In Assyria and Babylonia, as throughout the ancient world, slavery formed one of the most important elements of social life. The distinction between the freeman and the slave was one which it is difficult for us of Western Europe to realize. The gulf between the two was profound while it lasted, but it was not necessarily permanent. The slave might always look forward to the recovery of his freedom. Nay, more, it was possible for him to rise to high offices of state and become the political ruler of his former master. Moreover, between the slave and his owner there was none of that antagonism of race or colour which has characterized slavery in the America of our own days. They belonged to the same or an allied race, sometimes to the same population: their ideas, beliefs, religion, even education, were not very dissimilar. The slave was, in fact, a member of the family, like the child, with this difference, however, that when the child grew up he necessarily became his own master, whereas the slave remained subject to another until he recovered his freedom.

From an early period the slave had been an object of care to the legislature. In Accadian law it had already been laid down that the life of the slave was not absolutely at his master’s disposal. If the master, it is enacted, kill, beat, maim, or destroy the health of the slave, the hand which has so offended shall pay each day half a measure of corn. This was doubtless to be given to the slave for his maintenance if he still lived; we are not informed as to who should receive it in case of his death. We hear, however, of a master receiving a maneh of silver as compensation for the murder of his slave by another person.

In later times a slave could even appear as party to a suit. In the tenth year of Nabonidos (B.C. 546) a slave called Nergal-ritsua brought the following case before the judges. He had been sent by his master with 480 gur of fruit from the fields to the ships of a certain Baalnathan, who had been commissioned to transport it to Babylon. A portion of the fruit was stolen on the way to that city, and Baalnathan, whose name indicates his Phœnician origin, undertook to replace it. Instead of doing so he absconded, and had but just been caught again. Five judges deliberated on the matter and gave judgement in favour of the slave and his master.

The slave could also, under certain circumstances, engage in business upon his own account, and so lay by a sum of money by means of which he might eventually purchase his freedom. He could also hire himself to another than his own master. In the twenty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 577), for example, a deed was drawn up before several witnesses enjoining that ‘on the day when Nebo-nadin-akhi the slave of Ina-Esaggil-suma-epus enters into the service of Ubar he shall give his wages’ to his former master. In this case, however, it may be questioned whether the deed does not mean, not that the wages the slave received on first entering the service of another were to be given to his original owner, but that he was, as it were, lent by his master to a second employer, the wages he received from the latter being his master’s property during the whole period of his absence from the latter’s house.

The slave could become a freeman, either by manumission, or by purchase, or by proving that he had been unlawfully enslaved. He might also recover his liberty by being adopted as a son into the family of a citizen. His master might also lose him by his being taken into the household of the king as ‘a royal servant,’ or, in the case of a female slave, as a concubine. As the ‘royal servant’ enjoyed a considerable amount of civil power, the position was highly prized. Any slave, it would appear, was liable to be impressed into the royal service, just as he was liable to be adopted into a family. Accordingly, in buying a slave, it was usual for the seller to agree to bear all the risk and trouble which such claims would cause. Here, for instance, is a deed of sale which was registered at Borsippa before three witnesses in the twenty-ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar: ‘The woman Bahu-edirat and Itti-Nebo-panya, the son of the woman Ubartu, the slaves of the lady Gusummu, the daughter of the lady Sabullatu, have been sold on account to Merodach-edir-napisti, the son of Mandidi, for half a maneh of silver in shekel pieces; Gusummu undertakes all responsibility, whether as plaintiff or defendant in regard to claims for freedom or for royal service on the part of the slaves.’

A curious case which was decided at Babylon on the seventeenth of Marchesvan, in the seventh year of Nabonidos (B.C. 549), illustrates the attempts sometimes made by a slave to recover his freedom, and at the same time the care taken by the law that justice should be done to all parties, freemen and slaves alike. A certain Barachiel, whose name seems to show that he was of Jewish descent, had been sold in the thirty-fifth year of Nebuchadnezzar by Akhi-nuri, the son of Nebo-nadin-akhi, to a lady named Gaga. Gaga had given him to her daughter Nubta (‘the Bee’) as part of the latter’s dowry, and Nubta had subsequently ‘alienated him by a sealed contract in exchange for a house and slaves.’ Barachiel then asserted that he was a freeman, born of a noble Babylonian family and unlawfully detained in servitude. The case accordingly came before the court, consisting of ‘the high priest, the nobles, and the judges.’ Akhi-nuri did not appear, and it was eventually decided, by the confession of Barachiel and a true account of his former life, that his claim was a fiction.

‘Twice have I run away from the house of my master,’ he said, ‘but many people were present and I was seen. I was afraid, and said (accordingly) that I was the son of a noble ancestor. My citizenship has no existence; I was the slave of ransom of Gaga. I am a slave. Go now (pronounce sentence) upon me.’ The court consequently ‘restored him to his condition of slavery⁠[24].’

