(M460) From the point of view of the ancient Babylonian, as from that of the modern lawyer, there was a great similarity about all classes of real property. The deeds of sale or conveyances, as well as the leases, treated them with much the same formula. It was the land which was the main consideration. It was as land, built upon indeed, but essentially as land, that the house was sold. The house is rarely described by what to modern views would be its most important features, the number of stories, rooms, conveniences, and the like. Instead its area was stated. This is remarkable, as we do not buy houses by the area. We need not suppose that the building actually covered all the land sold. In fact, we often see that it had a garden. But it was _bîtu epšu_, a “built-on plot” of land, according to the Babylonian conveyancer. Perhaps there was in this usage a recollection of how fast the Babylonian house of sun-dried brick sank down to a mound of clay, perhaps, too, a far-off echo of the nomad’s scorn for the town-dweller, in both cases a recognition that the land was the one thing permanent, the one thing that could not “run away.” (M461) The plot of land was the _bîtu_, Hebrew _beth_, represented by the Sumerian _Ê_. When it had the additional advantage of a house upon it, it was _bîtu epšu_, a “built-on plot.” Gradually the edifice, in towns at least, absorbed the whole significance, and in common parlance _bîtu_ meant a “house,” but in legal phraseology it always retained its inclusive meaning of the plot of land. Even as late as the Assyrian Empire it retained some shade of a still earlier meaning, that of a plot, parcel, or share, just what it meant when the first settlers divided the land among them. Thus one might use _bîtu_ of a “lot” of slaves, or of a lot of land including its slaves and cattle. That _bîtu_ is to be referred to a root _banû_, “to make,” may still be true, though _banû_ cannot have come to mean “build” when _bîtu_ was formed from it. If _bîtu_ was originally the “house,” perhaps only a tent-house, then it could mean all that constituted the house, the man’s house in a wider sense, as in tribe names, like Bît Adini or the phrase, “House of Israel.” But _bîtu_, when used of a house, does not carry with it the implication of bricks and mortar, only of a fixed site occupied for dwelling. The edifice was implied by the addition _epšu_, marking the site “built upon.” So a house was “landed property”; land was of various sorts, one of which is “built on land.” To be accurate one must also specify the kind of building.