Chapter 15

(M429) In later Babylonian times we have a very large number of examples of slave sales. So far as the formula of a deed of sale is concerned, there is nothing to distinguish from a sale of the ordinary type, thus marking the slave as a chattel.

(M430) But there are several clauses, which directly illustrate the possession of slaves, their position and liabilities. One clause, frequent when slaves were either pledged or sold, was a guarantee on the part of the owner against a number of contingencies. These are not easy to understand.

(M431) First we have the _amêlu siḫû_. _Siḫu_ means rebellion or civil war. Sennacherib was slain in such an uprising.(429) It may be that then the slave would be impressed for defence of law and order. Or it may be that _amêlu siḫû_ is the rebel, or mob, who might carry off the slave. Or the contingency contemplated may be that the slave should turn rebel and refuse to do his master’s bidding. The fact that a ship was also guaranteed against _amêlu siḫû_,(430) renders this less likely. A ship could not turn rebel. It is not unlikely that slaves often joined in the rebellions.

(M432) That a slave would escape by flight was always a danger. The slave had great freedom and many opportunities of getting away. The only security was that wherever he went he was likely to be recognized as a slave and anyone might recapture him. However, the captor had a right to a reward and so the owner would have to pay to get him back, besides losing his services for a time. Hence a slave who had a fancy for running away was likely to be troublesome and costly. That might lead to his being sold. But the purchaser protected himself by a guarantee on the seller’s part that the slave would not run away. Then if the slave fled and was brought back, the captor gave a receipt for the sum paid him, and the owner reclaimed it from the seller.

(M433) The captor might retain the slave until he was paid.(431) In other cases the seller had to recover the slave for the buyer. In Assyrian times the seller guaranteed also against death. Here it has been argued that the guarantee meant only that the slave had not fled or was not dead at the time of sale. This is not likely in the case of death. Surely no man could buy a slave who was dead. He would not pay, if the slave was not delivered. But he might bargain for recompense, if the slave died within a short time after purchase, as the seller might have had reason to know that he was ill.

(M434) A guarantee was also given against the _pakirânu_. This is literally “the claimant.” What claim he had is not stated. When the slave was pledged, this might be a creditor to whom he had previously been pledged. But it covers all claims on the slave.(432)

(M435) Another indemnity is the _arad šarrûtu_, or in the case of female slaves, the _amat šarrûtu_. This was the status of an _arad šarri_, or _amat šarri_, king’s man or maid. The king, or state, had a right to the services of certain slaves. How long this was for, how it was discharged, and how a private person could give a guarantee against it, we do not exactly know. It may have been limited to slaves taken in war; it probably consisted in forced service; it may have been for a limited period, so that the guarantee amounted to an assurance that it was over. But it is possible that it would be compounded for, or a substitute provided. At any rate the seller held the buyer indemnified against this claim.(433)

(M436) There was also a guarantee against _mârbanûtu_, the status of a _mâr banû_, or “son of an ancestor.” The difficulty which this raised was that, if a man was a scion of a noble family, he might be redeemed by it. The same result would follow from his being adopted. Hence some consider _mâr banû_ to mean “adopted son.” But it does not always mean that. We have no good example of a slave being redeemed on this ground. But we know that they sometimes laid claim to be free men. This would of course involve a loss and at any rate a trouble to the owner. But we have not yet very full information on the point.

(M437) Finally there is mentioned a claim called _šušanûtu_. This occurs in Persian times only(434) and may be the status of a _šušanu_, _i.e._, a Susian, or one of the conquering race. Such it may have been illegal to buy or hold in slavery. But in Assyrian times an official in the service of the royal house is called _šušanu_. We do not yet know what his duties were, but it may be that this official was one who could be called up for service at any time and therefore was undesirable as a slave.

(M438) The _abuttu_ which the Code(435) contemplates a mistress putting on an insolent maid and so reducing her to slavery, or which the phrase-books contemplate a master laying upon a slave, or which an adoptive parent may set on a rebellious adopted son before selling him into servitude,(436) has usually been taken to be a fetter. But in the case of a man, who being sold as a slave, had escaped and was claimed by the levy-master, we find the latter saying, _ellita abuttaka gullubat_, “thy _abuttu_ is clearly branded,” or tattooed. Hence it may only be a mark.

