CULTURE AND HISTORY OF FLIGHT AND FREEDOM

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAS1

EDITED BY

BY
B. HALPERN, M. H. E. WEIPPERT
TH. PJ. VAN DEN HOUT, I. WINTER
DANIEL C. SNELL
VOLUME~

BRILL
LEIDEN . BOSTON' KOLN
2001
 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Snell, Daniel C.
Flight and freedom in the ancient Near East / by Daniel C. Snell.
p. cm.-(Culture and history of the ancient Near East, ISSN 1566-2055 ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9004120106 (alk. paper)
1. Liberty-History. 2. Human rights-Middle East-History. 3. Forced labor-
Middle East-History. 4. Government, Resistance to-Middle East-History. 5. Middle
East-History-To 622. I. Title. II. Series

]C599.M53 S65 2001

323.44'0939'4--dc21 00-066729 For James and Abigail
CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnalune May the basic assumption be freedom.

Snell, Daniel C.:
Flight and freedom in the ancient Near East / by Daniel C. Snell. -
Leiden ; Boston; Koln : Brill, 2001
(Culture and history or the ancient Ncar East; Vol. 8)
ISBN 90-04-120I0-6

)e
50,'
. ti:;35C?s ISSN 1566-2055
ISBN 900412010 6
~o,
©Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke BrillNV, Leiden, The Netherlands

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 CONTENTS

Contents vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The History ofFreedom and Getting Away 11
Words for Freedom in the Ancient Near East.. 19
A. Edicts 21
B. Privileges 24
C. Manumissions 26
D. Rowdily Behaving Groups 27
Chapter 2 The Reality ofFlight... 31
1. The Nature ofArchival Texts 33
2. Comparative Absenteeism 37
3. Runaway Slaves in Classical Times 38
4. Runaway Slaves in the Americas .40
5. Early Mesopotamian Escape .46
6. Ur III Escape 48
7. OidBabylonianEscape 55
8. Middle Babylonian Escape .58
9. Neo-BabylonianEscape 60
Chapter 3 The Ideology ofFlight and Freedom 63
1. Edicts 63
2. Legal Collections 74
3. Treaties 86
Chapter 4 Flight in Literature and Story 99
1.Non-Narrative Texts 99
2. Flight Narratives 104
3. Conclusions 115
Chapter 5 Fr eedom in Israel... 117
1.Terminology 122
2. Practice in Narratives 126
3. Legal Collections 129
Chapter 6 Freedom Beyond Mesopotamians and Greeks 137
1. Are Traditions a Unity? 138
2. Descent Among Jews 140
viii CONTENTS

3.DescentAmong Greeks and Christians 144

4. Descent Among Muslims 146
5. TowardADefinition 148
'6. WhatIsthe West? 152
7. Freedom and the Non-West... 154
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Appendix I Selected Archival Texts on Escape 157
Appendix II Transliterations of Selected Legal, Treaty,
This study grew out of my work on Life in the Ancient Near East, a
and Canonical Texts on Freedom and Escape 171
social and economic history, and the institutions that supported me in
Bibliography 179
that endeavor must be thanked also in this one, particularly the
Index 193
University of Oklahoma in its Senior Faculty Summer Fellowship
AncientNear Eastern Texts Cited 199
program, now discontinued, and its sabbatical leave program. A
Biblical Texts Cited 200
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar in 1993
under Prof. Philip Curtin at Johns Hopkins University stimulated my
thinking on this topic, and to Prof. Curtin and my colleagues in the
seminar lowe a debt ofgratitude for bibliography and encouragement.
In particular Rosemary Brana-Shute ofthe College ofCharleston was
helpful in asking invigorating questions.
List of Tables
The Oregon Humanities Center at the University of Oregon in
Eugene awarded me a summer fellowship in the summer of 1996
Ur III Months ofEscape 53
which proved extremely helpful in my delving into bibliography and
Ur III Gender ofEscapees 53
in beginning to write. The Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Laws on Runaways 85
Humanities at the University ofEdinburgh offered me a non-stipendi-
Treatment ofFugitives in Hittite Diplomatic Texts 93
ary fellowship for part of the summer of 1997 which allowed me to
complete the preliminary draft. The staff of Otterbein College was
very helpful to me in the final stages ofthe work. Professors Benjamin
Foster, David Geggus, Alan Kimball, Mario Liverani, Richard Lowitt,
Helga Madland, Paul Minnis, Robert Nye, and Jamil Ragep gave me
helpful references and technical advice. My graduate student Lance
Allred read the manuscript and gave me several valuable suggestions.
We cannot blame him for errors, though, can we?
My family has been supportive of my work and my wanderings,
preferring when possible to come along, and the adventures they have
had are their own reward. In particular Dr. Katie Barwick-Snell
slogged through all this with me. But because of the implications of
the study for the future that they will inherit, I dedicate the work to my
children, James and Abigail, and to the children of the world.
-DCS
Was mag der Staat auch bei den Assyrem, Babyloniem, Persem usw.
Alles getan haben, urn das Aufkommen des Individuellen zu verhind-
em, welches damals fur soviel als das Bose gegolten haben wird? Der
hochsten Wahrscheinlichkeit nach hat es an allen Enden, bald da, bald
dort, emporkommen wollen und ist den burgerlichen und religiosen
Schranken, Kasteneinrichtungen usw. erlegen, ohne eine Spur
hinterlassen zu konnen.

--Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. New

York: Amo, 1979,65.

What could the state have done also among the Assyrians, Babylo-
nians, Persians, and so forth, to hinder the individual's rise, which
then counted for the same thing as evil? In all likelihood after all the
individual wished to arise, now here, now there, but was killed by civil
and religious barriers, caste regulations and so forth, without being
able to leave a trace behind.
 INTRODUCTION