One of the proofs of his citizenship brought forward by Barachiel had been that he had joined the hands of the brother and daughter of Akhi-nuri in matrimony. It would therefore appear that this was a ceremony which could be performed only by a freeman, and that Akhi-nuri should have allowed Barachiel to perform it was a tacit admission that he was no longer a slave. In order to prevent similar attempts to escape on the part of the slaves, it was usual for the owners to brand or tattoo them, generally with their masters’ names.

The husband and wife must often have been separated when a slave was sold. Thus in the time of Nebuchadnezzar we hear of a woman Sakinna and her daughter, a little girl of three years of age, being sold for thirty-five shekels of silver, or five guineas; and in the eighth year of the same reign a brother and sister sold two Persians, a slave-woman and ‘her son who was upon her breast,’ for nineteen shekels. The ancient Accadian law ordered that if children had been born to slaves whom their former owner had sold while still keeping a claim upon them, he should in buying them back take the children as well at the rate of one and a half shekel each. At times, however, husband and wife were sold together. In one case the price received for a slave and his wife was fifty-five shekels, or £8 5s., part of which was paid on the spot, part on account; and in the reign of Cambyses two slaves who had been sold along with their wives, but afterwards reclaimed by the seller, were not given back to him without their wives. We even find that parents sold their children into slavery, especially if they were girls, and it is possible that debtors might be treated in the same way. By the early Accadian law, a son who denied his father was ordered to be shorn and sold as a slave.

The slave was regarded as a chattel, like any other kind of property. He could form a portion of a daughter’s dowry, as we have seen; he could serve as the security for the payment of a debt; he could be lent by his master to a friend; and the master could hire him out, the wages he received in this way going into his master’s pocket. His price depended on his strength, abilities, age, and appearance, and varied from a very high to a very low figure.

In parting with a slave the seller commonly stated that he did so ‘in the joy of his heart,’ which seems to mean that he had not been driven to the act by any faults in the slave himself. The expression, in fact, denoted that he had nothing to say against the slave’s character, and that he was not deceiving the purchaser into a bad bargain. That the purchaser of a slave had to be on his guard is evident from a case which was brought before the judges in the early part of the reign of Nabonidos, and which has been translated by Dr. Oppert as follows:—‘Beli-litu, the daughter of Bel-yusezib, the wine-merchant (?), gave the following evidence before the judges of Nabonidos, King of Babylon: “In the month Ab, the first year of Nergal-sharezer, King of Babylon, I sold my slave Bazuzu for thirty-five shekels of silver to Nebo-akhi-iddin, son of Sula, the descendant of Egibi; he has pretended that I owed him a debt, and so has not paid me the money.” The judges listened, caused Nebo-akhi-iddin to be summoned and to appear before them. Nebo-akhi-iddin produced the contract which he had made with Beli-litu; he proved that she had received the money, and convinced the judges. And Ziriya, Nebo-sum-lisir, and Edillu gave (further) evidence before the judges that Beli-litu their mother had received the silver. The judges deliberated, and condemned Beli-litu to (pay) fifty-five shekels (by way of fine), the highest fine that could be inflicted on her, and then gave it to Nebo-akhi-iddin.’ The text affords a good example of the independent position occupied by the Babylonian free-women.

The regulations relating to slavery were similar in Assyria to what they were in Babylonia. A deed of sale of three slaves, dated B.C. 709, in the reign of Sargon, may be quoted, as it is interesting on account of the names of three of the witnesses, Pekah (Paqakha), Nedabiah (Nadbiyâhu), and Ben-didiri, all of whom were evidently Israelites. Pekah and Nedabiah are described as holding offices of state. The slaves were sold by a certain Dagon-melech for three manehs of silver, ‘according to the standard of the maneh of Carchemish,’ and it is stipulated that if the seller or any of his sons, grandsons, or relatives shall maintain that the price was not paid, or that the contract had been violated by the purchaser, the latter was to receive ten times the amount of the price he had paid, while the offender was further punished with a fine of one maneh of gold (or £140) to the goddess Istar of Arbela.

Another deed of sale of somewhat later date is equally interesting on account of its contents. It relates to the sale of his daughter by a certain Nebo-rikhti-utsur for sixteen shekels of silver (£2 8s.) to a lady who wished to marry the girl to her own son and heir. The contract could be annulled by the father or relatives of the girl upon the payment of ten silver manehs, that is to say, £90. We learn from it that the women of Assyria had the same power of transacting business as the women of Babylonia, and that in both countries parents were able to sell their children into slavery. But it is new to find that a wife could be bought in this way.

There were few Babylonians so poor as not to be able to keep a slave; even one slave might possess another slave of his own. A deed exists, dated in the twenty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, which records the sale of a female slave for two-thirds of a silver shekel (2s.) to ‘the slave of Nebo-baladh-yulid, the porter’ of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara. The smallness of the price indicates the poverty of the purchaser, and as it is stated that the money was to be paid on account, it would seem that even the small sum required was not forthcoming at the moment. The deed was attested by several witnesses, the first of whom was a slave. Nothing can show more clearly what a definite legal position a slave must have occupied in Babylonia.

