Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

54

G. R. DEIVER AND SIR JOHN MIILES

sons (A's grandsons), if ten years old, haLe a right to the girl and
one of them may marry her; if they are under 10 years, the girl's
father may either keep his daughter and give her to one of them
when he is of age or rescind the contract on equitable terms. If this
is so, she cannot be given to any of B's brothers if he had left any
sons. But, if A had no remaining sons, to one of whom he could
have given the girl, the contract comes to an end, the family being
extinct in the direct line, and the girl's father must make restitution
of the gifts, other than eatables, which A had given him for his
daughter's hand. This interpretation of the section has at least this
advantage, that it allows mtairu ' son 'in 1. 36 to bear that meaning,
in that it refers to a son of A, and does not necessitate either the
assigning to it the sense of' grandson' i. e. a grandson of A or a
son of B- or the deleting of 11. 27-35 as an interpolation.
In regard to the law of levirate Koschak< r (pp. 48-51) seems to
have proved that the levirate recognised hby the Assyrians was not
that of the Hebrews, but another type of the custom regulating the
marriage (1) by a brother of his deceased brother's intended wife
and (2) by a betrothed man of his deceased bride's sister.
Koschaker (pp. 51-53) believes the betrothal of these laws to
be what he calls Arrhalverlobnis ' arrhal betrothal ' ' effected by
bringing the arrhat to the father of the bride, and infers from the
use of assatu ' wife' of the betrothed girl in ~ 32 (31), 11. 41 and 44
and ~ 44 (43), 1. 21 that Assyrian betrothal was an application of the
rules of the law of purchase to marriage, whereby the purchaser on
the payment of the price acquires property in the wares - viz., that
the girl on payment of the arrha becomes his wife, although the
contract can still be rescinded. But this surely is to infer too much:
the use of a.satu ' wife ' in reference to a betrothed girl need prove no
1. It may be doubted whether the conception of betrothal as based on the law
of sale or of the gift of betrothal as a form a arrha ' earnest-money ' is true in
either Babylonian or Assyrian law. Neubauer has shown in his Beitrdge zur
Geschichte des biblisch-talnmudischen Eheschliessungs'recht that such an idea
was quite foreign to Hebrew law.