"... The protection of the widow and orphan is a virtue of the ideal sovereign or leader that is heralded in various literary genres ... It is a moral duty of the chief steward to which the downtrodden can appeal in Egypt (“The Peasant’s Lament”) and is listed among the duties of a good king in the Keret Epic of Ugarit. In the epilogue to his law code, Hammurabi declares that one of his achievements was to provide justice for the widow and the orphan. The key socioeconomic problem for orphans dealt with in Mesopotamian law codes spanning a millennium is the disposition of the inheritance. This legislation is, of course, to be coordinated with the guidelines regarding the rights of the widow upon the demise of her spouse. Since these societies were patrilineal (signifying that the estate was passed down through the male heirs), when the father died prematurely the legal system had to stipulate how and to whom the family’s property and goods were to be transmitted once the surviving children came of age. In the case of the death of the mother, what was at issue was the dowry with which she had entered into the marriage arrangement. Would this return to her father’s home, be kept by the husband or be bequeathed to her children? Many of these concerns also surface in the Old Testament ..."