(M439) There is frequent mention in early times of a mark upon slaves. The Code(437) talks of marking a slave, but in a way that is difficult to understand. The verb usually rendered “brand” has been shown by Professor P. Jensen(438) to include incised marks. Hence the penalty which was once rendered “shear his front hair” is thought to mean “brand his forehead.” The Code fixes a severe penalty for the putting of an indelible mark on a slave without his owner’s consent. This could hardly be enforced for merely giving the slave a bald forehead, like the Hebrew _peôt_, or like a “tonsure.” The mark borne on the forehead by Cain, or by the “sealed” in the Apocalypse, is far more to the point as a parallel. The slaves also wore little clay tablets with the name of their owner inscribed upon them. There are a number of these preserved in the Louvre. On one now in the British Museum we have this inscription: “Of the woman Ḥipâ, who is in the hands of Sin-êresh. Sebat, eleventh year of Merodach-baladan, King of Babylon.”(439) How these were attached to the slave is not very clear. But they must have been anything but an indelible mark. In the later Babylonian times we have(440) a slave marked by a sign on his ears and a white mark in his eye. Both may denote natural marks.(441) A more definite example is a slave “whose right hand has written upon it the name of Ina-Esagil-lilbur”;(442) and another “on whose left hand was written the name of Meskitu.”(443) These were the names of the owners, not of the slaves themselves. This renders it probable that the branding and the like was always an incised mark, a species of tattoo, which of course was indelible. That the same person who tattooed men should brand animals, or even shear them, is not an insuperable objection. But there is no reason to suppose that the brander ever was a sheep-shearer.

(M440) In respect to the names of slaves we may regard them with some interest as helping to determine the sources from which slaves were recruited. Some bear good Babylonian names, and perhaps when the father’s name is also Babylonian we may conclude that they had been born free, but were either sold into slavery by the head of the family, or, having once been adopted, had been repudiated and reduced to slavery again, or had been sold for debt. We have examples of all such cases. A father and mother sold their son;(444) a mother who had adopted two girls repudiated them again;(445) a brother gave a younger brother as a pledge.(446)

(M441) When the slave’s name is not Babylonian or Assyrian, a foreign nationality is nearly certain. These names are very valuable when they can be assigned to their nationalities, as confirming the historical claims of the kings to conquest. Sometimes they are actual gentile names, as Miṣirai, “Egyptian,” Tubalai, “man from Tubal.” But many may have been directly purchased abroad and sold to Babylonians. A great many foreign slaves doubtless received native names. Thus an Egyptian woman was called Nanâ-ittîa.(447) Some of the names of slaves are true Babylonian, but of a rare and odd form, which has caused some to imagine them to be foreign. But this is not necessary. Servants are often renamed after the families to which they belong, and finally become known by names which were never theirs. Masters seem sometimes to have given their own names to slaves. Their names are often contracted,(448) and some even appear to have had two.(449)

(M442) The slaves were not only captives taken in war, but were bought abroad, and not a few were reduced to that condition from being freeborn citizens. Slavery awaited the rebellious child or the contentious wife. But it was not allowed by the Code for a man to sell his maid outright, who had borne him children. And if he sold his wife or child to pay a debt, the buyer could not keep them beyond a certain time. But in all periods parents sold their children, and there does not seem to be any clause demanding any future release.

(M443) The slave had private property which was secured to him. He paid a sort of rent for it. This was an annual fixed sum called his _mandattu_, the same word as for the tribute of a prince to his overlord. In the case of a female slave this was twelve shekels _per annum_. Further, he paid a percentage on his profits.(450) The slave might hold another slave as pledge, lend money, and enter into business relations with another slave even of the same house. He might borrow money of another slave. Hence he was very free to do business. But when he entered into business relations with another master’s slave, or a free man, he sometimes met with a difficulty. He seemingly could not enforce his own rights against a free man. At any rate, we find that in such cases his master assumed the liability and pleaded for him. In fact, the master had to acknowledge his undertakings, though he did not guarantee them. Subject to this protection from his master, the slave was free to engage in commerce. He lent to free men, entered into partnership, and owned a scribe.

(M444) Here is an example illustrating one of the above points.(451) S had taken a loan of L. His master, A, became aware of it and guaranteed its repayment. He then put S into L’s hands as his pledge to pay it off. Now, A died, and his son, B, sells S to C, as part of his own property. But L still holds possession of S. C demands S from L. L says “Not until my money is paid off. If C will do this he may have S. But until he can prove that it has been done he cannot have S.” The proof probably lay in B’s hands, if he had preserved it from his father A’s records. Delay is granted for C to produce the proof that S has worked off the debt. It is clear that the evidence of S was not admitted on this point.

