Volume 12, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Beyond Slavery and Freedom in Ancient Mesopotamia; Guest Associate Editors: Vitali Bartash and Andrew Pottorf

This special issue aims to move beyond the traditional binary of slavery and freedom in the study of ancient Mesopotamian societies. Legal texts have long shaped our understanding of social status in this region, but a broader approach incorporating diverse textual genres and diachronic comparison reveals a far more nuanced social landscape. The articles collected here argue that ethnic, legal, political, religious, and socioeconomic factors continually shaped groups with ambiguous statuses who were neither clearly citizens nor enslaved individuals. Rather than locating a fixed “third” legal category of “serfs,” the contributors emphasize distinctions such as citizens versus noncitizens or emancipated versus dependent household members – both free and enslaved. The volume refines the binary legal model, reaffirming that ancient Mesopotamia recognized only two legal statuses – free and unfree – but complicates how these were lived and perceived. Six key insights emerge, including the legal and social diversity within both categories, the importance of household structures, and the precarious positions of groups like muškēnū (“those who prostrate themselves”), un -il 2 (“menials”), temple dependents, war captives, freed slaves, and detained persons. Collectively, these studies challenge static interpretations and reveal the dynamic and context-dependent nature of social identity in ancient Mesopotamia.

This article reexamines the origins and social status of the muškēnū ( maš.gag.en , etc., “those who prostrate themselves”) in ancient Mesopotamia. Previously thought of as commoners, analysis of third-millennium sources reveals them to be settled outsiders, distinct from citizens of the communities they inhabited. This precarious position necessitated protection from rulers or other powerful figures. Evidence suggests the Semitic Middle Euphrates-Tigris region as the homeland of this phenomenon. Early Dynastic data (ca. 2600–2300 BC) portray the muškēnū as low-status outsiders by placing them in the context of male regular and house-born slaves, menial workers, robbers/seminomads, and female sex workers. Akkadian conquerors brought the phenomenon to Sumer during the twenty-third century BC. The muškēnū lived in imperial centers and traveled between Sumerian cities. The data on the muškēnū become more common during the Ur III period (2110–2003 BC). They lived primarily in royal settlements and on the kingdom’s periphery, suggesting a deliberate policy to establish a loyal social base, and they were “people” rather than “natives” of these towns. Male muškēnū were typically conscripted full time in low-income occupations involved in animal husbandry and cultivation, and they seldom held administrative positions. Male citizens, on the other hand, enjoyed a better economic position with part-time work and additional income opportunities. Few muškēnū women (feminine forms of the term are not attested) might have been forced into penal labor like some citizen women. Sex work was another profession for some muškēnū women, also mirroring the situation for some citizen women. During the Old Babylonian period (2002–1595 BC), muškēnum remained a term for a group of state-protected free individuals distinct from regular citizens of southern Babylonia. What was new is that Babylonian states used this category as a blueprint to conceptualize the entire free population as royal/state subjects, a concept originally alien in the south.

This paper examines the practice of donating people to deities in southern Mesopotamia between 2600 and 2000 BC. It offers a diachronic analysis of Early Dynastic, Old Akkadian, and Ur III sources and considers Old and Neo-Babylonian evidence to address questions raised in Gelb’s (1972. “The Arua Institution.” RA 66: 1–32) foundational study. This paper demonstrates, first, that donors and recipients were rarely close relatives, as the dedicatees often included foreign captives, former slaves, orphans, and incomplete families temporarily under patronage prior to donation. Secondly, despite becoming temple “servants” (performing mostly unskilled labor like water-drawing, weaving, and, rarely, cult-related tasks), officials recorded the names of the donors of many dedicatees. In some cases, this was because the dedicatees were former slaves who continued living with their former masters after donation (and manumission), supporting them in old age as part of the paramonē arrangement. Other dedicatees may have lived with temple officials and employees or even within temple complexes. Third, the paper challenges the “temple slaves” model in interpreting the status of dedicatees in early Mesopotamia. Although third-millennium sources describe them as a deity’s “servants,” similar to how slaves in private households were referred to as someone’s “servants,” the dedicatees faced a social and legal dead end: temple officials could neither sell nor release them because their master or mistress was a deity. In effect, third-millennium dedicatees became part of a broader “menial” class of full-time temple dependents. Their status resembled that of the Neo-Babylonian oblates ( širkū ), who were legally free but subject to strict temple control. Finally, building on Patterson’s (1982. Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study . Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press) model of slavery as a substitute for death, this paper argues that the donation of humans to temples in southern Mesopotamia functioned as an alternative to slavery. For the local impoverished population, donating family members to temples provided an option other than outright sale into slavery. Additionally, donating foreign captives to temples served as a more effective method of control and integration than enslavement.

This article addresses social stratification during the Ur III period (ca. 2100–2000 BCE), particularly in southern Babylonia. The social strata are analyzed as Weberian orders ( Stände ), also known as status groups. More specifically, this article focuses on un -il 2 as a serflike order in comparison to free citizens and enslaved people. While un -il 2 can be translated as “menial(s),” which is preferrable to how they are sometimes translated as “carrier(s),” the term may literally mean “people supporter(s).” un -il 2 were distinguished socially and economically from citizens and slaves, while sharing features with both. Like citizens, they were legally free, worked and probably lived with their families, and were compensated better than slaves and sometimes certain citizens. Like slaves, they were subjected to full-time mandatory work with often low compensation. Overall, they had less economic autonomy and stability than citizens but more so than slaves. As such, they can be considered serflike but not fully enslaved and are therefore a compelling example of people with statuses between citizens and slaves, economically and legally. While this article examines a variety of features regarding un -il 2 , their economic conditions are the most understood. Extensive details concerning subsistence and tenant lands are provided, especially their sizes and yields for citizens and un -il 2 . Unsurprisingly, citizens were allotted more subsistence land on average than un -il 2 were allotted. The plots citizens were allotted also tended to have better yields. Surprisingly, there is one known example of a wealthier un -il 2 renting tenant land, which was otherwise rented by mostly citizens. Based on these data, it is evident that citizens could generally sustain themselves and accumulate wealth, whereas most un -il 2 were impoverished, though not as much as slaves.

