The laborers were partly slaves, partly freemen, the freemen hiring themselves out at so much a month. A contract of the age of Khammurabi, for instance, states that a certain Ubaru, had thus hired himself out for thirty days for half a shekel of silver, or 1s. 6d., but he had to offer a guarantee that he would not leave his master’s service before the expiration of the month. In other cases it was a slave whose services were hired from his owner; thus, in a document from Sippara, of the same age as the preceding, we read: “Rimmon-bani hires Sumi-izitim as a laborer for his brother, for three months, at a wage of one shekel and a half, 3 measures of grain and 1½ _qa_ of oil. There shall be no withdrawal from the agreement. Ibni-A-murru and Sikni-Ea have confirmed it. Rimmon-bani hires the laborer in the presence of Abum-ilu (Abimael), the son of Ibni-Samas, Ilisu-ibni, the son of Igas-Rimmon, and Arad-Bel, the son of Akhuwam. (Dated) the first day of Sivan.” The wages evidently went to the slave, so that he was practically in the position of a free laborer. When we come down to a later period, we find in contract, dated at the end of the second year of a Cyrus, Bunene-sar-uzur, “the son of Sum-yukin,” hired, as a servant for a year, “from the month Nisan to the month Adar,” for 3 shekels of silver. These were paid beforehand to a third person, and the payment was duly witnessed and registered. Bunene-sar-uzur was not a slave, though 9 shillings does not seem much as wages for a whole year. However, three years later only 1 _pi_, or about 50 quarts of meal, were given for a month’s supply of food to some men who were digging a canal. The hours of work doubtless lasted from sunrise to sunset, though we have a curious document of the Macedonian period, dated in the reign of Seleucus II., in which certain persons sell the wages they receive for work done in a temple during the “sixth part” of a day. The sum demanded was as much as 65 shekels. The Aramean Bedâwin, who acted as shepherds, or cattle-drovers, probably received better wages than the native Babylonians. They were less numerous and were in more request; moreover, it was necessary that they should be trustworthy. The herds and flocks were left in their charge for weeks together, on the west bank of the Euphrates, out of sight of the cultivated fields of Babylonia and exposed to the attacks of marauders from the desert. Early Babylonian documents give long lists of the herdsmen and shepherds, and of the number of sheep or oxen for which they were responsible, and which were the property of some wealthy landowner. In the seventeenth year of Nabonidos, five of the shepherds received one shekel and a half of silver, as well as a _gur_, or about 250 quarts, of grain from the royal granary.