In Assyria, as in Babylonia, parents could sell their children, brothers their sisters, though we do not know under what circumstances this was allowed by the law. The sale of a sister by her brother for half a maneh, which has already been referred to, took place at Nineveh in 668 B.C. In the contract the brother is called “the owner of his sister,” and any infringement of the agreement was to be punished by a fine of “10 silver manehs, or 1 maneh of gold,” to the treasury of the temple of Ninip at Calah. About fifteen years later the services of a female slave “as long as she lived” were given in payment of a debt, one of the witnesses to the deed being Yavanni “the Greek.” Ninip of Calah received slaves as well as fines for the violation of contracts relating to the sale of them; about 645 B.C., for instance, we find four men giving one to the service of the god. Among the titles of the god is that of “the lord of workmen;” and it is therefore possible that he was regarded as in a special way the patron of the slave-trader. It seems to have been illegal to sell the mother without the children, at all events as long as they were young. In the old Sumerian code of laws it was already laid down that if children were born to slaves whom their owner had sold while still reserving the power of repurchasing them, he could nevertheless not buy them back unless he bought the children at the same time at the rate of one and a half shekels each. The contracts show that this law continued in force down to the latest days of Babylonian independence. Thus the Egyptian woman who was sold in the sixth year of Cambyses was put up to auction along with her child. We may gather also that it was not customary to separate the husband and wife.(5) When the Israelite Hoshea, for instance, was put up for sale in Assyria in the reign of Esar-haddon, both his wives as well as his children were bought by the purchaser along with him. It may be noted that the slave was “marked,” or “tattooed,” after purchase, like the Babylonian cattle. This served a double purpose; it indicated his owner and identified him if he tried to run away.