There are other traces all pointing to the conclusion that in the civilisation of primitive Babylon mother-right was still very much alive. It is significant that the first rulers of Sumer and Akkad--the oldest Babylonian cities--frequently made boast of their unknown parentage, which can only be explained by the assumption that descent through the father was not recognised. Thus Sargon,[242] one of the earlier rulers, says: "My mother was a princess, my father I know not ... my mother, the princess, conceived me, in a secret place she brought me forth." A little monument in the Hague museum has an inscription which has been translated thus: "Gudea patesi of Sirgulla dedicates thus to Gin-dung-nadda-addu, his wife." The wife's name is interpreted "maid of the god Nebo." It is thought that Gudea reigned in her right. The inscription goes on to say: "Mother I had not, my mother was the water deep. A father I had not, my father was the water deep." The passage is obscure, but it is explained if we regard this as one of the legends of miraculous birth so frequent in primitive societies under mother-descent.[243] Another relic of some interest is an ancient statue of a Babylonian woman, not a goddess or a queen, who is presented alone and not with her husband, as was common in Egypt; such a monument may suggest, as is pointed out by Simcox, that women at this period possessed wealth in their own right. As in Egypt, the mother, the father, and the eldest son seem to have been the essential members of the family. We find that the compound substantive translated "family" means literally "children household." This is very interesting and may betoken a conception of marriage and the family like that of the Egyptians, in which the union of the wife and the husband is only fully established by the birth of children.[244] In the house the wife is "set in honour," "glad and gladdening like the mid-day sun." The sun-god Merodach is thus addressed: "Like a wife thou behavest thyself, cheerful and rejoicing." The sun-god himself is made to say, "May the wife whom thou lovest come before thee with joy." These examples, and also many others, such, for instance, as the phrase, "As a woman fashioned for a mother made beautiful," show that the Babylonians shared the Egyptian idealism in their conception of the wife and mother and her relation to the family. Many of the Summerian expressions throw beautiful light on the happiness of the domestic relationships. The union of the wife and husband is spoken of as "the undivided half," the idiogram for the mother signifies the elements "god" and "the house," she is "the enlarger of the family," the father is "one who is looked up to."