet no change of hand can be noted anywhere in one document, save where, as in the forecast tablets, a date or note was added by a different person, often in Assyrian script, to a text written in Babylonian. The only safe statement to make is that from the earliest times a very large number of persons existed, at any rate in the larger towns, who could write and draw up documents.