The symbol ofthe city ofAleppo, the ancient northern cultural center
in Syria, is the Citadel, a medieval fort with a fancy moated entrance.
On the top ofthat entrance the government in the 1980s displayed in
neon lights the governing party's motto-unity, socialism, and
freedom.
In Syria the meanings ofthese terms have evolved somewhat over
time, but everyone would agree that in the popular mind the least
clearly defined ofthe three is freedom. Since Syria was in the past a
Soviet client, freedom has not always included economic freedom as
it is understood in the United States and Western Europe, though
recently that has increasingly become an aspect of it. Freedom
probably does imply for Syrians freedom from want and freedom
from unwarranted official interference-though practice has not
always measured up to ideals, in Syria as elsewhere.
The Citadel at night was illuminated, and it was quite a sight with
its neon motto. One can imagine a more historically accurate way of
highlighting the structure, but the government had its reasons, and
freedom had its sway.
Forme this sight underlines the problem offreedom in the modem
world. The appeal of freedom obviously extends beyond those
countries which regard themselves now as part of the West, those
countries that have devised their political traditions from a century
and more of liberalism, which one might define as the devotion to
freedom.
The study ofthe history of freedom has become identified with a
certain political stance in Western politics, one that celebrates
Western understandings of freedom and condemns, for example,
Communist understandings that might be closer to that ofthe Syrian
government's. Students of the history of freedom have tended to
search for the roots of Western freedom in the ancient history of
2 INTRODUCTION
GreeceandRome andhave arguedthat Greecegavebirth to a unique
set ofattitudes that led to and, to a great extent,were identicalto our
own.Thispedigree, however, cannotexplainthephenomenaof1989,
in which not only the CommunistEast European world fell apart in
a devotionto a more recognizably Western-styled freedom, but also
China and Burma, culturesmore lightlytouchedby Western values,
saw movementsarisethat affirmeda populardedicationto freedom.'
Is this phenomenonto be explained by the diffusion of Western
values in centuries of contact? Or is it to be understood as the
welling up of autochthonous notions about human freedom?
Naturally the answers to these questions in the cases of China and
Burma must be given by specialists in the modern history of those
areas. And those answersmay not comefor many years,until,as one
hopes, eventually archives are opened and scholarship on sensitive
questions can be pursued. In the meantime I believe an important
parallel question is posed in ancient history, which, luckily, we are
quite free to investigate without modernpolitical interference.
If freedom in the Western sense arose only once, in Classical
Greece, it would be part ofthe so-called Greek miracle, which some
scholars see as the unprecedented development of art, philosophy,
drama, and poetry leading more or less directly to us. Martin
Bernal's work seeking the background to these developments in
Egypt and WesternAsia does not call into questionthe existence of
the miracle; it merelychangesthe acceptedpedigree, and Classicists
seem open to this adjustment, even though they mostly reject the
! As an example of Greek-centeredness in such studies, see Susan Ford Wiltshire,
Greece and Rome and the Bill of Rights, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1992),9, who writes, "The earliest origins ofthe Bill of Rights lie in Classical Athens,
for it was the ancient Greeks who invented the revolutionary idea that human beings are
capable of governing themselves through laws of their own making." She does not
examine the Ancient Near East at all.
By focusing on Syria I do not mean to imply that Turkey or Saudi Arabia, or the
United States, always manage to adhere to international standards in fostering freedom.
INTRODUCTION 3
detailsofBernal's claims aboutthe authenticity ofthe ancientGreek
understanding of the culturalborrowings?
MaterialfromancientMesopotamia, ancientsouthernIraq, allows
one to suggestsomethingmore radical, that the Greek understanding
of freedom was not a unique and miraculous phenomenon, but one
that can be paralleledelsewhere. I am not preparedto survey every
known cultureand languagegroup,nor do I think that such an effort
would be helpful. Rather I wish to pursue a test case in some detail
because a great deal is known about Mesopotamia.
The material we have from Mesopotamia that bears on the
problem is of two sorts. On the one hand is an abundantrecord of
state-sponsored labor,perhapsusuallya tax on laborthat we identify
with the corvee, the obligation to work several days a month on
government-organized projects.' In that record flight from work is
recorded, and this appears to indicate that the state system was not
able to retain all the laborers it wanted to control. Inadvertently the
governmental scribes recorded their own failure, but they also
showed that some illiterate individuals, calledupon to participate in
the state-labor system, resistedat least by running away.
Modernhistorians nowadaysseek to givevoice to the previously
voicelessas they try to uncoverwomen's history and the historiesof
minority groups in America and elsewhere. The flight of
Mesopotamian workersproves to be a fruitful topic of investigation
that edges us toward an understanding of a devotion to freedom
among the illiterate and oppressed.
The best evidence comes from the Dr III period (2112 to 2004
RC.E.), but there is important information from other periods too.
2 Martin Bernal, Black Athena, 1, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
1987), and the symposium in Arethusa 1989. I have benefitted from discussions on
Bernal's attitudes with my colleague Prof. Jamil Ragep. Mario Liverani, "The Bathwater
and the Baby," in Black Athena Revisited, edited by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy M.
Rogers, 421-427, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), points out
also that for Bernal the Greek Miracle is not incompatible with Ex Oriente Lux, both of
which are Eurocentric.
3 It is ofinterest that English now uses a French word for this, from Latin corrogiire
"to requisition"; see Oxford English Dictionary C: 1028.
4 INTRODUCTION
One aspect of these texts must be stressed at the outset: they were
composedby bureaucrats forbureaucrats. Theyhave no propaganda
value and are preserved only to make sure that the rations for the
absent workers were properly allocated, or not allocated. The goal
was inventory control, not condemnation or restoration of escapees,
though both of these matters were probably on the minds of the
scribes.
The second sort of Mesopotamian material is that deriving from
kings' propaganda machines and foundusuallyin the form ofroyal
inscriptions. These obviously were composed with a view to
influencing publicopinion, thoughit remainsa questionhow widely
theyreallywerediffused, andwhowouldhaveheardthem read,or if
anyone did. Perhaps in some periods they constituted merely a
touchstone of the party line with which government supporters
would be expected to be familiar. And yet as suchthey are valuable
windows onto the intellectual landscape of some of the Mesopota-
mian elite.
These royal inscriptions speak of freedom as something estab-
lishedby kings for the general benefitoftheir subjects. As we shall
see, what exactly this means is a vexed question that is not easily
answered. But at very least we can see that some Mesopotamians
were concerned with words that can be translated as freedom.
We have then information from two sortsoftexts and not always
from the same periods of Mesopotamian cultural life. There was
writingin Mesopotamia as earlyas 3100RC.E., and the last datable
text comes from 74 of our era. Over this vast time conditions and
attitudes changed, and ideas about freedom were probably not
everywhere uniform. Such stability is unlikely fromwhat we know
ofhow societies change.
One aspectof Mesopotamian culture thatoughtto be emphasized
at the outsetandthatwillmakeourtaskmoredifficult and the results
more ambiguous thanwe mightlike is that Mesopotamians disliked
generalizing. Whythisshouldbe isnotknown, but thecontrast to the
Greeks is obvious. The great example of the Mesopotamians' not
generalizing is their mastery of the so-called Pythagorean theorem,
thatthe squareof the sidesof arighttriangle is the sameas the square
INTRODUCTION 5
of its hypotenuse. Mesopotamian scribesknew that fact in the Old
Babylonianperiod, amillennium beforePythagoras. Buttheydidnot
state it as I have just done, as a general rule. Instead they demon-
strated through numerous examples of individual instances how it
worked. This habit of mind may seem alien, but it leads directlyto
thescience ofmakinglistsofphenomena sotypicalofMesopotamian
thinking and akin to our desire for encyclopedias of each area of
endeavor. The listsof omenswereprobablythemostpopularamong
Mesopotamian scribes themselves, but thelaw"codes"andthelexical
texts too must be understood as lists of examples from which the
students mightdrawconclusions. It maybethatin theMesopotamian
oral tradition therewas a customof generalization in order to make
short-cuts for the students, but it may also be that the lists were
thought of as courses in various aspects of knowledge, andthe strong
students would not expect any handy, and necessarily superficial,
generalization."
Like the Greeks, our own tendency is to attempt to verbalize
regularities. BrunoSnell in a famous example arguedthatthe power
ofGreekthought derived to a largeextent from their abilityto put a
definite article in front of anything, and thus to have a noun about
which they couldgeneralize, for example 'to wv ''the (phenomenon
of) being."? We may now doubt if grammar alone defines such a
cultural style, but we are the heirs of Herodotus, who sought to
generalize abouteverything thathe saw. Aswe attempttounderstand
Mesopotamian sources, we must also forego the desire for essays
4 Discussions in the summer of 1996 with Prof. Robert Nye of Oregon State
University were helpful in clarifying the interest in this matter for my study. Compare
Wolfram Von Soden, Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer
Wissenschaft, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), and his The
Ancient Orient, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1994), 145-148.
5 Bruno Snell, The Discovery ofthe Mind, (New York: Harper and Row, 1960),
227-230. Compare G.E.R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom. Studies in the Claims
and Practice ofAncient Greek Science, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1987),58, admitting Snell must be treated with reserve but asserting
a rise of egotism among Greeks, and "a certain gulf," presumably in intellectual style,
between Athens on the one hand and Babylonia and Egypt on the other, 102.
6 INTRODUCTION
frompersonal experience suchasHerodotus'fellows sometimes gave
us. Theproblems with suchGreektextsareas acuteas thosewith the
Mesopotamian texts,but different, sincein the Greekmodewe have
lots ofgeneralizations but no easyway to check their veracity. And
intheMesopotamian we havelotsofdatabut no easyway to seehow
they may have been interpreted by the culture, or even by its literate
members.
Even within the Western tradition, of course, there may be
traditions that approach the Mesopotamian morethanthe contempo-
rary American does in its approach to generalization. I remember
being told while studying Russian that one should expect that the
mode of argument would be that Sovietthinkers would tend to pile
up many relevant examples and only at the end of an essay would
they state the conclusion to which they had been arguing all along.
Tothe American thatapproach seemedlikestacking thedeckwithout
explaining whereone was going. We are frequently too farremoved
from Mesopotamian issuesto see wherethe argument was going, if
it was going in one direction. And yet the Mesopotamians were
sometimes lavishwiththeirindividual instances, andwe generalizers
will want to spin a tale from them as we can.
In the courseofthis studywewillalsobe usingtheHebrewBible,
the Christian OldTestament, andthoughit is morefamiliar to us than
Mesopotamian texts, we oughtto bear in mind one aspectof it that
will be especially important for our understanding of escaping
laborers and attitudes toward freedom. The Mesopotamian texts
come for the most part fromroyaloffices and reflectthe ideasofthe
rulers and the ruling classes. Rarely do we hear of rebellion or
disruption that would reflect ill on those classes. The exception is
runningawaysincetherewereeconomic implications to the absence
of workers, and responsibility had to be allotted, not for letting the
workersescapebut for the foodtheywouldhaveconsumedhad they
been on the job as they should have been. The Bible, in contrast,
comes mostly from peoplewho did not work for kings but still had
accessto literacy. To an extent this difference may derive from the
fact that the Bible was writtenon ephemeral things, mostly parch-
ment, and not on long-lasting claytablets or otherpermanent media.
INTRODUCTION 7
In Mesopotamia too it is possible thattherewas a literature ofdissent
thatsomescribes produced on perishable materials. But in Israelthis
literature became something treasured in dissident groups, and
becauseofthe fallof theIsraelite polities, thosegroupswerethe only
ones who survived antiquity. Theirwrittentraditions come downto
usbecausetheywerecopiedontootherperishable material whenthey
began to fall apart," This means that the Hebrew Bible approach to
problemsof runaways is likely to be moresympathetic andnuanced
than the Mesopotamian sources.
These differences in approach between the Hebrew Bible and
Mesopotamian texts ought not to force us to take sides and declare
the superiority of the Biblein humaneness or some other aspectthat
we might admire now. Inevitably we are goingto feel morekinship
for the Hebrew Bible viewjust because it has been part of our own
culture. But rather we must seek to evaluate evidence from each
cultureon itsownmerits, realizing in Israelthattheremusthavebeen
a relatively cogentroyalorrulingclassviewaswell as otherdissident
views that did not make it into the written tradition that has come
downto us. Wemustrealize too thatMesopotamia may haveknown
variousdissident traditions, mostprobably usuallyoral,whichwould
have had a verydifferent takeon the matters we will discuss thanthe
royallysponsored texts. Neitherculturewas monolithic, and taking
them together may give us a richness of understanding of the
phenomena which otherwise would be unavailable; still, it is
important not to assume that we can read in Israel's record exactly
what lower-class Mesopotamians thought or that we can read in
Mesopotamia's the exactideasofIsrael's rulers.
My epigraph from Burckhardt raises questions that ought to
remain open,but Burckhardt, for all his subtlety, assumed a mono-
lithic Oriental despotism we can no longerclaimto find in the texts.
He assumed that persons more or less like the nineteenth-century
individuals he knew were occasionally attempting to assert them-
6 On the entire process see Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That
Shaped the Old Testament, (New York: Columbia, 197I).
8 INTRODUCTION
selves against states that resembled those he knew. Now we are
inclined to keep open the definitions of both of these concepts, the
individual and the state. In studying ideas about freedom we may be
directly addressing that relationship between the individual and the
state or community and seeing how the individual did sometimes
assert herselfand how the state sometimes asserted itselfand made its
representatives act according to policy. We may not succeed at a
redefinition of either individual or state, but perhaps we will alert
others to the problems of definitions in the ancient and the modem
worlds. There is no question but that Greek-centered historians are
still happy to endorse Burckhardt's idea, that the states arising in the
Ancient Near East sought to suppress the freedom ofthe individual.
But is this view tenable? We shall see.
Much of what we discuss here is well known to students of the
Ancient Near East, although they have not tried to tease out the
implications ofit for the history of freedom. Still, I belie~e that they
will see avenues for further research opened up by the questions I
pose, and they may see their work in a different light as a result of
this study. I have heard it said that some ofus choose these byways
of scholarship because we do not want to confront issues that might
be relevant to current policies, and certainly there is much important
work to be done that has less obvious modem implications. It
appears, for example, that in some periods ofMesopotamian history
only a bit more than 50% of the texts that probably were produced
have been found and studied.' And there probably are more texts in
the Mesopotamian languages that no one has read since they were
written than for any other literature except Arabic. Much basic work
remains to be done, but we cannot imagine, in a time ofcontraction
of support for pure scholarship in the Humanities and even in the
Sciences, that an informed public will continue to support our work
unless we step forward from time to time to put it in a broad and
accessible context.
7 SeeD. Snell, Ledgers andPrices, (NewHaven:YaleUniversity Press, 1982),103-
108.
INTRODUCTION 9
My purpose in ferreting out evidence about attitudes toward freedom
is not to write a political history of a key term or to abstract an
essence of Mesopotamian or Israelite attitudes. Rather I seek to
fulfill three goals:
First, to see exactly how eluding authority worked on the ground,
including who was involved and what the bureaucratic response to it
was;
Second, to see what the elite understandings of freedom and
escape were;
And third, to see how the escapee experience might have affected
the elite understanding, especially in the first millennium RCE.
In the first chapter we will survey earlier views of the history of
freedom and then turn to the vocabulary offreedom in the languages
of the Ancient Near East. In the second chapter we will explore
flight in Mesopotamia, highlighting suggestive texts. Then in the
third chapter we will study the ideology offreedom among elites, and
we will try in the fourth chapter to examine flight in literature and
narrative. The fifth chaptertums to Israel's interesting and sometimes
abnormal approach to the question offreedom. In the final chapter we
shall return to the legacy of freedom in Western culture and the
possibility that the kernels of freedom are very widespread.
These goals may be difficult to achieve, and even if we achieve
them, some may ask why we bothered. Those comfortable with the
story of the Greek miracle would prefer not to know that it may be
questioned. And those who doubt it may have easier fields to plough
in other disciplines. But I believe the questions we raise here are
central to how the West behaves in the modem world and the
assumptions we Westerners bring to it. Are we the bearers of a
uniquely humane culture that has much to teach the other cultures?
Certainly in technology we have much to teach. But other great
traditions question our monopoly on virtue, and I want to argue here
that they are probably justified in so doing when it comes to the
understanding of freedom.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE mSTORY OF FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY

The interest in the history offreedom can be traced to Lord Acton's

1877 lecture "Freedom in Antiquity" in which he argued that a
major legacy from the ancient world was the concern for liberty. He
defined liberty as "the assurance that every man shall be protected
in doing what he believes his duty against the influence ofauthority
and majorities, custom and opinion." Acton seems to have assumed
that before the rise ofthe state personal freedom had existed, but for
him Solon's reforms in ancient Athens began the history of
freedom, by giving the poor the power to elect magistrates, though
those august persons were chosen only from the classes above them.
In this vein Acton saw the Jews as enjoying freedom until their exile
to Babylon in 586 B.C.E. He was careful to note that the first
evidence of religious toleration comes from Asoka, the Buddhist
ruler ofwhat we would now call India. And Acton did not find in
ancient Greece some elements he prized in his own freedom,
including "representative government, the emancipation of slaves,
and liberty of conscience."!
Clearly Acton admired his own tradition, but he did not make
exclusive claims for it. And he was obviously open to the possibility
that parallel concerns arose elsewhere and might inform non-

