These we may refer to as the middle class. The highest, or
upper class, in the Babylonian community embraced all the officers and
ministers attached to the court, the higher officials and servants
of the state, and the owners of considerable lands and estates. The
differences which divided and marked off from one another the two great
classes of free men in the population of Babylonia is well illustrated
by the scale of payments as compensation for injury which they were
obliged to make or were entitled to receive. Thus, if a member of the
upper class were guilty of stealing an ox, or a sheep, or an ass, or
a pig, or a boat, from a temple or a private house, he had to pay the
owner thirty times its value as compensation, whereas if the thief were
a member of the middle class he only had to pay ten times its price, but
if he had no property and so could not pay compensation he was put to
death. The penalty for manslaughter was less if the assailant was a man
of the middle class, and such a man could also divorce his wife more
cheaply, and was privileged to pay his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee
for a successful operation.
But the privileges enjoyed by a man of the middle class were
counterbalanced by a corresponding diminution of the value at which
his life and limbs were assessed. Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an
operation unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class,
or inflicted a serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the
punishment was the amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems
to have been exacted if the patient were a member of the middle class.
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