“... 21:15-17. right of the firstborn. Inheritance rights are based on the law of primogeniture. This stipulates that the firstborn son is to receive a double share of his father’s property. That this was the normal situation in the ancient Near East can be seen in Middle Assyrian texts, *Larsa, *Mari and *Nuzi documents, just to name a few. The intent of such laws is to insure orderly transmission of property from one generation to the next. *Hammurabi’s law gives the father the right to favor whichever son he chooses. In the Nuzi texts the father had the option of altering the firstborn rights. In the ancient Near East the closest legislation to that found here is the stipulation in Hammurabi’s law that says the children of the slave wife, if acknowledged as children during the father’s lifetime, have an equal share in the inheritance with the full wife’s children. ...”