! John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, The History ofFreedom and Other Essays,
edited by John N. Figgis and Reginald V. Lawrence, (London: Macmillan, 1922),3,
4,6,25-26. On Asoka see Romila Thapar, A History ofIndia, I, (Baltimore: Penguin,
1966),73,86-87 (there spelled Ashoka), who reigned 268-231 B.C.E. See Roland Hill,
Lord Acton, (New Haven and London: Yale, 2000). Acton was reflecting the Hegelian
interest in the growth offreedom; for Hegel freedom was only attained in the Protestant
Reformation, so naturally what predated 1517 would be of little interest. See Amo
Baruzzi, Die Zukunft der Freiheit, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1993),70-71,208-217.
12 CHAPTER ONE
Western political traditions. Lord Acton was far from chauvinistic
about liberty, which came to be a key aspect of his thought.
Subsequent students ofthe history of freedom have not been so
broad-minded. Herbert J. Muller in 1964, for example, argued that
Acton's idea that a major theme of human history had been the
growth of freedom was wrong since "none of the great Eastern
societies were basically free societies." He knew ofthe reform texts
from Mesopotamia and of the edicts of kings, but he rejected the
idea that they had any results, and he also rejected the idea that
Israelite prophets were interested in freedom. He found Pericles'
funeral oration the first statement on freedom's value, from 431
RC.E., and Euripides was the first to condemn slavery. His thesis
can be summarized in the title ofhis Chapter Six, "The Uniqueness
of Greece." Muller did not attempt to explain the origins of the
concern for freedom beyond a vague allusion to Cretan art as
displaying a spirit of freedom.'
Orlando Patterson in his recent book has developed an elaborate
and in many ways convincing argument about the centrality of
freedom in Western thought. His argument is' that freedom as a
social value emerged only in Classical Greece when the probability
2 Herbert J. Muller, Freedom in the Ancient World, (New York: Bantam, 1964), xii,
37,41,139-140,191,205,155,88. For slavery in Euripides, stopping well short of
abolitionism, see Heinrich Kuch, Kriegsgefangenschaft und Sklaverei bei Euripides,
(Berlin: Akademie, 1974), 70-77. Note that Karl Morrison sees Euripides' special
interest in women as the source ofmost ofOrlando Patterson's evidence for freedom as
a value; see his review ofPatterson, Freedom I, American Historical Review 97 (I 992):
5 I 2-5 14, 513. Compare Max Pohlenz, Freedom in Greek Life and Thought. History of
an Ideal, (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1966), tracing the rise of interest in freedom
to the success in the Persian Wars, 14. A brief consideration which at least includes the
Israelite material along with Sumerian "primitive democracy" is Donald W. Treadgold,
Freedom, a History, (New York: New York University Press, 1990), I I-33, reference
courtesy of Alan Kimball.
Richard H. King suggests that after World War II the left in the United States
allowed the right to hijack the idea of freedom; see his review of Patterson, Freedom 1.,
History and Theory 31 (1992): 326-335.
FREEDOM AND GETIING AWAY 13
that women would be enslaved as their husbands lost battles led
elites to accept the striving for freedom as a basic goal.'
Patterson argues that "A value emerges, is socially constructed,
only when a critical mass ofpersons, or a powerful minority, shares
it and, by persistently behaving in accordance with it, makes it
normative." Though he admits that various aspects of freedom did
appear in non-Western contexts, he denies that freedom ever
became a value in that sense until Classical Greece."
Patterson suggests that in Greece freedom as a value had three
aspects, which he calls personal, sovereignal, and civic. By personal
freedom he means the absence of coercion by governments or
groups. By sovereignal freedom he means the power to act as one
pleases, without regard to what others want. Civic freedom for him
is the ability of adults to participate in community life and gover-
nance. And he argues that in the history ofthe West these freedoms
have appeared in various combinations, in various chords, as he puts
it, sometimes with one aspect emphasized and sometimes another.
But Patterson is sure that in the West freedom as he understands it
has shown enormous continuities, so that all of these aspects are
found in each age since the Greeks.'
Not everyone has agreed with his definition of freedom; Doug
Bandow, reviewing the book, objected that "political equality and
state imperialism" should not have been lumped together with
personal freedom. Also it is of interest that Martin Ostwald, in his
extremely useful essay closely argued from specific texts, assumes
the uniqueness ofthe Greeks but emphasizes what Patterson would
3 Freedom 1. Freedom in the Making ofWestern Culture, (New York: Basic, 1991).
Compare also his summarizing article "Slavery, Alienation, and the Female Discovery
of Personal Freedom," Social Research 58 (1991): 159-187, and his earlier statement
in Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study, (Cambridge: Harvard, 1982),27:
"In almost all non-Western slaveholding societies there was no such status in law as a
'free' persons. Indeed there was no word for freedom in most non-Western languages
before contact with Western peoples." But he does not explain why a similar
circumstance did not lead to the creation ofthe same value elsewhere.
4 Freedom, 41.
5 Ibid., 3-4, xii.
14 CHAPTER ONE
call civic freedom as unique: "The Greek contribution to notions of
freedom is unique in that it is the first to extend this notion from
individuals to the community that is the state," by valuing not being
ruled by a despot and not being under foreign domination. Ostwald
has a valid point here, and talk ofthe freedom ofthe state becomes
an essential element of our modem concepts. And yet the idea of
city-based privileges, which clearly leads to the freedom ofthe state,
is not alien to the Ancient Near East, as we shall see. That is, state
freedom may not really have been an innovation among the Greeks.
Ostwald asserts that the cherishing of personal or individual
freedom is a universal; I believe that he is exactly right about that."
But Patterson would not agree that the valuing of personal
freedom is widespread. Patterson's learning is broad, and his
command of a vast literature is impressive; his insights into how
freedom was perceived in the West in ages later than the Classical
Greek are frequently profound. And yet one must question whether
he has set up his argument in a reasonable way and also whether the
uniqueness he claims for the West is justified.
The quest for a value is inherently a tricky thing. It may not even
show up in vocabulary; that is, there may not immediately be any
particular term for the quality valued, and yet over time one may
find speakers of a language focusing on aspects of it. Clearly in
Classical Greece Patterson has identified a concept that has a
specific term associated with it. And our understanding of Greek
values does place liberty high, although, as Patterson shows, Greece
6 Doug Bandow, review in The Freeman 42:9 (1992): 367-368. M. Ostwald,
"Freedom and the Greeks," in The Origins ofModern Freedom in the West, edited by
Richard W. Davis, 35-63, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); the quotation is
from 35. On the origins of Greek freedom see the wise view of J. B. Bury, A History
ofFreedom of Thought, (London: Butterworth, 1913),22: "We do not know enough
about the earliest history ofthe Greeks to explain how it was that they attained their free
outlook upon the world and came to possess the will and courage to set no bounds to the
range of their criticism and curiosity." Note also that Bury, 23, recognized that "the
Greeks does not mean all the Greeks, but only those who count most in the history of
civilization, especially the Ioniansand Athenians."
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 15
was a slave society that could not conceive of abolishing slavery,
and so the value ofliberty could not be generalized in the way we
tend to do.?
Patterson may be trying to accomplish an impossible thing, to
prove that non-Western societies did not hold a value. The mere
lack of existence of specific vocabulary does not seem sufficient to
establish that a quality was not valued. Values will be reflected only
in writing, which until quite recently was always an elite activity.
And so groups might hold values strongly and yet not necessarily
have those values inscribed in direct ways accessible to us modems.
But even if the difficulty of asserting that one knows the socially
important values of any ancient group is admitted, one cannot help
admiring Patterson's breadth. Is Patterson right, though, that
freedom is never a value outside the West? Patterson addresses the
question in his first section "The Stillbirth of Freedom in the Non-
8
Western World" and occasionally through the book.
He admits that slaves everywhere always wanted to escape, but
denies that this in itself defines a cultural value. For that, "there
must be present the consent ofthe community." Patterson does not
mean that slave-holding communities, as all Western communities
were until fairly recently, consented to their slaves' escape, but
rather, apparently, that some people within the elite had to be able
to imagine becoming slaves and wanting to escape. It is of course
hard to prove that this did not happen elsewhere, and Patterson does
not attempt to do SO.9
Sovereignal freedom, the ability to lord over others, did emerge
as a value outside the West, Patterson says, though he argues that it
did not become an important value. He also admits that civic
freedom in the sense of community participation was widespread,
7 The Greek word is eleuther ; but compare Socrates' use of enkrateia, pointed out
by Virginia Guazzoni Foa, La Elberta nel Mondo Greco 2, (Genova: Istituto di
Filologia, 1974), 14.
8 Patterson, Freedom, 7-44.
9 Ibid., 16.
 16 CHAPTER ONE
but not socially important. 10 He concentrates on anthropologically
studied modem cultures which he takes as representative of non-
Western societies, the Tupinamba of Brazil, the Imbangala of
Angola, and the Toradja ofthe Central Celebes in the Pacific. In all
places he finds that slaves want freedom but that elites are not
interested in it, and it did not become a cultural value. Interestingly
he does not note that the two latter examples, which represent more
complex societies, were both influenced by Islam, as is clear from
terms he quotes (the Celebes term for manners is ada, from Arabic,
and a freedman is called mavala in Angola, clearly the culturally
loaded Arabic mawla, "client, freed slave." One can see that some
of the ostensibly pristine cultures he adduces are not pristine. II
Patterson glances briefly at the Ancient Near East and asserts that
Israel's history of escape from bondage in Egypt "has no special
part in the history ofindividual freedom," though he does invoke it
again at the end ofhis book. He knows that there was manumission
and that slaves ran away, and so there was a desire for personal
freedom, but he denies that this became "a value ofany importance"
in society."
One may view the present work as a response to Patterson's
negative findings, and I want here briefly to examine Patterson's
assertions about two aspects ofhis chord offreedom. On sovereig-
nal freedom Patterson finds the Egyptian heretic-pharaoh Akhnaton
an important figure because he rejected traditional religion while
asserting his own right to rule, and yet Patterson sees that kings
always wanted to rule, perhaps not abandoning norms in the way
that Akhnaton wished to do. The assertion of sovereignal freedom
to do in some spheres as one wishes seems to be intrinsic to
10 Ibid., 25.
II Ibid., 13-19,23-33. For ada see 30, for mavala, 26; compare 'ada "habit, wont,
custom, usage, practice," Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
(~iesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), 654, and maulan "master, lord, protector, patron:
chent, charge, friend, companion, associate," 1101.
12 Patterson, Freedom 1,33,405; the quote is from 34-35 with his emphasis.
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 17
kingship, not something Akhnaton was inventing. An argument can
be made that kingship, the exercise of sovereignal freedom, was a
kind of explicit cultural value itself, one of the great gifts that the
gods gave to humans at the beginning oftime. From an early period
kingship appears to have included the power to dominate others.
Critiques ofkings show that the bounds kings set for their acts were
not always accepted by all their subjects."
Civic freedom too can be acknowledged to exist as a value in
very early times in Mesopotamia, and Patterson knows Thorkild
Jacobsen's argument that there was "primitive democracy" in early
Mesopotamia. Jacobsen was basing himselfon the behavior ofgods
in later literary texts and extrapolating from the assembly of the
gods to assemblies ofmen; this basis for argument seems slight, and
yet intuitively it makes sense that in simpler societies communities
were governed more democratically than in laterperiods in Mesopo-
tamia. In recent study it appears that the documentable trend was
actually the reverse. As empires grew bigger in the first millennium
RC.E., city assemblies were able to gain more rights from the
distant and busy king. Patterson argues, however, that this sort of
freedom as a value disappeared because ofthe efforts ofcentralizing
kings early in Mesopotamian history. 14
13 Ibid., 38-41; compare Eugene Cruz-Uribe, reviewing Patterson's earlier Slavery
and Social Death, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45:4 (1988): 308-311, from an
Egyptological point of view, concluding, 311, "...Patterson did not have a sufficient
grasp of Egyptian cultural matters to accurately relate them to his proposed scheme."
Also compare on the theory that there was only ever one real king, which contradicted
attested synchronisms, W.W. Hallo, "Royal Hymns and Mesopotamian Unity," Journal
ofCuneiform Studies 17 (1963): 112-118. For some critiques of kings see D. Snell,
"Intellectual Freedom in the Ancient Near East?" Intellectual Life ofthe Ancient Near
East=Compte rendu de laXLIIIRencontre assyriologique internationale, edited by Jifi