The large amount of slave-labour necessarily caused wages to be low; it also introduced into the country a numerous population, which might be dangerous in times of war or civil discontent. We know from the history of Barachiel that the slave was not always contented with his lot in life, and sometimes seized an opportunity of running away. On the other hand, the slaves possessed neither cohesion nor discipline; they had no leaders, they belonged to different nationalities, and were without arms. Moreover, they were divided into different classes. There were the royal slaves, among whom the eunuchs may be included, who occupied posts of importance and power, and regarded themselves as the superiors of many of the poorer freemen. Then, secondly, there were the temple-slaves, devoted to the service of the gods, like the Nethinim in the temple of Jerusalem, whose persons were consecrated and sacrosanct. Thirdly, there were the household slaves, a large number of whom were virtually members of the family in which they lived, and who might look forward to being adopted by their masters. Those who belonged to rich households were probably well-fed, well-clothed, and little worked. Lastly, there were the slaves who laboured in the country, whose lot was doubtless harder than that of the slaves in the towns, but who, nevertheless, enjoyed a certain amount of freedom which country life necessarily brought with it.

It is probable, however, that the number of slaves employed in the country was vastly exceeded by that of the slaves who lived in the towns. The Babylonians were an agricultural people, and the greater part of the work carried on in the country was conducted by free men. They were irrigators, gardeners, shepherds, and goatherds, tenders of cattle, and agricultural labourers. The gardener and shepherd held a high place in popular esteem. Tradition alleged that Sargon I, the founder of the first Semitic Empire, and of the great library of Accad, had been a gardener before he was called to the throne through the love of the goddess Istar, and it further related that when, like Moses, he had in his infancy been consigned to an ark of bulrushes and bitumen, and cast upon the Euphrates, he was discovered and brought up as a son by Akki, the irrigator. Tammuz himself, the young and beautiful Sun-god, had been a shepherd, according to the old belief, and the Bedouin Arab, or nomad Aramaean, who usually looked after the flocks of the wealthy Babylonian in the later days of the kingdom, was not only a freeman, but respected on account of his strength, his courage, and his connexions.

We hear a good deal about the life of the Babylonian farmer or labourer from the fragments of an old Accadian work on agriculture, extracts from which were provided with translations into Assyrian, and used as a reading-book by students who were learning Accadian⁠[25]. Here we are told that the agriculturist must begin his work in the sixth month of year, when he agrees with his landlord about his rent, pays his taxes to the Government, hedges in his fields, brings together his flocks, and works from dawn to dusk.

The sixth month, as Mr. Bertin points out, was Elul, hence we may conclude that the agricultural year originally began with Tisri, or September, the seventh month, and not with Nisan, or March. This throws light on the fact that Tisri was the first month of the Jewish civil year, and that the Feast of Trumpets was celebrated on its first day.

The tenure of a farm was of various kinds. In some cases the property belonged half to the landlord and half to the tenant, when the tenant bound himself to plough, sow, manure, and water, and to hand over the produce of the landlord’s half to the agent appointed by the latter. In other cases the whole farm, with its produce, was shared equally between the landlord and the tenant; the tenant giving his labour, and the landlord in return providing him with carts, oxen, and other necessaries. But there were several modifications of this system of partnership. The landlord might stipulate that the farmer should receive only a third, a fourth, a fifth, or even a tenth of the produce, the rest being appropriated by himself. In addition to this, it would seem, the tenant was required to pay a fixed rent, which consisted of two-thirds of the dates gathered from the trees on the farm, or their equivalent in money. The dates had to be handed over to the landlord on the last day of the month Marchesvan, or October. The landlord reserved to himself the right of dismissing his tenant, who was required to keep the farm in order, repair the walls and fences, plant date-palms, and water the young trees. When taking a new farm, moreover, on which there was no house, he was required to build the house in the middle of the property, paying the wages of the workmen when the work was finished. If the house was badly or improperly built, it is stated that he might be fined as much as ten shekels.

It must be remembered that all these are regulations of a very early period, and that as time progressed the tenure of land, and the laws and customs relating to it, necessarily became much more complicated. Still, the general outlines of the system remained unaltered; the farmer paid his rent in kind rather than in money, and the tenure resembled that of the French métayer. The system of farming was essentially co-operative.

Some of the songs have been preserved to us with which the Accadian peasants beguiled their labour. They, too, were translated into Assyrian, and formed part of a reading-book used by students of the ancient language. This is how the cattle were addressed as they ploughed the field:—

Or again, while threshing was going on, the peasant would sing:—

Like all agricultural populations the Babylonian peasantry delighted in proverbs: ‘Like an oven which is old, be firm against opposition.’ ‘The corn is high, how know we it is ripe? The corn is cut down, how know we it is good?’ ‘The fruit of death a man may eat, and yet find it the fruit of life.’ Such are some of the sayings which have come down to us from the popular wisdom of ancient Chaldea.