One of the documents that have come down to us from the age of Abraham records the gift of a female slave by a husband to his wife. The slave and her children, it was laid down, were to remain the property of the wife in case either of divorce or of the husband’s death. The right of the woman to hold private property of her own, over which the male heirs had no control, was thus early recognized by the law. In later times it is referred to in numberless contracts. In the reign of Nebokin-abla, for instance, in the eleventh century B.C., we find a field bequeathed first of all to a daughter and then to a sister; in the beginning of the reign of Nabonidos we hear of a brother and sister, the children of a naturalized Egyptian, inheriting their father’s property together; and in the fourth year of Cyrus his son Cambyses sued for the payment of a loan which he had made to a Babylonian on the security of some house-property, and which was accordingly refunded by the debtor’s wife. Other deeds relate to the borrowing of money by a husband and his wife in partnership, to a wife selling a slave for a maneh of silver on her own account, to a woman bringing an action before six judges at the beginning of the reign of Nabonidos to recover the price of a slave she had sold, and to another woman who two years previously was the witness to the sale of a house. Further proofs are not needed of the independent position of the woman, whether married or single, and of her equality with the man in the eyes of the law.