Prosecky, (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998),359-363.
14 Patterson, Freedom, 36. And compare T. Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in
Ancient Mesopotamia," Journal ofNear Eastern Studies 2 (1943): 159-172, and "Early
Political Development in Mesopotamia," Zeitschriftfur Assyriologie 52 (1957): 91-170.
On the growth of city privileges see Marc van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian
City, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 133-139.
 18 CHAPTER ONE
One may, however, doubt that assertion. Patterson asks us to
take kings' statements about their vast powers at face value but
Ancient Near Eastern scholars have never done that. We know kings
needed to make propaganda to assert their power and to appear to
lord it over other institutions. They did have control over many
aspects of temples at an early period, but control of the the city
assembly may have eluded them. Kings did not discuss this lack of
power because it did not redound to their glory, but the persistent,
or perhaps just recurring, power ofthe assemblies shows that kings
did have to deal with them. IS
About assemblies in smaller communities we know less. It is not
clear that the rural community is attested in politically interesting
ways in later periods; certainly it did not loom very large in the eyes
ofthe bureaucrats who had most access to writing. 16
. We ~ave only sketchy ideas on how communities were governed
In practice, Self-governance may have been debated in the proto-
democracies of Greece about the same time as in the Ancient Near
East; one might take Herodotus' report on the Median discussion as
more reflective of eastern conditions than his Persian discussion
involving Darius. The Median story tells of a Median judge who
o~ered himself as a leader to counter surrounding chaos; realizing
his power, he went on strike as a judge, and his fellows made him
king. The Persian story supposedly occurred after Cambyses's death
as Persian notables examined whether to have a king at all. Darius
argued that the best monarchy was better than the best oligarchy or
the best democracy. 17 . that :freedomwas a cultural value. It is interesting, though, that both
15 Hayim Tadmor, "Monarchy and the Elite in Assyria and Babylonia: The Question
ofRoyal ~ccountability," in The Origins andDiversity ofAxialAge Civilizations, edited
by Si~' EIsenstadt, 2~3-224, (Alb~y: State University of New York Press, 1986).
See the papers In the symposium La Communaute rurale, Recueils de la Societe
Jean Bude 41 (1983).
17
See Herodotus I, 96-8 and III, 80-2, and M. Liverani, "Nelle Pieghe del
Despotismo. Organismi rapprasentivi nell' Antico Oriente," Studi Storici 34 (1993): 7-
33,25-6,29-30. See on the importance of this discussion for posing the question that
was of interest to Herodotus in the rest of his work Donald Lateiner "Herodotean
Historiographical Patterning: 'The Constitutional Debate'," Quadern; di Storia 20
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 19
Also in the Bible 1 Samuel8's concerns, where Samuel described
the oppressive nature ofthe proposed Israelite king, may come from
the time around the close of the sixth century, meaning that Greek
ideas were similar to Ancient Near Eastern ones in the wake of the
retreat of the Assyrian empire. Loyalty to cities endured much
longer than any Mesopotamian state, even though the individual
cities did not all last through all ofMesopotamian history. And the
argument has been made for Israel at least that the community of
elders competent to decide legal questions outlasted the monarchy
and went on to provide leadership even in the rabbinic period and,
in a sense, down to our own day."
In short it appears that desire to dominate others and the desire
to participate in meaningful ways in community life are widespread
and may nearly be cultural universals. Patterson almost admits that
is so in the first instance. So we are left with his assertion that
devotion to personal freedom is a unique value in the West, and the
rest ofthis work will be devoted to exploring this sort offreedom in
Ancient Near Eastern contexts.
WORDS FOR FREEDOM IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
An initial approach to the question of where :freedom was valued
can be made by looking at the relevant lexicons, though the
existence ofwords themselves does not go far toward establishing
early and late, and clearly before the eventual Greek interaction with
the Ancient Near Eastern region, there were words for concepts
which we usually translate as :freedom,though they may not always
(1984): 257-284. This patterning tends ofcourse to undermine any historical value the
story might have.
IS See Hayim Tadrnor, "'The People' and the Kingship in Ancient Israel: The Role
of Political Institutions in the Biblical Period," Cahiers d 'Histoire mondiale 11 (1968):
46-68, and Hayim Reviv, The Elders in Israel, (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989).
20 CHAPTER ONE
mean the same thing and there is not necessarily cultural continuity
among them, as Patterson has asserted for the West. 19
In an article Patterson adduces Indo-European philological
evidence on the Western words for freedom. The consensus of
philologists is that eleuther, Greek for "free," derives from *leudh-
ero, meaning "belonging to the people," and Latin tiber "free" may
have the same origin. The idea is that the III and Irl are at base the
same phoneme in Greek and Latin, and the Ith/ might correspond to
the fbi, while the Greek's initial e- vowel could be seen as a helping
vowel added secondarily." Naturally given our understanding of
slaves as coming in most societies from alien peoples, it is seductive
to see words for free as meaning somehow "from our people."
Alternatively there is a possible connection between eleuther and
the form eleusomai, the future of the verb erxomai "to go." If in
fact this is the root sense, the free man in Greek might have been the
one capable of going where he wanted."
The Mesopotamian languages, Sumerian and Akkadian, were so
long in close contact that it sometimes is hard to distinguish what
might have been original to each in vocabulary, but they are very
19 Especially Freedom, xii.
20 Patterson, "Alienation," 165. See A. Walde, and 1.B. Hofmann, Lateinisches
etymologisches Worterbuch, (Heidelberg: Winter, 1982, reprint of 3rd ed. of 1938), 1:
791, connecting fiber to words like Russian lyudi "people," and A. Emout and A.
Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine, (Paris: Klincksiek, 1985, 4th
ed., 1959), 355a, say the etymological connection ofthe two words "is not excluded but
does not impose itself." See also Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches
Worterbuch, (Heildelberg: Winter, 1960), 491, and Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire
etymologiquede la langue grecque, (Heidelberg: Winter, 1950, 4rth ed.), 241-242. And
note the dissent from Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue
grecque, (Paris: Klincksiek, 1970), tome 2, 337a: "A connection of Latin tiber and
Greek eleutheros with terms designating the people in Germanic and Balto-Slavic may
be seductive, but it cannot be demonstrated..."
21 See Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East,
(Jerusalem, Minneapolis: Magnes, Fortress, 1995),33. Compare Amo Baruzzi, Die
Zukunft der Freiheit, 1: "Freiheit wird mit Bewegung zusammen gesehen; sie ist
wesentlich Bewegungsfreiheit (Freedom is seen together with movement; it is
essentially freedom of movement)," commenting on the popular understanding of the
term today.
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 21
different languages. Sumerian is unrelated to any other language
and is marked by agglutination, the addition of elements in chains
after or before key words, as in modem Turkish. The cuneiform
writing system through which we know these languages may have
been devised for it. But the system was very early applied to
writing names and then texts in Akkadian, a Semitic language
related to modem Arabic and Hebrew. As far as I am aware, no one
has discussed the Mesopotamian terms for freedom in the context
ofthe history offreedom except in the most casual way, but I do not
see how they can be omitted. The relevant words appear in four
spheres of activity: edicts, privileges, manumissions, and rowdily
behaving groups.
A. EDICTS
Mesopotamian kings for a time in the late third and early second
millenniums B.C.E. occasionally invoked their concern for justice
as demonstrated by their "setting freedom." This means establish-
ing edicts of remission and freedom from some taxes and certain
kinds of debts. We have several references to the practice and one
actual edict and fragments of others. The "freedom" being set is
called a mar g i in Sumerian; etymologically this means "returning
to mother," and so one could imagine that the image is that of
manumission ofa child-slave and return to the family. But freedom
for slaves appears not always to have been part of the kings'
envisioned practice. In fact edicts may have been issued in order to
limit debt remission and slave release to a single year, the first ofan
Old Babylonian king's reign. Scholars believe that the contents of
the edicts differed with each king's reign, but the general term
continued to be used."
22 Note the Liberty Classics' use of cuneiform signs for a mar g i, Sumerian for
"freedom" on the end-flaps of its books, for example John Emerich Edward Dalberg-
Acton, Essays in the History ofLiberty, 1. Rufus Fears, editor, (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, 1985). And see the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, (Chicago and Gliickstadt:
Oriental Institute and J. 1. Augustin, 1956- ), A 2: 115-117, ama.ar.gi = anduriiru. For
the limiting of releases through edicts see W.W. Hallo, "Slave Release in the Biblical
22 CHAPTER ONE
The Edict ofAmmisaduqa is a text produced in 1646 B.C.B. for
an Old Babylonian king. Its 22 paragraphs deal with two kinds of
material; some are presented as acts ofroyal grace which may have
had a force only at the time of the promulgation of the edict and
were unrelated to the usual law, and other acts remitted some debts
for a period. The former are tagged with the explanation "because
the king has invoked justice for the land." Only six of the 22
paragraphs mention the royal justice. The paragraphs usually
involve something the king could control, including remission of
back taxes in paragraphs 14, 15, and 16. Paragraph 19 affects the
amount to be paid by a soldier who leases a field, but only "in the
present year." Scholars do not understand the term for the loan in
paragraph 4; it might in fact have been between private persons and
thus not something the king could directly regulate. Most interest-
ing is paragraph 20, which guaranteed that citizens ofcertain named
areas and towns would be able to get wives or children out ofdebt-
servitude, although paragraph 21 makes it clear that mere slaves
World in Light of a New Text," in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots. Biblical,
Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of.Jonas C. Greenfield, edited by Ziony Zevit,
Seymour Gitin and Michael Sokoloff, 79-93, (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns,
1995). Moshe Weinfeld, '''Justice and Righteousness' in Ancient Israel Against the
Background of' Social Reforms' in the Ancient Near East," in Mesopotamien und seine
Nachbarn, edited by Hans J. Nissen and Johannes Renger, 491-519, (Berlin: Reimer,
1987), surveys these texts and related ones. He suggests a connection to New Kingdom
Egyptian texts which also promised release of some slaves on the kings' coronation,
501-502. He concludes, ''The primary meaning of mspt, sdqh' and myinm) [usually
justice, righteousness, and fairness] is freedom from oppression..." 511. Compare also
his Social Justice in Israel and the Ancient Near East. The problem of the tension
between a desire to return alienated property and a desire to maintain property rights is
stressed by Eckart Otto, "Soziale Restitution und Vertragsrecht. Misaru(m), (an)-
duraru(m), kirenzi, para tarnumar, S"mitta und d"riir in Mesopotamien, Syrien, in der
hebrliischen Bibel und die Frage des Rechtstransfers im alten Orient," Revue
d'Assyriologie 92 (1998): 125-160.
Note that the word for conditionally free man in Sumerian, a person still owing
some obligations to the former master, dumu-gi-, or dumu-gi may be related to
ama.ar.gi, perhaps meaning "a son returned"; see A. Falkenstein, Neusumerische
Gerichtsurkunden, (Munich: Bayerische Akademie, 1957),3:103.
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 23
who were not related to a citizen debtor were certainly not to be
freed."
Although a number of other Old Babylonian kings in royal
inscriptions mentioned their having established justice or freedom,
no other edicts have been preserved. It is speculative to guess
whether kings promulgated similar acts to Ammisaduqa's whenever
they mentioned such terms. The period covers three major dynasties
and 400 years from 2004-1595 B.C.E. Ifthere were such edicts,
now lost, then one might reasonably argue that the kings at least
were very much engaged in supporting the various remissions of
taxes and debts that may have been contained in them as expres-
sions of a communal value of long standing during the Old
Babylonian period. Of course all these kings were politicians, and
it is clear that they mentioned their devotion to justice and freedom
in order to solidify support for their other goals, and the motifmay
be a literary topos of political discourse and not always or even
usually a subject for administrative reform. Nonetheless the elite's
dedication to the value is patent. 24
The Akkadian term for what the edicts establishedis andurdrum,
which comes from words for turning and returning, though there is
also a meaning for dariiru, a related verb, that is connected with the
manumission ofslaves and running free, and thus means to become
free. Scholars have discussed andurdrum at length, and recent
opinion is that it is best understood as a return to earlier status. The
kings were trying to adjust their unwieldy economies and to get
23 See F.R. Kraus, Kiinigliche Verfiigungen in altbabylonischer Zeit, (Leiden: Brill,
1984), 168-288, and the English translation by J.J. Finkelstein, in Ancient Near Eastern
