Business transactions were made by contracts, the transactions in question usually having reference to the sale of slaves, animals or other property. The validity of the contracts apparently depended upon their being duly attested, as in later times, the witnesses receiving gifts for their services. In regard to the purchase of slaves, and the price which they fetched in the market, it is a significant fact that according to the stele of Manishtusu, an ass and a slave were worth exactly the same, which betrays a lack of appreciation of the superiority of the working capacity of a human being over that of a brute beast. But the crown and the church took good care not to allow the laity the full possession of their own property, and managed to make a very comfortable livelihood for themselves by means of various impositions and taxes. Farm produce, garden fruits, fish, cattle, wool and perfumes were all levied as royal or ecclesiastical dues, while the temple sacrifices were of course for the most part mere perquisites of the priests, though the latter had to hand a goodly proportion over to their royal patron. A civilization such as this, with its commercial enterprises and its legal transactions, of course presupposes the invention of systems for ascertaining the weights and measures of the various objects and different forms of property with which those transactions were immediately concerned. There was a square or area measure, a sine quâ non in property-conveyancing; there was a long measure, equally necessary for the sale and purchase of wood or stuffen goods, the smallest unit of which appears to have been the thumb. Then again the daily requirements of man made the invention of a measure of capacity an absolute necessity. Other modes of reckoning besides the regular metrical systems were however sometimes adopted, thus fishermen appear to have sold their fish either by number or by the basket, while liquids were measured by means of different sized vessels. Lastly there was a weight measure, which was the same in Urukagina’s time as in that of the later dynasty of Ur. 2. _RELIGION_