Abstract
The Akkadian letters published in 2018 by A. George as CUSAS 36 provide important evidence on the social and political history of Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC. Among 219 Old Babylonian documents of CUSAS 36, dated mainly to the 19th–18th centuries BC, only 14 texts mention slaves. The status of these slaves is marked with different Akkadian terms: wardum ‘slave’, amtum ‘female slave’, rēšum / sag-ìr ‘head’, wardūtum ‘status of a slave’, amūtum ‘status of a female-slave’, written in the majority of cases syllabically. Besides, in some contexts the terms ṣuhārum ‘servant’ and ṣuhartum ‘female servant’ also refer to individuals of the slave status. The number of documents mentioning slaves amounts to 6,3% (11% if together with ‘servants’) of the whole corpus. This percentage closely corresponds to the numbers obtained in to the study of a signifi cantly larger group of texts published as AbB (ca. 2800 letters). Such a modest rate of documents related to slavery testifi es to its marginal role, at least among the concerns that caused Babylonians to write letters. The maximum number of slaves per household mentioned in CUSAS 36 is three (1x). The majority of texts discuss only one male or female slave. Mentions of male slaves (12x) are more frequent than that of female slaves (3x), however, these numbers should not be taken as refl ecting the real sex ratio among the slave population. Disputes over property form one of the most frequent contexts in which slaves are mentioned in CUSAS 36. Slave labor could be used in various domains: agriculture, animal husbandry, crafts, household jobs which obviously included the care for elderly members of a family. Two letters, nos. 38 and 175, deserve special attention, since they were authored by slaves. Freedom is characteristically the main topic of these messages. The authors want to set themselves free from the power of their actual masters.
Keywords
Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian period, slaves, slavery .
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