*** This fact was evident from the text of the so-called _Sumerian Laws concerning the Organization of the Family_, according to the generally received interpretation: according to that proposed by Oppert-Menant, it was the woman who had the right of causing the husband who had wronged her to be thrown into the river. The publication of the contracts of Iltani and of Bashtum appear to have shown conclusively the correctness of the ordinary translation: uncertainty with regard to one word prevents us from knowing whether the guilty wife were strangled before being thrown into the water, or if she were committed to the river alive.
The adulteress was also punished with death, but with death by the sword: and when the use of iron became widespread, the blade was to be of that metal. Another ancient custom only spared the criminal to devote her to a life of infamy: the outraged husband stripped her of her fleecy garments, giving her merely the loin-cloth in its place, which left her half naked, and then turned-her out of the house into the street, where she was at the mercy of the first passer-by. Women of noble or wealthy families found in their fortune a certain protection from the abuse of marital authority. The property which they brought with them by their marriage contract, remained at their own disposal.* They had the entire management of it, they farmed it out, they sold it, they spent the income from it as they liked, without interference from any one: the man enjoyed the comforts which it procured, but he could not touch it, and his hold upon it was so slight that his creditors could not lay their hands on it.
* In the documents of the New Chaldæan Empire we find instances of married women selling their property themselves, and even of their being present, seated, at the conclusion of the sale, or of their ceding to a married daughter some property in their own possession, thus renouncing the power of disposing of it, and keeping merely the income from it; we have also instances of women reclaiming valuables of gold which their husbands had given away without their authorisation, and also obtaining an indemnity for the wrong they had suffered; also of their lending money to the mother-in-law of their brother; in fine, empowered to deal with their own property in every respect like an ordinary proprietor.