(M411) According to the Sumerian laws disinheritance appears to have been simply the result of repudiation of a child by a parent, who has said to him, “You are not my son.” The penalty for a child’s repudiation of parents is to be reduced to the condition of a slave. There may also be a reference to renunciation on the part of an adopted child, but there are no legal documents to clear up the point.(409) (M412) The Code is much clearer. Here the father is minded to cut off his son. But the disinheritance must be done in legal form. The father must say to a judge, “I renounce my son.” The judge must then inquire into the grounds of this determination. A grave fault must be alleged. What this was we are not told. But rebellious conduct, idleness, and failure to provide for parents are probable. A parent had the right to his son’s work. An adoptive parent had a right by the deed of adoption to maintenance. If the fault could be established as a first offence, the judge was bound to try and reconcile the father. If it was repeated, disinheritance took place legally. It was done by a deed duly drawn up. The Sumerian laws show that a mother had the same power as the father. Whether this was only exercised when there was no father, or whether a wife could act in this way independently of her husband in disinheriting children, does not appear. But possibly she had power in this respect only over her own property.(410) It has been suggested that disinheritance sometimes took place as a legal form and with consent of a child, in order to admit of his adoption into another family or to free the parents from responsibility for the business engagements of the son. (M413) An adoptive parent, who had brought up a child and afterwards had children of his own, could not entirely disinherit his adopted child. He was bound to allow him one-third of a child’s share. But he could not alienate to him real estate.(411) XVII. Slavery (M414) In modern thought slavery concerns personal rights. But it was not thus regarded by the Babylonians, for the slave was an inferior domestic, and, like the son in his father’s house, _minor capitis_. That he was actually a chattel is clear from his being sold, pledged, or deposited. He was property and as such a money equivalent. He might be made use of to discharge a debt, according to his value. Hence, while some account of slavery belongs with the discussion of the family, it is also a part of the section dealing with property, since the slave was a piece of property.