In the account of Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of other presents being made to her mother in conformity with Babylonian usage. So, too, the infliction of death by burning with which Judah threatened his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition that she was a widow, has its explanation in the legislation of Khammu-rabi, where the same punishment is enacted against a nun who has been unfaithful to her vows of virginity or widowhood. The story of the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, moreover, has long been recognized by Assyriologists as pre-supposing an acquaintance with the legal forms of a Babylonian sale of land in the Khammu-rabi age. With all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected about B.C. 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which superseded it also served to protect three cities, the latest of which was deserted during the Maccabean period, about B.C. 100. Hence, Mr. Macalister argues, “if we may assume the rate of growth to have been fairly uniform, we are led back to B.C. 2900 as the (latest) date” for the foundation of the first wall. During this long period of time twenty-eight feet of _débris_ accumulated; below this are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.[130]