(M501) The importance of the temple was partially the result of the large dues paid to it. These consisted primarily of a _ginû_, or fixed customary daily payment, and a _sattukku_, or fixed monthly payment. How these arose is still obscure. They were paid in all sorts of natural products, paid in kind, measured by the temple surveyor on the field. Doubtless, these were due from temple lands, and grew out of the endowments given to the temple. These often consisted of land, held in perpetuity by a family, charged with a payment to the temple. The land could not be let or sold by the temple, nor by the family. Such land was usually freed from all other state dues. The endowment was thus at the expense of the state. An enormous number of the tablets which have reached us from the later Babylonian times concern the payment of these dues. They mostly consisted of corn and sesame, or other offerings, and the tablets are receipts for them. In Assyrian times the _ginû_ also included flesh of animals and birds. In some few cases we have long lists of these daily dues, accompanied by precious gifts in addition. The gifts were perishable, but were accompanied by a note specifying them, and the good wishes or purpose of the donor.(538) These notes were preserved as mementos of the donor’s good-will. (M502) Temples, however, also possessed lands which they could let. They also held houses which they might let.(539) In fact, the temples could hold any sort of property, but apparently could not alienate any. Some lands the temple officials administered themselves, having their own work-people. We have mention of these lands from the earliest times (_e.g._, the very early tablet referred to above),(540) right down through the Sumerian period. We have almost endless temple accounts, many of which relate to the fields of the temple, giving their dimensions and situation, with the names of the tenants, or serfs, and the rents or crops expected of them. Then, in the First Dynasty of Babylon, we find the lands, gardens, courts, _et cetera_, of the gods named. We no longer have the temple accounts, but the private business transactions of the citizens, whose neighbors are often the gods themselves, as direct land-owners. In Assyrian times the mention of temple lands is very common. In later Babylonian times there is abundant evidence of the same custom. Dr. Peiser devotes a considerable portion of the introduction to his _Babylonische Verträge_ to this subject. How the temple became possessed of these lands we do not know. We do know of large gifts of land by kings, rich land-owners and the like, but we do not know whether originally the temple started with land. When a king speaks of building a temple to a god, we may understand that he really rebuilt it, or erected a new temple on the site. Before kings, the _patêsis_ did the same. But did a _patêsi_ precede a temple or _vice versâ_? and did the first founder, or the town, grant the first temple lands?