Adoptions during the Old Babylonian period were driven by various social, economic, and legal motivations. In the case of adoptions of slaves, it automatically resulted in their manumission, granting them a new status as “son and heir” along with associated rights – mostly inheritance ones – and duties. Thus, adoption-manumissions transformed slaves into freed heirs. However, while laws clearly protected the inheritance rights of freeborn children, the legal situation of these freed adoptees has yet not been fully explored. By examining a corpus of 10 documents, this paper shows that the situation of freed heirs was precarious when compared with free heirs. On the one hand, their former status as slaves meant that adoption-manumission contracts included provisions for their (re-)enslavement in the event of a contractual breach. On the other hand, no specific legal regime governed and protected their inheritance rights, which were therefore entirely contingent on the contract drafted by the adopters. As a result, the fate of adopted slaves was at the mercy of their adopters. This study reveals that the inheritance rights of freed heirs were often inferior to those of free heirs. This was due to the ability of parents to add ancillary clauses to the adoption-manumission contracts to favor preexisting free heirs. However, adopters could also insert protective clauses to secure the inheritance rights of freed heirs, especially in competition with future free heirs. Through a new reading of texts concerning adopted slaves, this paper outlines for the first time their inheritance rights, highlighting the complexity and flexibility of Mesopotamian law.

This paper elaborates on the status of war prisoners in southern Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period. The analysis focuses on the data from the bīt asīrī texts, coming from “the house of prisoners of war.” These texts date back to the reign of Rīm-Anum, who held power in Uruk during the rebellion of southern Mesopotamian city-states against king Samsu-iluna of Babylon. This archive provides unparalleled evidence for studying the status of war prisoners during the first half of the second millennium BC. The analysis suggests a distinction in the management of slaves and prisoners of war, showing that the latter were only employed as forced workers under the superior authority of the palace without being included in the slave trade or becoming privately owned slaves. The author argues that the status of prisoner of war was different from slavery, and the paper uses the emic term “head” ( sag ) when referring to them. To confirm this model, the author analyzes some elements of the so-called “death certificates” and particular ways in which war prisoners were employed, such as weavers. Additionally, the article presents the gifting of some prisoners to deities by the royal family. These gifted prisoners were high-ranking military officers or connected to prominent figures of Ešnunna, Malkum, and Mutiabal, often qualified as šallatum of Isin. It is argued that they were not slaves but hostages; giving them to the temples could have been a way to leave an option for a potential ransom or to negotiate agreements with other warring parties. Finally, the paper analyzes the ways of releasing prisoners upon ransom payment, agreements, or following a royal action, confirming the temporary nature of the dependent status of these prisoners working under the palace’s authority.

This paper considers detention for the Middle Babylonian period (ca. 1595–1155 BC). Detention was utilized as part of the judicial process and to control labor. The idea that detention can be viewed as liminal space is established by using literary texts. The concept of liminality is then applied to various legal and administrative documents to demonstrate that detention did not entail the creation of a new status. Instead, persons of a variety of statuses could be detained temporarily. During this time, the normal social and legal rights of a person could be suspended until resolution occurred.

This article maintains that the term “semi-free” for describing the personal status of individuals and population groups in ancient Mesopotamia is overused and underexplained. As long as this label is attached to any non-slave who happens to be burdened with duties of whatever kind, it remains a hollow cliché. It was the free, non-slave individual who was subjected to taxes and corvée, even if he was of high social standing. Declaring dependent groups, such as non-priestly temple personnel or foreign deportees settled on royal land, to be “semi-free,” despite being qualified to own and bequeath property, live in families, and perform state duties, limits the number of “really free” individuals considerably, basically, to male heads of wealthy households and noble descent only. Even their sons, wives, and daughters experienced diminished freedom of whatever fraction one wishes to choose – even more so their underlings and the dependents of state and temple households. Manumission records are the key to our understanding of personal status, as they spell out the steps necessary for status change and, thereby, the features pertaining to these steps. Relying on the Neo-Babylonian archives, this article distinguishes between several types of manumission, specifically the redemption and oblation type. Based on insights into the mechanics of these procedures, this article argues that the place of an individual within a household and his relation to the head of this household were additional parameters, besides the legal status (slave vs. non-slave), that defined his social standing.

This essay provides a response to the articles assembled for the JANEH special issue titled ‘Beyond Slavery and Freedom in Ancient Mesopotamia.’ The experiences of a few free men, women, and children who came from “odd” social groups are highlighted, in order to emphasize and humanize the stories of how they negotiated their ambiguous social and legal situations. Although these individuals were not enslaved, the freedom they experienced was more constrained than that of citizens. Some saw their status change as a result of detention as a prisoner of war or as an escaped worker, or because they had been manumitted from slavery in order to be adopted into a family or dedicated in service to a deity. Others had been identified from birth as an un -il 2 or muškēnum , two categories of mostly menial laborers who were neither citizens nor slaves. The individuals in this essay are drawn from documents discussed in articles in the volume, and the reader is encouraged to explore the whole special issue to learn more about the authors’ innovative and important interpretations.