Moses instituted three classes of heirs: first the children, then the agnates, and then the members of the clan or gentiles.[1051] The Hebrew father did not inherit from his son, nor the grandfather from his grandson, which seems to indicate an ancient epoch, when the children did not yet belong to the clan of their father. For a long time among the Hebrews the german sister was distinguished from the uterine sister; the kinship with this last was considered much closer. In primitive Judæa a man could marry the first, but not the second. To the King of Egypt and to Abimelech, who reproached Abraham for having passed Sarah off as his sister, the patriarch replies: “For indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, _but not the daughter of my mother_, and she became my wife.” In the same way Tamar could become the wife of Amnon, for she was only his paternal sister.[1052] The father of Moses and Aaron married his father’s sister, who was not legally his relation.[1053] Abraham himself could marry his paternal sister, and his brother Nabor took to wife his fraternal niece, the daughter of his brother.[1054] But by degrees paternal kinship was recognised by the same title as maternal kinship, and Leviticus advances as far as to expressly forbid marriage with father’s sisters as well as with mother’s sisters,[1055] “whether they be born at home or abroad.” Doubtless all these indications have their value; they are, however, only indications, and it is especially in placing them by the side of similar facts observed amongst other peoples where the existence of the maternal family and the familial clan is indisputable, that we are inclined to accord to them the same significance. In short, it is clear that the Hebrews early adopted paternal filiation and the patriarchate. The memory of a distant epoch of confused kinship and of free sexual unions had, however, remained in Semitic tradition. Sanchoniathon, indeed, in his _History of Phœnicia_, says that the first men bore the name of their mother, because then the women yielded themselves without shame to the first comer.[1056] Among the Berbers familial evolution is much easier to follow than with the Semites, and its lower phases are more evident. III. _The Family among the Berbers._