The Ea of the cuneiform text seems to be the Oannes of the Chaldean historian Berossos, who was said to have risen out of the waters of the Persian Gulf, bringing with him the elements of civilization and the code of laws which were henceforth to prevail in Babylonia. The code of Oannes has perished, but fragments of another and more historical one have been preserved to us in a reading-book which was intended to teach the Semitic pupil the ancient language of the Sumerians. The original Sumerian text is given with its Semitic equivalent, as well as a list of technical legal terms. “If a son,” it is said, “denies his father, his hair shall be cut, he shall be put into chains and sold for silver. If he denies his mother, his hair also shall be cut, city and land shall collect together and put him in prison.… If the wife hates her husband and denies him, they shall throw her into the river. If the husband divorces his wife, he must pay her fifty shekels of silver. If a man hires a servant, and kills, wounds, beats, or ill-uses him or makes him ill, he must with his own hand measure out for him each day half a measure of grain.” We have already seen that the last regulation was in force up to the latest period of Babylonian history. It betrays a humane spirit in the early legislation and shows that the slave was regarded as something more than a mere chattel. It provided against his being over-worked; as soon as the slave was rendered unfit for labor by his hirer’s fault, the latter was fined, and the fine was exacted as long as the slave continued ill or maimed. The law which pronounced sentence of death by drowning upon the unfaithful wife was observed as late as the age of Khammurabi. Such at least is the evidence of some curious documents, from which we learn that a certain Arad-Samas married first a daughter of Uttatu and subsequently a half-sister of his wife. In the contract of marriage it is stipulated that unfaithfulness to the husband on the part of both the wives would be punished with drowning, on the part of the second only with slavery. On the other hand he could divorce them on payment of a maneh of silver—that is to say, of 30 shekels apiece. Under Nebuchadnezzar the old power of putting the wife to death in case of adultery was still possessed by the husband, where the wife was of lower rank than himself and little better than a concubine. It was a survival of the _patria potestas_ which had once belonged to him. The wife who came from a wealthy and respectable family, however, stood on a footing of equality with her husband, and he could not venture to put in force against her the provisions of the ancient Sumerian law.