Closely connected with the _kalî_ was a sort of monastic institution, which seems to have been attached to some of the Babylonian temples. The _Zikari_, who belonged to it, were forbidden to marry, and it is possible that they were eunuchs like the _kalî_. They, too, were under a chief or president, and their main duty was to attend to the daily sacrifice and to minister to the higher order of priests. In this respect they resembled the Levites at Jerusalem; indeed they are frequently termed “servants” in the inscriptions, though they were neither serfs nor slaves. They could be dedicated to the service of the Sun-god from childhood. A parallel to the dedication of Samuel is to be found in a deed dated at Sippara on the 21st of Nisan, in the fifth year of Cambyses, in which “Ummu-dhabat, the daughter of Nebo-bel-uzur,” whose father-in-law was the priest of the Sun-god, is stated to have brought her three sons to him, and to have made the following declaration before another priest of the same deity: “My sons have not yet entered the House of the Males (_Zikari_); I have hitherto lived with them; I have grown old with them since they were little, until they have been counted among men.” Then she took them into the “House of the Males” and “gave” them to the service of the god. We learn from this and other documents that the _Zikari_ lived together in a monastery or college within the walls of the temple, and that monthly rations of food were allotted to them from the temple revenues. The ordinary priests were married, though the wife of a priest was not herself a priestess. There were priestesses, however, as well as female recluses, who, like the _Zikari_, were not allowed to marry and were devoted to the service of the Sun-god. They lived in the temple, but were able to hold property of their own, and even to carry on business with it. A portion of the profits, nevertheless, went to the treasury of the temple, out of whose revenues they were themselves supplied with food. From contracts of the time of Khammurabi we gather that many of them not only belonged to the leading families of Babylonia, but that they might be relations of the King.