Tablets of the time of Urukagina and his predecessor, Lugalanda, translated by M. de Genouillac, give some indication of what the family condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the real attitude toward children. Women were important; they could hold property and they were protected in their property rights by law. This in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as exposing or drowning female children. Among these tablets of Tello, is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were attached to the Temple of Bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler prays, as: “... The one that grantest life unto the land.... “Thou art the Queen, the mother that founded Lagash.”[128] In these tablets the name of each woman is followed with the number of infants belonging to her family, and their sex. In all, two hundred and twenty-nine infants are enumerated, of which ninety-seven are boys and one hundred and thirty-two, girls. Five hundred and fifty-two women are named, but before coming to a conclusion as to the percentage this shows of children to mothers, it is well, as de Genouillac points out,[129] to remember that among these five hundred and fifty-two women there were many young girls. Some idea of the size of the Sumerian family may be obtained from the fact that the number of infants charged to a single mother is seldom more than four. Once the number seven occurs, but this is in connection with the wife of the king, and two of these children would seem to have been adopted. “The education of a large number of infants,” concluded de Genouillac, “was encouraged by the pension for mothers.” Here indeed was progress!—at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere else in the world. It is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife of the king or the _patesi_ was of great importance, for all documents signed by Lugalanda bear the name of his wife, Barnamtarra, and those under Urukagina have the signature of his wife, Sagsag. It is more than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the Temple of Bau, was for the goddess’s representative, the Queen Sagsag. Another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants to fifty-seven women,[130] and in this and other tablets the frequent reference to the orphans who were being taken care of, shows that there was provision for the infant whose immediate protectors had passed away.