Texts Relating to the Old Testament, edited by James Pritchard, 526-528, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969). Samsuiluna's fragmentary edict, mentioning his year
8 (= 1741 B.C.E.), and another are in Kraus, 154-160; Samsuiluna's two legible
paragraphs appear similarly to free people from tax liabilities and to assure that regular
slaves are not to be freed.
24 For the many references, most ofthem laconic, see Kraus, Verfiigungen, 16-110.
For reform as a literary topos see D.O. Edzard, "Soziale Reformen im Zweistromland
bis 1600 v.Chr.: Realitiit oder Iiterarischen Topos?" Acta Antiqua 22 (1974): 145-156.
24 CHAPTER ONE
some aspectsofthemback to normal, For individuals, however,the
normal may be freedom from constraint. 25
A new bilingual text from Boghazkoy in Turkey presents an
exotic instance of a freedom song. The term is kirenzi in Hurrian,
equatedthere with para tarnuwar in Hittite. Elsewherethe Hittite
means "handing over." The text speaks ofEbla in Syria, where the
storm-god demanded a release of debts as a purification from sin.
The city elders pledged help for the storm-god, but would not
forgive debts, and the storm-godsaid he would destroy the city for
this omission."
B. PRIVILEGES
The Mesopotamians used terms in the late second millennium and
especially in the first that referred to special exemptions from
taxationand corveelaborgrantedby kings to particularlyvenerable
cities. These ancientlibertieswere called kidinnu and subarra, and
25 As Benjamin Foster has pointed out to me in personal communication, building
on D. Charpin, "Les Decrets royaux a l'Epoque paleobabylonienne," Archiv fir
Orientforschung 34 (1987): 36-44, who argues a m a - a r - g i, meant "return to the
original situation," 37. Charpin denies that there is a general idea of freedom: "The
Babylonians did not know in fact that men are born free and equal" 38. But I doubt if
he is right to push this view to claim "It is clear that one is here at the antipodes of any
sentiment of 'social justice' or of 'a reformist ideology'" 39. Elites did not seek what
we would see as real reform, but forced laborers did seek freedom from constraint. The
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, A 2: 115-117, translates anduriirum as "remission of
(commercial) debts, cancelling of services (illegally imposed on free persons)," usages
that the Dictionary emphasizes should be differentiated, or should we generalize?
Compare D. Charpin, "L'anduriirum a Mari," MA.R.I. 6 (1990): 253-270, and
especially F. R. Kraus, Verfiigungen.
26 See for the Hittite word Chicago Hittite Dictionary, edited by Hans G. Guterbock
and Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1995), P 2:125: "hand over,
release." The text is in Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., "Hurrian Civilization from a Hittite
Perspective," in Urkesh and the Hurrians. Studies in Honor ofLloyd Costen, edited by
Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, 167-200, 180-183, (Malibu: Undena,
1998). The context is mythic, and the relation to administrative reality is not known;
see Chapter Three below. For a Hittite edict dealing with release from debt see Raymond
Westbrook and Roger D. Woodard, "The Edict of Tudhaliya IV," Journal 0/ the
American Oriental Society 110 (1990): 641-659, also discussed in Chapter Three below.
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 25
they were politically extremely important, especially in the later
period."
The term kidinnu began as a word for a standardor symbol of a
god in Old BabylonianSusa, on the eastern edge ofMesopotamia,
around 1800B.C.E. It cameto stand forthe objectand forthe god's
protection. After around 1500 B.C.E. the word appeared in central
Mesopotamiatoo, and it came to mean the politicalprerogativesof
the oldest cities,though in later times it sometimesreferred only to
religious prerogatives. An instruction for a Neo-Assyrian prince
shows subarra might include exemptionfrom corvee labor."
Freedomswerethe cause offrictions betweenkings who wished
to curtailthem and the citizenswho wished to maintain them. One
might argue that such liberties were not generalized into freedom,
and yet it is clear that in those particular cities they were of very
greatimportance. Thesewerenot exactlyPatterson's civic freedom
since they did not concern an individual's right to participate in
community actions--that is rather assumed than defended in the
Mesopotamian cities--but rather these freedoms concern how the
city will be ableto resist a centralauthority. Theseideas seem close
to Ostwald's definition of the Greek ideal of the freedom of the
27 Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, K 342-344 kidinnu "divine protection, divinely
enforced security," and 344-345 kidinniau "privileged status (of city or temple
personnel)"; S3: 169-170 subarrU "freedom from service obligations." Compare Walter
Farber, Beschworungsrituale an Ihar und Dumuzi, (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977),
96-97. And see Hayim Tadmor, "Monarchy and the Elite," 218-219, seeing subarrU as
an archaic synonym for kidinnu. The cities that claimed these privileges were the oldest
and most venerable, but newer cities sometimes did too; see van de Mieroop, The
Mesopotamian City, 135, and Albert Schott, "Hohe Beamte und freie Stadte im Spiel
der assyrischen Staatskunst," inAtti delXIXCongresso internazionale degli Orientalisti,
(Rome: Senato, 1938),75-77, but his distinctions among the words appear not to hold;
he suggested that zakiitu and andurtiru meant freedom from particular legal demands,
kidinniitu meant corporate invulnerability, and subarU immunity, 75.
28 W. F. Leemans, "Kidinnu. Un Symbole de droit divin babylonien," in Symbolae
ad jus et historiam antiquitatis pertinentes Julio Christiano van Oven Dedicatae, edited
by M. David, B.A. van Groningen, and M. Meijers, 36-61, (Leiden: Brill, 1946),57-9;
the use of subarrU in the princely instruction is in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom
Literature, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), 112-113, line 30.
26 CHAPTER ONE
state, though the Mesopotamian cities had not been independent
states for centuries before we see these terms used.
C. MANUMISSIONS
The freeing ofslaves is attested in most periods. The actual numbers
of slaves was never high in ancient Mesopotamia; the reason for
this, we think, is that the Mesopotamians were never willing to
invest the manpower necessary to patrol and restrain large groups of
slaves, preferring to rely instead on peasants who could be coerced
into giving up some days oflabor a month to the central authorities.
But there always were slaves who probably had originated as
foreigners captured in war or who had been brought in by slave
traders."
The terms for manumission are a m a - a r - g i,...g a r in
Sumerian, literally "establishing the return to mother," and in
Akkadian andurdrum issakan "freedom is established," and zukkii,
literally "declaring pure." Other terms for becoming free include
dariiru, mentioned above in connection with anduriiru, elelu and
nuram/Samas amliru--all meaning just becoming free, the latter
literally "to see the light/Sun-god." Elelu is connected to other
words for purity."
There are several court cases from after 2050 RC.E. where a
slave attempted to prove that he or she actually had been manumit-
29 See I. J. Gelb, "Quantitative Estimates of Slavery and Serfdom," in Cuneiform
Studies in Honor ofSamuel Noah Kramer, edited by Barry Eichler, 195-208, (Kevelaer,
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker, Neukirchener, 1976).
30 For manumission in general see Emile Szlechter, "L'Affranchissement en droit
sumero-akkadien," Archives d 'Histoire du droit oriental. Revue internationaldes droits
de l'Antiqutte I (1952): 125-195; for the terms see 130, 132. The Sumerian Dictionary
A 3:208-210, Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Z 29-31 zukkU "to free, release"; D 109
dardru "to become free (of a task), to move about freely, to run off'; E 80-83 elelu,
especially u/lulu "to make free"; and A 2:21 niiram / Samas amdru. It is not usually
possible to distinguish debt-slaves from others in manumissions, as noted by Gregory
C. Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East, (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1993),62-67,72-85, and for Israel, 182; there is no reason to believe
persons who not enslaved for debt were not occasionally freed also.
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 27
ted, and this implies that manumitted slaves were not uncommon.
In the preserved court cases, however, no slave who claimed to have
been freed actually was declared free." The cards clearly were
usually stacked against persons in slavery.
D. ROWDILY BEHAVING GROUPS
Some ofthe terms attested in Akkadian for particular groups go on
in other languages to become words for the free, at least in the sense
of the manumitted slave. Probably the most important later is the
term hurru, which may have begun its career as a term for an ethnic
group that becomes increasingly important in Upper Mesopotamia,
the Humans. It persisted as an ethnic term till Humans died out as
a separate people around 1200 RC.E. It never meant "free" in
general, but it is of interest that it came to mean ''noble'' in some
sense in Biblical Hebrew and is perhaps the basis for the words for
freedom in the modem languages of the region."
The Hebrew references are in late texts, and the term does not
seem to be an early word for leaders in the Bible. The reference to
31 A. Falkenstein, Die neusumerischen Gerichtsurkunden, 3 volumes, (Munich:
Bayerische Akademie, 1956-1957), texts 30-42.
32 D.O. Edzard, "Hurriter, Hurritisch," Rea/lexikon der Assyriologie 4 (1975): 507-
514 and Gernot Wilhelm, Grundziige der Geschichte und Kultur der Hurriter,
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche BuchgeseIlschaft, 1982), and see the review of the
translation, The Hurrians, by Michael Astour, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 53
(1994): 225-230.
The connection is clear from Biblical Hebrew hor through Late Hebres /:terilt, to
Arabic hurr, as noted in Ludwig Koehler and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and
Aramaic Lexicon ofthe Old Testament, (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 1: 348. For meanings of
the terms see below. Hurrum "Hurrian" has a harder gutteral sound than hor, but
Biblical Hebrew lacks that harder phoneme, and the harder gutteral usuaIly shows up
as the less hard one. See Sabatino Moscati, An Introduction to the Comparative
Grammar ofthe Semitic Languages, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1980), 39-40. Arabic
has the distinction, but the word may have arrived in Arabic through a language that did
not have the distinction.
Probably unrelated is the Egyptian word /:twr for "peasant," and "miserable," E.A.
Wallis Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, (New York: Dover, 1978, first
edition 1920), 472b, and Coptic hooure "to deprive," W.E. Crum, A Coptic Dictionary,
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 737b.
28 CHAPTER ONE
the earliest story is in 1 Kings 21:8 and 11, where Jezebel wrote to
the /:z6r'im to get them to condemn Naboth who owned a coveted
vineyard. In Nehemiah they seem to have been a sort ofaristrocracy
to whom the Persian-Jewish governor had to appeal." Because of
the chronology oftexts it does not seem likely that there is a direct
connection with the Horim, usually understood as meaning hole-
dwellers, who appear in Deuteronomy's list of autochthonous
dwellers in the land ofIsrael, who might in turn be connected to the
Humans of the second millennium.
Why an apparently ethnic term came to be associated with
freedom is not clear, but one might speculate that in the perspective
ofsome Israelites some Hurrians had fewer constraints and perhaps
more effectively eluded centralizing administrations than they did,
though most scholars would agree that the Bible has no clear
memory of the presence of historical Hurrians. St. Jerome (d. 420
C.E.) noted the connection between the Hurrians and freedom,
following a Jewish tradition. One might argue that this is just a
popular etymology, though, linking an ethnic name with an idea
without historical basis."
How the term hurriyah, Arabic for freedom, developed in that
language is not known, though the modem sense certainly derives
from the liberal age ofthe last century. But it is probably from the
same root as Hebrew hor. It would be instructive but far beyond the
scope of this study to pursue the question of the word for free and
freedom in other languages; it may be noted that the Arabic word
shows up in Swahili, the language spoken on the East African coast
as uhuru, u- being the prefix that indicates general qualities."
33 See J. van der Ploeg, "Les chefs du peuple d'Israel et leurs titres," Revue Biblique
57 (1950): 40-61, 57-60, and "Les 'Nobles' israelites," Oudtestamentische Studien 9
(1951): 49-64.
34 See Roland de Vaux, "Les Hurrites de I'Historire et les Horites de la Bible,"
Revue Biblique 74 (1967): 481-503, 500-501
35 See the discussion of Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept ofFreedom and of
A. Hourani, Arabic Political Thought in the Liberal Age in Chapter Six below. On the
u- prefix in Swahili see D.V. Perrott, Teach Yourself Swahili, (London: English
FREEDOM AND GETTING AWAY 29
Another word with a long afterlife does not clearly start as an
ethnic term. ljupsu apparently always meant free peasant, but
sometimes referred to a person not paying proper respect to
authority. It too was not generalized, but in Hebrew it came to be
the term for freed slave."
Manfried Dietrich in his survey of personal freedom has called
attention in addition to the terms considered above to what he calls
adverbial expressions used in Akkadian that show an interest in the
desires of the individual, particularly as parties to contracts. They
wrote ofthe satisfaction ofa party with the agreement, the bud /ibbi
"satisfaction of the heart," and they used the terms for the self,
ramdnu, and the head, qaqqadu, showing the person's own will had
been fulfilled. Dietrich also notes that the term for freedom,
andurdru is related to the verb naduriiru which describes both the
running away ofslaves and the free running ofwater. To this image