(M445) That in the case of some slaves their value to their master consisted in their _mandattu_ is clear from the fact when a master sold a slave and did not at once hand him over, the seller had to pay a proportional amount of this fee to the buyer.(452) Of course, in transferring a slave to another owner, the seller could not separate him from his property. That was his own. A slave who had acquired a fair amount of wealth, or was earning well in trade, would produce a higher income to his master and sell for more. What was sold then, was an interest, the master’s, in his slave’s work. Hence prices varied very much. We are not always able to see what was the reason of the high price, but it was evident then to those who made the bargain. An average price in the later Babylonian era seems to have been twenty shekels, the interest on which at the usual twenty per cent. would be four shekels. This, then, was the annual value of a slave above his keep. If the keep amounted to about eight shekels _per annum_, that gives the value of a slave’s work as twelve shekels yearly. This is what an unskilled slave was worth to his master. If, then, a man married a slave-girl, he ought to pay her master about twelve shekels a year for his loss of her services. Of course, the master retained his right over her, but it seems to have been a tacit understanding that he could not sell her away from her husband. So really what he sold was, after all, only a right to income from her husband of twelve shekels a year. The children were also his born slaves, if the father was his slave. We do not know how matters would be arranged if the man was slave to one master, the wife to another. Probably this was provided against by the master giving his slave a wife from his own maids, or buying a slave-girl as wife for him.

(M446) It occasionally happens that we can trace the history of a particular slave for some time. Thus, Bariki-ilu was pledged for twenty-eight shekels to Aḫinûri, in the thirty-fifth year of Nebuchadrezzar.(453) In the next year we find him in the possession of Piru, his wife Gagâ, and a cousin Zirîa. What they gave for him does not appear. But they now sold him for twenty-three shekels to Nabû-zêr-ukîn. He must have fled from his new master, for four years later, the same three people pledged him.(454) But he seems to have been unsatisfactory as a pledge. For next, we find that Gagâ’s daughter (Piru having probably died), being about to be married to Iddin-aplu, this slave was set down as part of her marriage-portion. She gave him over to her husband and his son. In their possession he remained awhile, but on the death of his mistress, was handed over to the great banker, Itti-Marduk-balâṭu. These events, extending from the thirty-fifth year of Nebuchadrezzar to the seventh year of Nabonidus, were all put in evidence when Bariki-ilu tried later to prove that he was a free man. He pretended to be the adopted son of Bêl-rimâni. He had to confess that he had twice run away from his master and had been many days in hiding. Then he was afraid and pretended to have been an adopted son. This, if proved, would have freed him. But he confessed that it was a pretence, and had to return to his servitude. The case was decided in the tenth year of Nabonidus.

(M447) It seems clear that when a slave ran away to his old owners, they did not always deliver him up again to the man who bought him of them. They probably had to return the purchase-money. The buyer probably would not accept him again.

(M448) One feature which the later Babylonian contracts show us for the first time, but which probably was always in force, is the apprenticing of slaves to a trade. Instances of this are fairly numerous. The person to whom the slave was apprenticed was usually a slave himself. The teacher was bound to teach the trade thoroughly. The owner of the slave gave him up to the teacher for a fixed term of years, differing for different trades. He had to furnish a daily allowance of food and a regular supply of clothing. At the end of the term, the slave might remain with his teacher on payment of a fixed _mandattu_ or income to the owner. Penalties were fixed for neglecting to teach him properly. The trades named are weaving, five years’ term;(455) baking, a year and a quarter;(456) stone-cutting, four years;(457) fulling, six years;(458) besides others not yet recognized.

(M449) The teacher had no fee, but only the apprentice’s work for his trouble. The owner was therefore bound to allow the apprentice to remain a fair time.

(M450) A question of considerable interest which needs to be worked out is the relative number of slaves in the population. In early times the impression one gets is that they were few. Even in the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, the evidence at the disposal of Dr. Meissner in 1892 did not allow him to exceed four as the number in the possession of one man at a time. But since then further evidence is available. Thus we read of twelve slaves at once, seven males and five females, given by a father to his daughter, at Sippara.(459) In Assyrian times the number in an average household rarely exceeds one or two, but we have as many as thirty mentioned at one time.(460) So in later times there are generally only one or two in a household, but the number is occasionally much more.

(M451) As to the value of a slave, we have in very early times an average set down as twenty shekels, with examples as low as thirteen shekels. In the time of the Second Dynasty prices varied from as low as four and a half shekels for a maid, or ten shekels for a man, up to eighty-four shekels.(461) The Code estimates the average value of a slave as twenty shekels.(462) In Assyrian times the price of a single male slave varies from twenty to one hundred and thirty shekels, but the usual price is thirty shekels. A female slave could be had for as little as two and a half shekels, but might cost as much as ninety shekels. A common price was thirty shekels. In later Babylonian times also, prices vary widely, but the commonest price and usual pledge-value was twenty shekels.

