A Research Into The Maintenance Practices Of Ancient Babylon

Maintenance is a hot topic in our society, but not in the ancient society necessarily, too, even if there is, it will not preferred. Especially in the Old Babylonian Period, People did not pay attention to the respect of the elderly.There is a little of the specialized literature records about the elderly.may be due to unhappiness, the ancient Babylonians avoided talking about the topic, or because the ancient Babylonians had accepted the reality that everyone will grow old eventually, which there is no need to make a record for this purpose specifically. The writers did not write the cycle of life, there was no diary told us the ideas of men, women, young and old, we can find the answers from the different literature. Such as poetry, myth, adoption contract and inheritance contracts and so on. This article mainly studies the older persons how to live and the quality of life of them through the myth, adoption contracts and inheritance contract in the Old Babylonian period.The main content is divided into seven parts:The first part introduces the causes of the topic of this paper and reviews the status of major research.The second part describes the basic living conditions of the older persons in the Old Babylonian period. Firstly, study the concept of the elderly; Secondly, illustrates the purpose of maintenance; finally, analyses the amount of living material that the elderly need and the comparative studies of quantity.The third part mainly analyses the children how to support their parents in the nuclear family. Of course, including the reorganization family.The fourth part mainly discusses that the elderly spend their remaining years by adoption. Such as couples without children, they could adopt the other couple's children. To our surprise, there appeared a special adoption approaches in the Old Babylonian period, such as false adoption, which the both side of adoption exchanged their property in order to achieve the purpose. Although this adoption lacked feelings between adoptive father and adopted son by comparison with the general adoption, the adoptive father got the food, sesame oil and other basic subsistence to maintain life. The elderly could adopt a slave in order to take good care of them.After the adoptive parents died, in return for fulfilling the obligations of support, at the death of the adoptive mother, the salve woule be granted freedom.The fifth part mainly studies the priestess how to spend their life in old age in the cloister.This part of the original material preserved more. Some priestess could not marry, so their pension is worth attention. It was generally the responsibility of the brothers and the father of a nad(?)tu to provide her with the basic necessities of life such as barley, flour, oil, and clothing allowances from the moral and emotional support wthenever she was unable to support herself. If her brothers died, the brother's son or daughter will take care of the nad(?)tu priestess and get the property.In many instances a nad(?)tu adopted a younger nad(?)tu, sometimes her niece. She might adopt a slave.The sixth part mainly analyses the other ways of the support in the Old Babylonian period, such as the inheritance of the temple posts.The seventh part is the conclusionan, which summarizes the full text.