(M343) We have seen that the _terḫatu_, or present made to the parents by the suitor before marriage, was usually handed over to the bride on her going to her husband’s house. There is frequent reference to this essential preliminary. It had to be carefully laid aside for the young man by his mother or brethren, if he had not married in his father’s lifetime, and was secured to him by law, apart from and above what might come to him as a share of his father’s property. Otherwise he would suffer loss in having to find it out of his own pocket, when his married brothers had been provided with the means during their father’s lifetime. Usually it was an amount of silver, one shekel up to three minas. In later Babylonian times there is little evidence of the parents receiving gifts. We now and then find it so. Thus a man gave a slave and a mina and a half of silver for his wife to her mother,(277) but it is not clear whether or not this was to buy her. (M344) A far more valuable endowment of the bride was her marriage-portion. If her father was not alive to give it to her, the duty fell on his heirs, and she had a right to it over and above her daughter’s share of his property. Thus we find that the brothers, on giving their sister a share, contract to further endow her if she marries.(278) (M345) We have one or two lists that show what might be expected as a trousseau by a Babylonian bride. One which illustrates the Code(279) extremely well, narrates first what had been given a notary and _NU-BAR_ of Marduk by her father on her taking her vow and entering the temple of Anunitum. This was his “grant” to her and was known by the same name as the marriage-portion of a bride. It included half a shekel of gold for a nose-ring (?), two shekels of silver as a finger-ring, another ring of silver of one shekel, one _malumsa_, three cloaks, three turbans, one small seal worth five minas, two jewels of unknown character, one bed, five chairs, five different sorts of things apparently made of reeds, the concubine Suratum, her step-mother. Unfortunately many of these renderings are still quite conjectural. It is interesting to note that the father left to his daughter his concubine, who was probably a slave, and possibly really the girl’s mother. But now this girl is about to marry and her own mother, Shubultum, at any rate, her father’s full wife, together with her brothers and sisters, give her all this property and cause it to enter her husband’s house. They had a reversionary right to her property, since as a votary she could not alienate it from her family.(280) So now they waive their right, as it will after her marriage pass to her children, if she has any.(281) So they are said to “give” her what her father had already “granted” her. Further, they return to her husband the _terḫatu_, of one-third of a mina of silver, which he had presented to them.(282) The marriage-portion could not be reclaimed by the wife’s family at her death if she had children.