Anali Pravnog fakulteta u Beogradu

to ensure the maintenance to devoted temple-maids and priestesses, depending on whether they received the dowry from their fathers or not, regardless to die fact of their living in the temples or somewhere else. It seems that in this family-law context, not in an inheritance-law one, in the sense of guaranteeing the provision of livelihoods and not unilateral management of the inherent legal consequences of one’s own death, it is necessary to consider not only the authority of the priestesses in the temple of the Marduk of Babylon, which in Article 182 of codification is expressed in words that „Marduk may leave her estate to whomsoever she wishes“, but also the similar authority that is guaranteed in the article 179 of the Code, which states: ,Jf a „sister of a god, 44 or a prostitute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases, and give her complete disposition thereof: if then her father die, then she may leave her property to whomsoever she pleases/ 4 The reason for the special attention paid in the Code to Marduk’s priestesses should be sought not only in the fact that these God-devoted women were women of a higher social status who enjoyed great reputation for the work they did, but also in the fact that Marduk was the supreme authentic Babylonian deity that pushed out the previous gods, and was in need to legally obtain authority.

Key words; Art. 182 of The Code of Hammurabi. Last will. Devo-

tees in the temple ofMarduk of Babylon. - Maintenance.

Article history:

Received: 15. 8. 2017. Accepted: 4. 9. 2017.

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Анали Правног факултета у Београду; година LXV, 3/2017