(M437) Finally there is mentioned a claim called _šušanûtu_. This occurs in Persian times only(434) and may be the status of a _šušanu_, _i.e._, a Susian, or one of the conquering race. Such it may have been illegal to buy or hold in slavery. But in Assyrian times an official in the service of the royal house is called _šušanu_. We do not yet know what his duties were, but it may be that this official was one who could be called up for service at any time and therefore was undesirable as a slave. (M438) The _abuttu_ which the Code(435) contemplates a mistress putting on an insolent maid and so reducing her to slavery, or which the phrase-books contemplate a master laying upon a slave, or which an adoptive parent may set on a rebellious adopted son before selling him into servitude,(436) has usually been taken to be a fetter. But in the case of a man, who being sold as a slave, had escaped and was claimed by the levy-master, we find the latter saying, _ellita abuttaka gullubat_, “thy _abuttu_ is clearly branded,” or tattooed. Hence it may only be a mark. (M439) There is frequent mention in early times of a mark upon slaves. The Code(437) talks of marking a slave, but in a way that is difficult to understand. The verb usually rendered “brand” has been shown by Professor P. Jensen(438) to include incised marks. Hence the penalty which was once rendered “shear his front hair” is thought to mean “brand his forehead.” The Code fixes a severe penalty for the putting of an indelible mark on a slave without his owner’s consent. This could hardly be enforced for merely giving the slave a bald forehead, like the Hebrew _peôt_, or like a “tonsure.” The mark borne on the forehead by Cain, or by the “sealed” in the Apocalypse, is far more to the point as a parallel. The slaves also wore little clay tablets with the name of their owner inscribed upon them. There are a number of these preserved in the Louvre. On one now in the British Museum we have this inscription: “Of the woman Ḥipâ, who is in the hands of Sin-êresh. Sebat, eleventh year of Merodach-baladan, King of Babylon.”(439) How these were attached to the slave is not very clear. But they must have been anything but an indelible mark. In the later Babylonian times we have(440) a slave marked by a sign on his ears and a white mark in his eye. Both may denote natural marks.(441) A more definite example is a slave “whose right hand has written upon it the name of Ina-Esagil-lilbur”;(442) and another “on whose left hand was written the name of Meskitu.”(443) These were the names of the owners, not of the slaves themselves. This renders it probable that the branding and the like was always an incised mark, a species of tattoo, which of course was indelible. That the same person who tattooed men should brand animals, or even shear them, is not an insuperable objection. But there is no reason to suppose that the brander ever was a sheep-shearer.