Mesopotamian Marriage Law
Marriage Law in Ancient Mesopotamia very much resembled property law. As discerned from Hammurabi's Code, wives were bought and sold in a manner very much resembling slavery. The legal institution of marriage, its rules and ramifications, show that in the Mesopotamian world, marriage and slavery were legal cousins.[1]
Cultural Institutions
The difficulty of understanding social and cultural values based on a legal code must not be ignored. For Sumer and Akkad and Assyria, we have an understanding of their material culture in the form of archaeologial evidence. We have glimpses of their culture, from Gilgamesh and the Eannatum, but we can only guess of their demeanor. Were these laws of marriage built out of necessity or whim, a personal desire of Hammurabi’s or to correct a perceived ill of society? The short answer, of course, is that we’ll never know. One can see a basic egalitarian spirit within the code. It treats male and female slaves equally. It affords protection to children borne of a slave if those children are ever treated as part of the family. But the protection afforded to wives, though well-mannered, is like the protection afforded to the honest merchant, the oxen and the ill-gotten slave. A woman is required to kill herself if a charge of adultery is brought against her, not for her impurity, but because she has brought shame upon the family. This is the case with no guilt. If she has actually committed adultery, then she is to be thrown into the river.
Divorce
Divorce is acceptable, even amiable, if it’s a matter of returning the dowry and getting a refund on the bride-price. Finding a new wife, marrying a priestess, they’ve all got their rules. The position of a woman in Mesopotamian society can best be seen with two examples. The one is the responsibility of a father to leave his son with a wife. The wording is to, “enable him to acquire a wife.” The wife is treated thus, as a piece of property, which is not to say poorly, as the Mesopotamians treated their property with respect.[2] The word translated as husband is, literally, “Owner of a wife”.