(M457) A settled hamlet soon had its temple. Some think that the god was ideally landlord of all the village land and that every title represented simply the rental of the land from the nominal owner. We do indeed find the temples as owners of vast estates and, like monastic institutions in the Middle Ages, letting lands and houses. To the temples poor men went for temporary accommodation for sowing, for wages at harvest-time, and for ransom from the enemy. These they had a right by custom to receive without paying interest. Undoubtedly the temples became the first centres of progressive civilization. The _patêsi_, as chief-priest of the god, was the regent of the community. In process of time, as villages combined and grew into towns and districts, the _patêsi_, in virtue of his town’s supremacy, became the king, who, as regent of the state and representative of the gods, owned all. We know that, in later times, the king in Babylon was the adoptive son of Bel-Merodach.(466) (M458) In historical times no such conditions prevail. Doubtless the tribal ownership had become theoretically transferred to the god, or to the town. That the town had a theoretical personality of its own is clear enough from the oaths sworn to confirm a sale. Men swore by the gods, the king, and also by Sippara, or Kar Sippara. But there is no indication that points to the god, or the town, or the king as having any power to intervene to prevent a sale, or to claim payment for consent. It is clear that the land was sold subject to its dues, and they were many. But the private ownership, subject to such reservation, was absolute. The one danger to a purchaser was that the family of the seller should claim a right of redemption and annul the sale. Against this the seller undertook to indemnify him. (M459) Exact statements as to the rights possessed by the family to reclaim land sold by a member of the family are not to be found, but they are to be inferred with certainty from a few notices which we have. Thus,(467) a man claimed a certain plot of land as ancestral domain which two others had sold. There are several such cases among the legal decisions of the First Dynasty of Babylon. In most of the Assyrian deeds of sale we have a long list of representatives of the seller, who are explicitly bound not to interfere and attempt to upset the sale.(468) Their right existed or they would not be called upon to enter into a contract nor to insist upon it.