The _mushkênu_ may have descended to a lower position in Babylon, for the phrase, _ana mushkênûti alâku_, meant ‘to go to misery’, ‘to be ruined’. We may even note steps in this degradation. In the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, Amenophis king of Egypt answers the letter of Kadashman-Ellil, the Kassite king of Babylon, who had inquired after his daughter the princess Tsukhartu, one of the Egyptian king’s matrimonial alliances. The Babylonian king says that Amenophis had had his sister to wife, but no messenger of his had ever been able to converse with that princess, or to know whether she was alive or dead. They had indeed seen a certain lady, but whether she was the daughter of some _mushkênu_ they could not tell. They hardly suspected her of being a poor man’s daughter, only of being a ‘commoner’. So too, in the days when Babylonia was subject to Assyria, the Babylonians complained that they were being treated as _mushkênu_, not surely as poor men merely, for the obvious answer would be to increase their taxes, but as inferiors subject to indignities. At any rate, in Hammurabi’s Code they are free and possess moderate means, but are inferior persons to the _amêlu_, yet superior to the slave. We see that these poor men fell later into still more abject conditions. In the later texts it is usually their weakness, helplessness, and poverty that is dwelt upon.[16] Hence my first rendering was ‘poor-man’, but later I preferred to use ‘plebeian’, to which view most scholars have now come round. The slave, _wardu_, was often spoken of as ‘a head’, as if he were a chattel, or a mere animal. He was perpetually changing hands, being sold or pledged (§§ 118, 147). Any damage done to him had to be paid for, but the compensation went to his master (§§ 213, 214, 219, 220). If he repudiated his master’s rights to his service, he was punished by mutilation. It appears that his master had no power to kill him, but he could brand him and put fetters on him. Yet the slave could acquire wealth and often acted in business as a free man, but his master had control of his actions and took a share of his profits. If he was living in his master’s house, he could not buy or sell except by written authority from his master (§ 7). Many slaves, however, married and had homes of their own. The master might act as patron and recover debts for them. Presumably they could not plead in Court, though they were called on to bear witness.