The slave, however, was allowed to accumulate capital for himself, to trade with it, and even to become rich enough to lend money to his own master or to purchase his own freedom. That a similar privilege was allowed to the slaves of the Israelites we may gather from the fact that Saul’s slave offered to pay the seer Samuel a quarter of a shekel which he had about him, though it is true that this might have been the property of his master. In Babylonia the possession of property by the slave was not at all uncommon. In the sixth year of Cambyses, for example, a female slave named Khunnatu received a large quantity of furniture, including five beds, ten chairs, three dishes, and various other kitchen utensils, and agreed to pay the rent of the house in which she deposited them. Her master also lent her 122 shekels of silver, which were expended in buying fifty casks of beer, besides other things, and upon which she was to pay interest. Apparently she wanted to set up an inn or drinking-shop; the fact that the money was lent to her by her master proves that she must have been engaged in business on her own account. In other contracts we find the slave taking a mortgage and trading in onions and grain or employing his money in usury. In one case a slave borrows as much as 14 manehs 49 shekels, or £138 3s., from a member of the Egibi firm. In another case it is a considerable quantity of grain in addition to 12 shekels of silver that is borrowed from the slave by two other persons, with a promise that the grain shall be repaid the following month and the money a year later. The contract is drawn up in the usual way, the borrowers, who, like the witnesses, are free-born citizens, giving the creditor a security and assuming a common responsibility for the debt. The grain, however, was to be repaid in the house of the slave’s master; it seems evident, therefore, that the slave had no private house of his own. The slave, nevertheless, could own a house or receive it in payment of a debt. This is illustrated by an interesting contract in which reference is made to Ustanni, the Tatnai of the Book of Ezra, who is called “the governor of Ebir-nâri,” “the other side of the river.” The contract is as follows: “Two manehs of silver lent by Kurrulâ, the slave of Ustanni, the governor of Babylon and Ebir-nâri, to Merodach-sum-ibni, the son of Sula, the son of Epes-ilu. The house of the latter, which is by the side of the road of the god Bagarus, is Kurrulâ’s security. No one else has any prior claim to it. The house is not to be let or interest taken upon the loan.” Then come the names of five free-born witnesses, and the document is dated at Babylon in the third year of Darius. The terms of the contract are precisely the same as those exacted by Cambyses, when he was crown-prince, from a certain Iddin-Nebo, to whom he had lent money through the agency of his secretary, receiving a house as security for the debt.