edded in the Code. Matrons may manage a absent husband's land on their sons' behalf, but only until the sons reach their majority, and may only inherit prop erty if they have no sons. Indeed, a soldier may neither mortgage his property nor sign over his fields to his wife or daughters, and a soldier is forbidden to sell his land for cash. Nor may a soldier sell land or property granted him by the king. He may, however, sell his property to government officials or business men. The fact that regulations surround land use and transfer suggests that land policy is a social construction. Access to land is access to status, and control of land transfers implies control of social organization, including the judgment of how the privileges of the elite could be guaranteed. This would explain why a soldier who mortgaged land or assigned it to women would forfeit the proceeds of the sale and why field commanders who send men to battle in the expectation that they will not return and later try to appropriate their estate, may be executed.
The manner in which the Israelites maintained social ine quality is connected to the texts of ancient Jewish culture, which have survived to the modern period. These texts are its principal legacy to history, and they provide clues
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