(M318) A case of assault and forcible entry into a house occurs.(245) But the tablet is so defective that we cannot make out the rights of the case. The superintendent of the city Shaḫrin, in the eighth year of Cyrus complained to the priest of Shamash at Sippara, to the following effect: He had taken into his house, as a prisoner, a certain man A. He pleads that he is uncle to the priest and chief magistrate of the city. Why then has the priest raised his hand over him? Further, seven men, who are armed, have burst in his door and entered his house and taken a mina of gold. Whether this was a rescue by relatives of the prisoner, or by order of the priest, does not appear. As a result of this complaint, the elders of the city were assembled and depositions made. Beyond the plea on the part of the house-breakers that someone had paid them to break in the door, and that the prisoner A was someone’s pledge, we get no further information. (M319) A case of procuration of desertion, forbidden by the Code(246) under pain of death, was condoned by the injured party.(247) A caused a maid of B’s to leave her master’s house. B received her back, pardoned A, and took no money of him. (M320) Adultery was punished in the Code by drowning.(248) The Code in this and similar cases of sexual irregularity is explicit that the case must be flagrant. Suspicion was not enough.(249) But conduct leading to scandal had to be atoned for by submission to the ordeal. The Code did not take a higher ground than public opinion. The private contracts name death as punishment for adultery. Usually it is drowning, but being thrown from a high place, temple, tower, or pillar is named. In the later contracts death was still the penalty for a wife’s adultery, but the penalty had ceased to be drowning only. The adulteress might be put to the sword.(250) A woman’s procuring her husband’s death, for love of another, was punished by impalement.(251) (M321) Incest on the part of a man with his own daughter involved his banishment.(252) Incest with a daughter-in-law, if she was his son’s full wife, was apparently punished by his being drowned. The Code is obscure here and we are not sure whether she was drowned also.(253) If the girl was not yet fully married, the case was treated as one of ordinary seduction, and the culprit was fined half a mina.(254) If a man committed incest with his own mother, both were burned.(255) If a man had intercourse with his foster-mother, or step-mother, who had borne children to his father, he was disinherited.(256) IX. The Family Organization