A slave, who married one of his master’s slave girls, or for whom, as often was the case, a master bought a slave girl to be wife, was usually provided with a house to live in and often with furniture, such as would not disgrace a freeman’s home. Here he lived as a simple poor worker. His master usually respected his rights, fed him and clothed him in return for his service and treated him as a poor subject brother. When the master thus set up a slave for life, with wife, house, and home, he often laid it down that the slave should clothe and feed himself henceforth, and specified the extent of service which he would demand. Clearly such was a very modified slavery. Slaves do not seem to have often been retained living in the house long after they grew up to manhood. On the other hand, slave girls and women were kept in the master’s house. A master often made a slave girl mother of his children. But if so, these children were not born to slavery, but if acknowledged became legitimate heirs to the master’s estate, and if not, were at least free, and the slave mother was freed when the master died. There is no suggestion that a Babylonian master claimed any rights over the slave wife of his slave, beyond some share in such work as weaving and perhaps a few household duties. The slave who lived in his own house, if active and industrious, might soon acquire wealth, or he might inherit it from relatives. Hence, he might aspire to marry a free woman. In that case, if he remained a slave, his master took one half his property at death and the other half went to his free wife and her children who also were free. Such a free wife of one who was still a slave might bring her marriage portion, inherit property, &c. In fact she forfeited none of the rights of a free woman by marrying a slave man. Doubtless, in many cases a master preferred his slave marrying a free woman to having to purchase a slave girl for him. He had to weigh the reversion of one half his slave’s acquired property against the value of a family of born slaves, who of course had to be fed and clothed till they were of value for sale or service. The humane Babylonians were strongly averse to separating a slave mother from her children and they were usually sold in families.