XVIII. Land Tenure In Babylonia

(M452) The idea of real as opposed to personal property is common in Babylonian law; for we notice that in the Code, while certain persons may inherit from the goods of their parents, they may not inherit land, garden, or house.(463) He then had no share in his father’s house; he was not one of the family. The distinction is important, for, as we shall see later, the word “house” had a wider signification than mere bricks and mortar.(464) It was the ancestral estate. Over it the family had rights. It went back in default of heirs to the family of the last owner. We are therefore confronted with private ownership of land, but also with a sort of entail.

(M453) The amount of land might be increased by purchase, but there is a strong presumption that it thus became family property and did not remain at the disposal of the buyer. For if so, in the case above the law should have stated that the parent could not donate land that was family property, but might do so with what he had bought. This does not exclude the possibility of sale. Only the family had apparently the right of pre-emption.(465)

(M454) In looking back upon the primitive state of the country, its natural features must be taken into account as helping to shape the course of development. In such a low-lying country as the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, floods naturally occur every year. Every spot of land that stood above the level of the annual floods was thereby marked out for a residence. Throughout the literature of Babylonia the hill or the mountain is a refuge and a place protected by the gods. But when the floods were gone, man’s great need for his land was water. Hence irrigation was synonymous with cultivation. The unclaimed land grew rank with grass and natural food for cattle, but dried up to dust in the summer. Hence the control of the flood, its diversion into desired channels, regulation, storage, and all the processes implied by canals and irrigation were forced upon the inhabitants of Babylonia by stern necessity. The only alternative was to migrate with flocks and herds to higher lands when the floods came.

(M455) Settled society was ultimately founded upon the cultivation of a plain. Every eminence might become a hamlet occupied by the abodes of men, whose fields were water meadows. The meadows which grew their corn lay around the village and below its level; and beyond those which were needed to grow crops lay the pastures. But for security the cattle and sheep must come back, before the floods came, to the village, there to be folded and fed, as it seems, upon straw and also grain. The land of the village extended itself in time, as the population grew and needed more corn. More and more of the unreclaimed land beyond the cornfields was brought into cultivation and the flocks went farther afield for pasture. This continued until the pastures forming the outlying ring had met the pastures of another village.

(M456) Such is an ideal sketch of the growth of land tenure. But in historical times this simplicity had vanished. Land was owned, not merely held. It does not appear that pasture was owned, even as late as the First Dynasty of Babylon. It seems that the flocks were confided to shepherds, who were bound to bring them back from the pastures and expected to account for all they took out and for a reasonable increase in the flock from breeding. The pasture was common land; at any rate, to the sheep-owners of the same village. No one claims to buy and sell pasture land, only cultivated land, fields, gardens, and plantations, ultimately irrigated land. But unreclaimed land, that is, such as only required cultivation to make it fields and gardens, is often sold, or let, to be reclaimed. Was this a trespass on the pasture held in common? If so, it was not resented as such. We do not know yet how a man acquired a title to such unreclaimed land. Perhaps to have brought it into cultivation sufficed originally to establish title.

(M457) A settled hamlet soon had its temple. Some think that the god was ideally landlord of all the village land and that every title represented simply the rental of the land from the nominal owner. We do indeed find the temples as owners of vast estates and, like monastic institutions in the Middle Ages, letting lands and houses. To the temples poor men went for temporary accommodation for sowing, for wages at harvest-time, and for ransom from the enemy. These they had a right by custom to receive without paying interest. Undoubtedly the temples became the first centres of progressive civilization. The _patêsi_, as chief-priest of the god, was the regent of the community. In process of time, as villages combined and grew into towns and districts, the _patêsi_, in virtue of his town’s supremacy, became the king, who, as regent of the state and representative of the gods, owned all. We know that, in later times, the king in Babylon was the adoptive son of Bel-Merodach.(466)

(M458) In historical times no such conditions prevail. Doubtless the tribal ownership had become theoretically transferred to the god, or to the town. That the town had a theoretical personality of its own is clear enough from the oaths sworn to confirm a sale. Men swore by the gods, the king, and also by Sippara, or Kar Sippara. But there is no indication that points to the god, or the town, or the king as having any power to intervene to prevent a sale, or to claim payment for consent. It is clear that the land was sold subject to its dues, and they were many. But the private ownership, subject to such reservation, was absolute. The one danger to a purchaser was that the family of the seller should claim a right of redemption and annul the sale. Against this the seller undertook to indemnify him.

(M459) Exact statements as to the rights possessed by the family to reclaim land sold by a member of the family are not to be found, but they are to be inferred with certainty from a few notices which we have. Thus,(467) a man claimed a certain plot of land as ancestral domain which two others had sold. There are several such cases among the legal decisions of the First Dynasty of Babylon. In most of the Assyrian deeds of sale we have a long list of representatives of the seller, who are explicitly bound not to interfere and attempt to upset the sale.(468) Their right existed or they would not be called upon to enter into a contract nor to insist upon it.