"The Code Of Hammurabi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johns Rev Claude Hermann Walter)

no claim on her property; possibly not on his own.
As a widow, the wife took her husband's place in the family,
living on in his house and bringing up the children. She could only
remarry with judicial consent, when the judge was bound to inventory
the deceased's estate and hand it over to her and her new husband in
trust for the children. They could not alienate a single utensil. If
she did not remarry, she lived on in her husband's house and took a
child's share on the division of his estate, when the children had
grown up. She still retained her dowry and any settlement deeded to
her by her husband. This property came to her children. If she had
remarried, all her children shared equally in her dowry, but the first
husband's gift fell to his children or to her selection among them, if
so empowered.
Monogamy was the rule, and a childless wife might give her husband
a maid (who was no wife) to bear him children, who were reckoned hers.
She remained mistress of her maid and might degrade her to slavery
again for insolence, but could not sell her if she had borne her
husband children. If the wife did this, the Code did not allow the
husband to take a concubine. If she would not, he could do so. The
concubine was a wife, though not of the same rank; the first wife
had no power over her. A concubine was a free woman, was often dowered
for marriage and her children were legitimate. She could only be
divorced on the same conditions as a wife. If a wife became a
chronic invalid, the husband was bound to maintain her in the home
they bad made together, unless she preferred to take her dowry and
go back to her father's house; but he was free to remarry. In all
these cases the children were legitimate and legal heirs.
There was, of course, no hindrance to a man having children by a
slave girl. These children were free, in any case, and their mother
could not be sold, though she might be pledged, and she was free on
her master's death. These children could be legitimized by their
father's acknowledgment before witnesses, and were often adopted. They
then ranked equally in sharing their father's estate, but if not
adopted, the wife's children divided and took first choice.
Vestal virgins were not supposed to have children, yet they could
and often did marry. The Code contemplated that such a wife would
give a husband a maid as above. Free women might marry slaves and
be dowered for the marriage. The children were free, and at the
slave's death the wife took her dowry and half what she and her
husband had acquired in wedlock for self and children; the master
taking the other half as his slave's heir.
A father had control over his children till their marriage. He had
a right to their labour in return for their keep. He might hire
them out and receive their wages, pledge them for debt, even sell them
outright. Mothers had the same rights in the absence of the father;
even elder brothers when both parents were dead. A father had no claim
on his married children for support, but they retained a right to
inherit on his death.
The daughter was not only in her father's power to be given in
marriage, but he might dedicate her to the service of some god as a