of sons. Mesopotamian law In Ancient Mesopotamia, the legal status of women was related directly to how females were characterized in society. Most mentions of women were in relation to fertility, property, or sex and these laws dictated both the severity of the punishment as well as the way the situation was handled by the community based on the social status of the person in question. Thanks to the Code of Hammurapi/Hammurabi, we are able to see that women in these societies had limited rights when it came to divorce, fertility, property, and sex. A way to examine the legal status of women under The Code of Hammurabi is by looking at the laws pertaining to inheritance. In the absence of a dowry, daughters were to be included in the inheritance after their father's death and have legal rights to collect a portion of moveable goods from the paternal house. We can see that women could inherit assets or money from their father or mother, creating a level of legal equality to men in Mesopotamian society in that the value of their inheritance or dowry belonged to them personally. If a married woman died, her dowry was to be divided amongst her children and not returned to her father. If a situation arose where the first-ranking wife of a man who also has children that he does not raise or recognize should die, she has a legal right to receive both her dowry and marriage settlement, retain residence in her husband's home, and pass on her own property to her children. There were limits to her legal rights in that she was not allowed to sell her deceased husband's home. The slave women in question, along with any of her children, would be freed. If the children the slave women had with the master of the household were recognized by him as his own children, upon his death, the estate would have been divided equally between the children of the slave woman and the first ranking wife. Sources use these legal examples to show that children were not granted more or less money solely based on their mother's societal ranking. Another way in which we can examine the legal status of women in Mesopotamian society is through their fertility rights. Here we see the laws categorizing women based on their social status. If a noble beat a pregnant woman so