offreedom as the freedom to run where one wills one might add the
Egyptian term that appears equivalent, wst/tn, which means "to
stroll at one's ease." Dietrich suggests that the pursuit of personal
freedom was not a great theme in Ancient Near Eastern literature,
but that personal freedom was assumed as a part of an ordered
universe."
Universities Press, 1965), 21.
36 Chicago Assyrian Dictionary ij 241-242 "(a member ofone of the lower social
orders)", and note the cliche tibiu fJupsim "revolt of the fJupsus." Compare L. Kohler
and W. Baumgarter, Lexicon 1 241-342, and N. Lohfink, "/foPI" in Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer
Ringgren, 5: 114-118, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), stating, 117, "Nowhere is the
modern concept of 'freedom' attested" in the Hebrew Bible.
37 M. Dietrich, "Die Frage nach der personlichen Freiheit im Alten Orient," in
Mesopotamica - Ugaritica - Biblica. Festschrift fiir Kurt Bergerhof, edtied by M.
Dietrich and Oswald Loretz, 45-58, 47-48, 51, 57, (Kevelaer, Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Butzon & Bercker, Neukirchener, 1993). For wstltn "to stride freely, to go unhindered"
see Adolph Erman and Hermann Grapow, Worterbucb der Aegyptischen Sprache,
(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1925-1963), I:367-368, known since the Middle Kingdom (2040-
1786 RC.E.) Compare E.A.W. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, 184, and
Aristide Theodorides, "Freiheit," Lexikon der .,rgyptologie 2 (1977): 297-304,298.
30 CHAPTER ONE
Concerns for freedom may not be the same as modem concerns.
But there is no question but that the terminology was extant with
which one might discuss such matters.
Next we will tum to the records of running away. One might
question whether this directly impinges on the question of the
existence offreedom as a value, but I believe that it is really the only
way to get at the question of what the society as a whole thought
about freedom. It is true that we are trying to penetrate the world of
the illiterates, and we are compelled to do that by using the records
of the literate bureaucrats. That is always a tricky tactic since
inevitably such data blend the elite's reactions and views with those
of the illiterate non-elite. To ignore it, though, in this context is to
stifle the expressions of the illiterate, and in our age that is tanta-
mount to suppressing evidence.
CHAPTER TWO
THE REALITY OF FLIGHT
And many fled. In spite ofthe efforts of administrators to control
the laborers whom they were hoping to make work for them, the
bureaucrats admitted that they had failed to keep the workers at
work, and that sometimes significant numbers of them had made
good their escape. The terms used were z a b - b a "fled" in
Sumerian, usually equated to halqu "missing" in Akkadian, and
sometimes to other terms with the same general meaning. 1
Scholarship has not paid much attention to this phenomenon,
even though it appears to be a prime example of a way into the
world of the illiterate masses and their relation to labor manage-
ment schemes ofthe elites. The understanding ofthe lexical terms
involved is derived from the lexical lists compiled by native
speakers of Akkadian and edited in a systematic way by Benno
Landsberger, beginning in 1937. Texts about labor were pub-
lished and analyzed with increasing sophistication in the twentieth
century.
Mendelsohn in his 1949 study of slavery devoted a section to
flight. But the first person to draw attention to flight as an
indicator of the attitudes ofthe persons who were supposed to be
managed by Mesopotamian elites was A.I. Tiumenev in his
monumental 1956 book. Tiumenev, a classical and Egyptian
scholar by training, had become interested in the archival texts
available from Ancient Mesopotamia and approached them with
a synthesizing and generalizing eye; he was not concerned to
construct archives based on the origins oftexts, and thus his work
1 See The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, under balqu, abiitu, and niibutu. Compare
Marc Bloch, Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1975), 51: "It was always singularly difficult to stop a man from
leaving."
32 CHAPTER TWO
seems general. And yet he was the first to argue that flight itself
was a significant phenomenon which showed normal peoples'
reactions to the oppressive conditions ofMesopotamian life. The
people who were running away were not slaves, but dependent
workers who owed the governmental economy days of labor;
Tiumenev, following the Soviet line, viewed such people as
essentially slaves, but he was not doctrinaire in his treatment of
them, and this approach may explain his delaying publication of
his book, on which he had worked for many years, until after
Stalin's death. Tiumenev noticed that the phenomenon became
more prevalent in the well-documented Dr III period (2112-2004
B.C.E.), in which he also noted the rise in importance of hired
labor.'
Subsequently several labor organizations of the Dr III period
especially were analyzed, and yet flight itself was not a focus of
study. Even the extremely useful 1987 volume edited by Marvin
Powell, which brought together experts on labor texts from various
periods in the Ancient Near East, has few mentions of flight, and
it was certainly not a focus of research there. In my edition ofthe
massive but now lost labor text from the city of Umma, I com-
mented on the prevalence of runaways and referred to studies
noted above, but I did not attempt a thorough analysis of the
phenomenon.'
In other fields ofhistory a sophisticated literature on escape has
arisen in the past thirty years. This literature invites the ancient
historian to consider the issue also in the Ancient Near East, as
shall attempt to do here.
2 Mendelsohn, Slavery in the Ancient Near East, (New York: Oxford, 1949),58-64;
Tiumenev, Gosudarstvennoe Khoziaistvo Drevnego Shumera (Governmental Economy
ofAncient Sumer), (Moscow: Nauka, 1956), esp. 367-68.
3 On organizations see especially Robert Englund, Organization und Verwaltung
der Ur III-Fischerei, (Berlin: Reimer, 1990). M. Powell, editor, Labor in the Ancient
Near East, (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1987). The labor text is published
as Snell and Lager, Yale Oriental Series 18:115 and edited in Snell, "The Lager Texts,"
Acta Sumerlogica 11 (1989):155-224, and is discussed below.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 33
1. THE NATURE OF ARCHlYAL TEXTS
The texts which we can study to understand the behavior of
laborers are in large part archival. That means that they were
composed by bureaucrats only for the purpose ofreporting to their
superiors about their use ofresources. These sorts oftexts do not
usually enter the stream of tradition, that is, the things one might
copy in school, although some phrases from them may appear
among school texts since a major part ofthe time ofmost working
scribes was taken up with such texts. The texts, composed and
preserved on clay, usually come to us in one copy, andif parts of
them are damaged, the information is lost forever. This disadvan-
tage to the data is balanced by the fact that archival texts tended to
be formulaic; they usually are lists ofmore or less similar things,
and so the formulaic parts of them can usually be restored on the
basis ofthe smallest traces in the clay, and frequently without any
part ofthe formula's being preserved at all.
The point ofcomposing the texts recording laborers was similar
in most periods. The bureaucrats were keeping records for higher
authorities and were presumably subject to a later audit in which
their handling ofthe laborers might be questioned. The process of
composition of the texts was a part of the audit. In other spheres
of scribal work we know that the information in small tablets
recording a small number of transactions was put together into
larger tablets every six months or so, and this composition of
larger "ledgers" might have been accompanied by oral queries
about what happened to goods and persons mentioned in the
smaller texts. Sometimes the larger texts record what happened
more completely."
The goal of Mesopotamian accounting, we assume, was
reducing misuse, spoilage of goods, and pilfering. It was not, as
far as we can see, the determination of profits and losses. This
point has been made by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix for Greek and
4 Compare Snell, Ledgers and Prices, 65-75.
34 CHAPTER TWO
Roman accounting, and internal indications from Mesopotamian
material shows that it probably obtained in Mesopotamia too.'
Most labor texts that recorded runaways did so in the context
oftheir allotments ofgrain and other rations. These served as the
maintenance allowance ofpeople serving the elites' organizations,
and they were standardized at a level that would maintain life for
adult men. But women got half that amount, and children got
less." These rates were standardized at an early period and
continued apparently as an ideal through much ofMesopotamian
history.
These facts raise a number ofquestions for laborers. The first,
perhaps only a modem question induced by our own love of
variety, is how boring the ration must have been if one were
getting only grain, as frequently happened. One must assume that
it was usually possible to change the grain received into other
forms of produce, in other words that the grain frequently could
act as a money; this accords with what we know of the
Mesopotamian economy,"
The other problem is the inadequacy ofthe ration for those who
were not adult males. From the bureaucrats' point of view this
5 "Greek and Roman Accounting," in Studies in the History ofAccounting, edited
by AnaniasC. Littleton and Basil S. Yamey, (Homewood, Illinois: Irwin, 1956), 17-74;
compare Ledgers, 32, showing no profits, but usually balances.
6 See on the Mesopotamian system I.J. Gelb, "The Ancient Mesopotamian Ration
System," Journal ofNear Eastern Studies 24 (1965): 230-243, and Lucio Milano, "Le
Razioni alimentari nel vicino oriente antico: per un'articolazione storica del sisteme,"
in II pane del re: Accumulo e distribuzione dei cerea/i nell 'oriente antico, edited by Rita
Dolce and Carlo Zaccagnini, 65-100, (Bologna: CLEUB, 1989). On the calorie content
see R. Ellison, "Diet in Mesopotamia: The Evidence of the Barley Ration Texts, c.
3000-1400 B.C.," Iraq 43 (1981): 35-45. Compare the unequal slave rations based on
worker productivity, of about three pecks of corn meal weekly in the southern United
States for men, while women and the old got one to two pecks; see Herbert Aptheker,
American Negro Slave Revolts, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 126-127.
7 See especially Maurice Lambert, "L'Usage de I'Argent-Metal aLagash au temps
de la 3e Dynastie d'Ur," Revue d'Assyriologie 57 (1963): 79-92, 193-299, and my Life
in the Ancient Near East, 41,57-58, and "Methods of Exchange and Coinage in Ancient
Western Asia," in Civilizations ofthe Ancient Near East, edited by Jack M. Sasson, 3:
1487-1497, (New York: Scribner's, 1995).
REALITY OF FLIGHT 35
made sense because the kind ofwork being asked was physically
demanding, and men could work harder at it than women. Usually
the work had to do with canal maintenance and the preparation and
weeding of fields. And yet the inadequacy of the lesser rations
must have been obvious to all. An important group of texts
records the rations ofgroups ofwomen who had been "dedicated"
to temple-managed weaving establishments and shows that the
women died off at an appalling rate; in these cases bureaucrats
must have decided that since they were dealing with women and
children whom no one else wanted in their households, it did not
matter how long they lived. And the work being demanded of
them, though important for the economy of the Mesopotamian
state, was not so skilled that replacements for workers could not
be easily found. Probably the bulk of weaving in Mesopotamia
was done in non-official households, and bureaucrats were
experimenting with mass workhouse projects involving women,
and an important consideration may have been keeping the cost in
terms of food very low."
Women and children in other situations fared better. Women
with husbands working could share their food. Also women
connected to households would have their own garden plots from
which more food could be grown; the "dedicated" women were in
the organization because they did not have such connections, and
the condition was not usual for women in Mesopotamia.
When scribes recorded runaways, the focus of their concern
was frequently the grain that they were thus not paying to the
people who were not working. In a sense having runaways was a
8 The slighting of women as agricultural workers continues into our own time;
compare Carol A. Bryant, Anita Courtney, Barbara A. Markesbery, and Kathleen M.
DeWalt, The Cultural Feast. An Introduction to Food and Society, (St. Paul, Minnesota:
West, 1985),311-313, showing developing societies do not reward or even give
encouragement to women, who continue to produce the majority of crops consumed.
One might argue that the Mesopotamian rations were proportional to body weight and
to caloric needs. See I. 1. Gelb, "The Arua Institution," Revue d 'Assyriologie 66 (1972):
1-32, and Daniel Foxvog, "A Third Arua Summary from Ur III Lagash," Revue
d'Assyriologie 80 (1986): 19-29.
36 CHAPTER TWO
good thing for a bureaucrat; the absences guaranteed a surplus of
grain for the operation, a surplus which could be returned at the
end of the accounting period, or, since grain lasts for years when
kept dry, the surplus could be saved for supporting workers in later
accounting periods. Still, the work was not getting done, and there
was doubtless some frustration in those recording the runaways.
These people had been assigned by some higher authority to work
under the bureaucrat, and they had been placed under his responsi-
bility; resources, however nutritionally inadequate, had been
allocated for their upkeep. And then they were gone.
Though we do not have texts that talk about plots farmed by
persons for their own use, it is very likely that most persons who
showed up in labor texts had such plots. We know that most did
not work full-time for the great organizations that had access to
writing, and we can see from the nutritional inadequacy of the
rations for many that they must have been getting food from
elsewhere, beyond the reach ofthe bureaucracy. So it makes sense
that they spent time producing fruits and vegetables at least on
their own plots. And though we do not see bureaucrats referring to
it, there doubtless was some sort of farming community to which
such persons belonged, groups of people engaged in similar
activities sharing information about crops and seasons even ifthey
lived in cities or their environs. This community might have been
a relic of earlier village structures, or in many cases it might have
been something new that arose in imitation ofvillage structures in
urban environments." The point for our consideration is that such
communities may have given workers reasons to stay in their
9 Dj. Sharashenidze, Fonny ekspluatatsii rabochei sily v gosudarstvennom
khoziaistve Shumera Il. pol. III tys. do n. e., (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1986),42, 117-118,
120 and n. 74. Compare the similar argument about slave communities in the southern
United States; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll. The World the Slaves Made,
(New York: Vintage, 1976), and J. Blassingame, The Slave Community, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979), stress its supportiveness, while others have stressed the
ravages visited on the community through slavery and later vestigial racism, notably
William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days. Slavery in the American Rice Swamps, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 429-436, reference courtesy of Richard Lowitt.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 37
current situations, however unpleasant the bureaucracy-sponsored
labor they were called on to do might have been. Obviously most
workers found their lives endurable and did not give the bureau-
cracy any trouble, and a large part of that ability to endure must
have derived from membership in families and the communities
that supported them.
2. COMPARATIVE ABSENTEEISM
To get some perspective on those who did leave it is useful to look
at the literature on absenteeism in modem industrial economies.
Absenteeism may not be exactly similar to what the Mesopotam-
ian workers were doing, in that there is no indication whether they
usually intended to return to their jobs. Also, obviously, it is
much harder completely to disappear from the bureaucratic record
in modem developed countries, though every jurisdiction has its
missing persons, most of whom are not the victims of skulldug-
gery but are persons who simply want to be missing. It is hard for
modem social scientists to study such persons and their motiva-
tions, but economic distress plays a major part in anecdotes about
them, though other personal setbacks may be important factors in
their decisions.
Students of absenteeism are unable to agree on its definition
and the reasons for it, though they are agreed that it has a major
effect on the North American economy and is worth studying to
determine how it might be minimized. And yet in spite of the
numerous pulls on individual employees' time in the United States
and the inevitable variation among industries and organizations
with different conditions for workers, the overall rate of absence
seems remarkably low. In 1978 the average rate of absence for all
workers in the United States was from 2.9 to 3.5 % of the work
force. More recent data indicate 4.7% of United States workers
were absent on any given day, 4.8% of English, and 2.5% of
38 CHAPTER TWO
Japanese. As we shall see. ancient runaways sometimes exceeded
this rate. but frequently they did not. 10
Among the motivations for modem absenteeism are family
crises with which the employee has to deal and job dissatisfaction.
frequently deriving from lack of freedom to structure the work.
Both of these factors may have motivated the ancients. It is
certainly true that the Mesopotamian bureaucracy and its overseers
were not interested in giving workers freedom to choose how to
work. although it may be that individual supervisors allowed
considerable variation in how jobs were actually conducted. and
such variation will not appear in archival texts. though the results
ofthat variation may in fact explain stability and instability in the
work force. Family crisis is hard to document in modem society.
and it is hard to see in the ancient archival record too. Now if a
child goes to a hospital. our bureaucracy will have a record. but if
she just has a bad cold. the employer may have to take the
employee's word on it. and bad colds are much more frequent than
trips to the hospital.
3. RUNAWA Y SLAVES IN CLASSICAL TIMES
Other societies with slaves have confronted the runaway. perhaps
nowhere so sharply as in Classical Greece and Rome. where the
percentage of slaves probably approached a third of the popula-
tion. The phenomenon in Greece must have been a common one'
•
10 See Paul S. Goldman and Robert S. Atkin, eds., Absenteeism. New Approaches
to Understanding, Measuring, and Managing Employee Absence, (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1984), ix, xi. Educational Research Service, Employee Absenteeism: A
Summary ofResearch, (Arlington, Virginia: Educational Research Service, 1980), 140.
Susan R. Rhodes and Richard M. Steens, Managing Employee Absenteeism, (Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1990),2-3.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 39
there was even a child's game called drapetinda "runaway slave"
in which "It" covered the eyes and tried to catch the others. II
In Egypt ofHellenistic through Roman times papyri reveal that
slave flight was more frequent from households with many slaves
than from smaller establishments. Usually it was the young
people who fled. though not always. and women with young
children were less likely to run off. There were more runaways
attested under the Ptolemies than after the Romans came in. and
this may be due to smaller numbers ofslaves but also to a rigorous
system of slave identity cards. perhaps instituted under the
Emporer Augustus. Masters knew what directions slaves were
headed. and thus they may have had a fair chance of capturing
them."
In Rome itself the demand for more workers may have
encouraged slaves to flee. knowing they would be sure to find a
place to work and free people to protect them. Three motives can
be isolated in the Roman material: economic. religious. and
political. Slaves wanted to change masters to get better treatment
or more access to goods. or they sought liberation among fellow
Christians. or they reacted to barbarian invasions or other insurrec-
tions which disrupted normal relations. 13 Other scholars have felt
that the best thing for the runaway was to find a powerful protector
who would harbor the escapee. The runaway might have had a
hard time finding a new economic niche. and that may have
II There is no study of runaways in Classical Greece, though general studies of
slavery refer to it. See Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, (Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981),22, 84-86, 181, and 190, and Yvon
Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988),
193-197, and Norbert Brockmeyer, Antike Sklaverei, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1979), 112, 125. For the game see Mark Golden, Children and
Childhood in Classical Athens, (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1990),55-56.
12 Ize Biezunska-Malowist, "Les Esclaves fugitifs dans l'Egypte greco-romaine,"
in Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, 6:75-90, 77-78, 83-84, (Milan: Giuffre, 1971).
13 Heinz Bellen, Studien zur Sklavenjlucht im romischen Kaiserreich, (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1971), 156-158.
40 CHAPTER TWO
discouraged runaways." Demand for labor fluctuated, and that
would affect the runaway's chances.
4. RUNAWAY SLA YES IN THE AMERICAS
Analogous to the ancient runaways in motivation were slaves in
the Americas, although again conditions must have been very
different in the Mesopotamian and the New World labor systems.
The major difference is the rise ofrace as a distinguishing criterion
for slavery which was operative in the Americas but seems to have
been muted in Mesopotamia. Chattel slaves usually derived from
foreigners captured in battle and thus might be assumed not to
speak the Mesopotamian languages and may have appeared
different. But Mesopotamia was always multicultural and thus can
be expectedto have afforded opportunities to "pass" as'free and to
disappear into farm and city communities. This difference means
that it may have been more difficult for slaves in the Americans to
conceive ofthemselves succeeding in escaping the grip ofwhite-
imposed servitude, and it may have kept the numbers ofsuccessful
attempts low. And yet the remarkable thing is that everywhere,
regardless ofthe efficiency ofthe slave-holding system, slaves did
escape. 15
Another important contrast to Mesopotamia is that we have the
best information about escaping slaves from archives of the
nineteenth century of our era, a time in which white opinions
14 FridoffKudlien, "Zur sozialen Situation des Fluchtigen Sklaven in der Antike,"
Hermes 116 (1988): 232-252,238,250.
15
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, 648. In 1850 I,01 I escaped to freedom in the
northern states, Canada, and Mexico, but repression reduced the number to 803 in 1860.
Most were men between the ages of 16 and 35.
This is not the place to defend continuity in slavery itself, but see David Brion
Davis, "Looking at Slavery From Broader Perspectives," American Historical Review
105:2 (2000):452-466, 457: "The many metaphorical uses of 'slavery' and
'enslavement' point to the remarkable stability and continuity of the concept of total
subordination, vulnerability, and animalization." (His emphasis).
REALITY OF FLIGHT 41
about the slave system were crystallizing in the south of the
United States and in other parts of the Americas. Abolition
movements in the north and in Britain in particular forced slave-
owners to justify their institution, and the movements' publicity
and reputation may have encouraged more slaves to try their luck.
Thus in the nineteenth century one might expect to find more
runaways than previously. One must contrast nineteenth-century
conditions, however, with looser structures in earlier centuries,
when the legal status of Africans was not yet clarified in many
places and when the colonial cultures may have been less self-
consciously racist and were certainly less efficient at catching
Africans trying to escape."
Studies on runaway slaves in the American South suffer from
the lack of systematic reporting of the phenomenon. There is a
valuable register ofrunaways caught and imprisoned in Washing-
ton, D.C., for the years 1848-1863, showing that in the 1850s
equal proportions of women and men fled and were caught,
although broader studies indicate that the proportion ofrunaways
in the United States was between 71% and 91% male. Most
studies must rely on statistical analysis of advertisements in
newspapers placed by owners for the return of runaways. Owners
who advertised may not have been typical, and the cases of their
slaves may not have been typical either. In one analysis of
information from nineteenth-century Barbados males were found
to be disproportionately represented, appearing in 90% of the
advertisements. Skilled slaves there seemed more likely to escape
than unskilled field hands. Many were said by their owners to be
headed toward towns, and only a quarter were said to be going
other places in the country, though females ran to such places
more than males. Slack months in the agricultural cycle were the
most popular to make an escape. Males were more likely to have
16 On the racism see especially Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black, (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1969), and also there the incoherent status of early slaves, 44-100, and in
somewhat more detail Betty Wood, The Origins ofAmerican Slavery, (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1997),40-67.
42 CHAPTER TWO
been away for longer periods, and rejoining family was noted as
the goal of many persons ofboth sexes.'?
In pre-revolutionary Haiti, where one might expect a lot of
runaways, a survey shows only 0.5% did flee. Guadaloupe in the
1780s had 1.5% fled, eighteenth-century rural Bahia in Brazil had
0.7%, and Domenica in 1813 had 2.3%.18 These figures are ofthe
same order as modern absenteeism noted above.
In a boast an overseer in the southern United States in 1828
wrote, "In ten years I have lost by absconding forty-seven days,
out of nearly six hundred Negroes" by providing them garden
plots to grow supplemental food. This does not lend itself to
precise calculation, but the percentage ofwork missed is very low,
on the order of 1.3%.19
Franklin has underlined the implications ofrunaway studies for
the history of freedom. Franklin writes that "the happy slave
syndrome" described by some scholars argues that most slaves
were not interested in leaving their places and status. But he
suggests, referring to manumission and the ability of some
American slaves to hire out their own time as independent
workers, that "To deny that such actions inspired slaves to want to
be free is to deny them the essential humanity that others
possessed.?" The incidence of running away shows that some
certainly asserted this humanity, as understood in the terms ofthe
society in which they worked.
17 John Hope Franklin, "Runaway Slaves," American Visions 6: 1(1991): 30-31. For
the higher proportion of males in the United States see John Hope Franklin and Loren
Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 211-212.
On Barbados see Gad Heuman, "Runaway Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Barbados,"
in Leonie J. Archer, ed., Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labor, 206-224, (New
York: Routledge, 1988).
18 See David Geggus, "On the Eve of the Haitian Revolution:
Slave Runaways in
Saint Domingue in the Year 1790," in Out ofthe House ofBondage, edited by Gad
Heuman, 112-128, 117, (London: F. Cass, 1986).
19 If slaves worked about 350 days a year--probably a high estimate. The boast is
quoted in Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, 539.
20 Franklin, "Runaway," 30.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 43
The mechanism for guarding against runaways in the American
South was the slave patrol, a group ofwhites usually consisting of
a captain and three other whites who theoretically ranged over
large areas at night to catch escapees. The whites were forced to
serve and had to pay fines if they did not show up, and in most
places the patrols "periodically lapsed into passivity." Though
frequently incoherent, patrols did manage to strike fear into most
slaves and thus to prevent more runaways than they caught. When
we hear ofMesopotamian efforts to patrol, we should be cautioned
not to assume that they were any more efficient."
Jose Alipio Goulart quotes a provincial president in Brazil in
1860 as saying, "Flight is inherent to slavery. It is one of its
natural correctives." Also Goulart notes that slaves sometimes
escaped slavery by suicide, not just by flight. This extreme form
of escape is not directly known in Mesopotamia, but not all the
dead persons oftexts listing the fled and dead may be from natural
causes."
Many things were different in Mesopotamia, and the mecha-
nisms for spreading news and ideas were certainly much more
rudimentary. We must ask whether conditions for escape, clearer
in the American examples, can be understood to have applied in
some Mesopotamian situations. The key variable is what direction
the people were going, and perhaps we can assume that the
escapees' heading toward family would have been very common,
and that most families would have lived in the countryside. And
if family groups escaped, they must have been usually heading
either toward relatives or toward rural areas not controlled, or not
closely controlled, by the governmental entities they were seeking
to escape. In periods of political fragmentation, which were the
norm in Mesopotamia, they may have sought to go to rural areas
21 See Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, 617-618. Compare lA. Brinkman, "Forced Labor
in the Middle Babylonian Period," Journal ofCuneiform Studies 32 (1980): 17-22, 17.
22 Jose Alipio Goulart, Da Fuga ao Suicidio, Aspectos de rebeldia do escravas no
Brasil, (Rio de Janeiro: Conquista, 1972),26, 123.
 44 CHAPTER TWO
nominally ruled by rival states, although the political information
available to peasants may have been minimal.
Was it easy to slip away? In most periods the answer is
probably yes. Even if one could not easily find another agricul-
tural niche, one could throughout the region slip off to join
nomads who pastured on the fringes ofthe cultivated areas in the
summer and retreated into the Syrian and Arabian Deserts in the
wetter winter. We know that sedentary farmers who were not
trying to escape did this when their agricultural luck ran out, and
it makes sense that people trying to escape oppressive labor
systems would too.
There were prisons in some periods to hold persons arrested,
but they were apparently only used to house people accused of
crimes before trial. Running away may have been a crime, but
punishments for convictions were usually not jail sentences but
monetary or labor punishments.P . be connected to the fact that Girsu, though an old an important
In the Americas a culmination ofthe runaway phenomenon was
the maroon community, a village composed entirely ofpeople who
had escaped from slavery. Such villages could survive, sometimes
for years, against the concerted efforts of slave holders, if the
villages were located in inaccessible swamps, forests, or moun-
tains. The most famous maroon community, Palmares, constituted
an independent state in Brazil and lasted from about 1650 to 1694 ,
when it was finally rooted out. 24
Are there traces of such communities in Mesopotamia?
Perhaps the example ofnearby nomads would militate against the
creation of such communities, and the riverine terrain at least in
the most fertile regions would not encourage hiding. But we know
23 See for earlier references Miguel Civil, "On Mesopotamian Jails and Their Lady
Wardens" in The Tablet and the Scroll. Near Eastern Studies in Honor ofWilliam W.
Hallo, edited by Mark E. Cohen, Daniel Snell, and David Weisberg, 72-78, (Potomac,
Maryland: CDL, 1993).
24
See R.K. Kent, "Palmares: An African State in Brazil," in Maroon Societies:
Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, edited by Richard Price 170-190
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). "
REALITY OF FLIGHT 45
ofanother rather successful maroon state in southern Mesopotamia
from a later period, that constituting the Zanj rebellion, which held
out in the swamps of southern Mesopotamia from 868 to 882
against the armies of the Abbasid caliphate." Obviously the Zanj
caught the attention ofthe rulers. But unless maroon communities
create states or at least unless they take to destructive and success-
ful raiding on the dominant society, that society is not likely to
take notice ofthem, and that may be the case, even ifthey existed,
in Mesopotamia. At this point, given the existence of a culture of
escape, one should simply be aware ofthe phenomenon and try to
be sensitive to its possible manifestations.
The tortured etymology of the city of Girsu, and the very odd
political history it had, might conceivably have had something to
do with a foundation by prisoners or escapees." Jacobsen tried to
explain the name as meaning "naked prisoners." The name might
center, as we can see from preserved texts, was omitted from the
Sumerian King List and not regarded by scribes in Nippur as a
distinguished Mesopotamian city. But etymology is not a strong
argument, and other places have idiosyncratic political histories.
Who fled? We are interested in at least three social categories
of persons, the nominally free, the clearly slave, and the debt
25 The primary source is The History ofal-Tabari; volume xxxvi, The Revolt ofthe
Zan}, translated by David Waines, and volume xxxvii, The "Abbiisid Recovery,
translated by Philip M. Fields, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992,
1987), and compare Alexander Popovic, The Revolt ofAfrican Slaves in Iraq in the
3rd/9th Century, (Princeton: Marcus Wiener, 1999).
26 T. Jacobsen, "Some Sumerian City Names," Journal ofCuneiform Studies 21
(1967): 101-103, suggesting Girsu means "naked prisoner" and began as a settlement
of prisoners ofwar, 101, who were always closely connected to slavery, though not all
were enslaved. But note that Chicago Assyrian Dictionary N 1:336, says the meaning
is unknown for naqmii, which Jacobsen saw as "captivity." W. Von Soden, Akkadisches
Handwiirterbuch, 744, sees the meaning as possibly Brenneisen, "firing iron," which
would be irrelevantto Jacobsen's view. On Lagas-Girsu' s odd history see E. Sollberger,
"The Rulers of Lagas," Journal ofCuneiform Studies 21 (1967): 279-286. It may not
have been included in the King List because it, like Umma, was in territory belonging
to the Old Babylonian kingdom of Larsa, a rival of Isin, where the List may have been
composed.
46 CHAPTER TWO
slave. It might be argued that there was a distinction between debt
slaves and other slaves and that most manumissions, for example,
concerned people who were serving to work off a debt and not
people of possibly foreign extraction held for perpetual service.
Hammurapi and the Hebrew Bible did legislate leniency for the
debt slave and limited the years ofservice. In the Middle Assyrian
Laws it is clear that a debt-slave could be sold as a permanent
slave." The terminology does not distinguish how slaves became
slaves, and for purposes of studying escape there seems to be no
means to discern the distinction. The variety of forms of unfree
labor in other societies argues that there have been more distinc-
tions in social and legal practice than we can now define. But
many people wanted to get away.
5. EARLY MESOPOTAMIAN ESCAPE
From the Early Dynastic period there are a few texts indicating
that escapes had been made with success. We have from the city
of Suruppak around 2500 B.C.E. texts listing as many as 108
persons fled." Here as elsewhere the motive for absence is
unknown; it may have been a sort ofmass strike to avoid work, or
it may have included personal reasons not obvious even to
contemporary observers.
Most interesting is the apparently legal text in Old Akkadian
script, from about 2200 B.C.E. which reads: "Lugal-azida, the
slave ofLugal-kigala, ran away from the city-governor. Then Ur-
Nigin's slave girl disclosed the place to which he had run away:
'He is in Maskan-sabra; let them bring him here...'" The interest-
ing thing about the text is that when the slave girl speaks, it is in
27 Middle Assyrian Laws paragraph 7, Roth, Legal, 170; for the texts on leniency
see Chapter Three, 86, note 43 below.
28 Raymond Jestin, Tablettes sumeriennes de Suruppak, (Paris: Boccard, 1937),
554,780, and Anton Deimel, Die Inschriften von Para, 3, Wirtschaftstexte aus Para,
(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924),99, with 19 men fled who were supposed to get flour rations.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 47
Akkadian language, though the rest of the text is in Sumerian.
Here we see that the slave community knew what had happened,
and one oftheir numbers was willing to confess it. The slave had
run, not to his family in the countryside, but to another city. The
purpose ofthe document is not clear; perhaps it was to be used in
a court case against the slave, but the chief witness is unnamed.
The fact that the last line is broken keeps us from knowing if
perhaps the text was an order for some official to pick up the
errant slave. Certainly the text shows that running away was a
ruling class concern, and sometimes the leaders could count on the
cooperation of the oppressed in recovery of those who had
escaped."
The problem of escape was also noted at approximately
contemporary Ebla in northern Syria. Though the text is broken,
an interesting entry shows someone, perhaps a messenger himself,
connected with the wife of the king escaping with supplies for
messengers."
29 Dietz Otto Edzard, Sumerische Rechtsurkunden des Ill. Jahrtausends, (Munich:
Bayerische Akademie, 1968), text 83, 137-8, reedited by Aage Westenholz, Early
Cuneiform Texts in Jena, (Copenhagen: Munsgaard, 1975), text 50,36-37:
[1] Lugal-a-zi-da
ir ll Lugal-ki-gal-Ia
ensi-da
in-da-zah
5. ki-zah-a-na
geme Ur-nigin
ba-du.,
in MaS-ga-niki-P[A].AL
u-sa-ab
li-ru? -u-nim ...
Compare also listing the fled and dead workers, Piotr Steinkeller, Third Millennium
Legal and Administrative Texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, (Winona Lake, Indiana:
Eisenbrauns, 1992), text 45, 81-83.
30 Edmond Sollberger, Administrative Texts Chiefly Concerning Textiles = Archivi
reali di Ebla Testi 8, (Rome: Missione archeologica italiania in Siria, 1986), 534:
paragraph 48: [...Jije-sud, zab, in nig-kas.-kas.. On ije-sud's identity see ibid., 24.
 48 CHAPTER TWO
6. UR III ESCAPE
The first thing that must strike one about the texts from the Ur III
period (2112-2004 B.C.E.) is that there are so few of them. One
would think that because forced labor was so widespread in the
records, escape from it would have been quite common. The lack
of mention might indicate that there was little escape, either
because of a guard system or because of an ethic that laboring for
the government brought intangible benefits that were worth the
eff~rt. It is possible that such a work ethic existed; certainly
scnbes would have been quick to advance it. But the major reason
for labor record-keeping appears to be the assignment of rations
usually in grain. Thus it may have been in the interest ofoverseers
to appear to have a full contingent ofworkers even when they did
not: It is a little l~ke voting in the city of Chicago in more corrupt
penods of Amencan history; the dead could be voted, and the
runaways. The Ur III supervisors' return was more concrete, in
the form of grain not distributed.
Some texts, however, do mention runaways. I certainly have
not found all mentions ofescape, but I have found some intriguing
texts. We must ask ourselves why these documents were com-
posed when i~ may have been in the bureaucrats' interest to keep
the matter quiet. It may take the reconstructing ofwhole archives
ofw~~h the texts were a part to answer the question definitively,
and It IS not my purpose in this study to attempt to do that. Still
interesting insights are to be gained from a study of a selection of
the texts.
L~ger 115 is a large text, now lost, probably undated, but
certain from Ur III Umma, summarizing the status of three work
grou~s .and part of a ~ourth, allocatin.g rations to persons by job
and listing runaways. Ofthe approximately 1396 persons listed
30 See Snell, "The Lager Texts: Transliteration, Translation, and Notes," Acta
~umerol0i!ica 11 (I ~89): 155-224 to Snell and Carl Lager, Economic Textsfrom Sumer
- Yale Oriental Series 18, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992).
REALITY OF FLIGHT 49
in the broken text 21, or 2%, were fugitives, and 37, or 3%, were
old. The runaways appear in the Plow Oxen Work Group and the
City Governor's Work Group, but not in the other two groups.
The jobs or characteristics of those who fled included:
young males 3
workmen 12
smiths 3
policemen 3.
It is of interest that young males fled since that is common in
flight in other cultures, and also that some skilled smiths fled.
These persons may have had skills to earn a livelihood outside the
government service that this list presumably represents. On the
other hand most who fled were simply workmen. The issue ofthe
fleeing "policemen" raises the question of whether we are
correctly defining the apparently military term a g a - us. In some
other cultures enforcers ofnorms, ifthat is what these were, could
be expected to keep their places and to support the system. The
Athenian example, where the police were foreign slaves who
initially at least spoke no Greek, cautions that that is not univer-
sally true, or perhaps we should simply say, as in nineteenth-
century Britain, "A policeman's lot is not a happy one.'?'
One sort oftext indicates that there was some sort ofsystem for
patrolling for runaways and for retrieving them. Texts like Sigrist,
Syracuse 259, show that a porter had been returned (literally:
"completed") by the guard or watch. Also several texts of the
messenger type, which list rations for messengers for the royal
establishment, note the goal of a particular messenger was "to go
to seize the person who fled."32 These texts confirm that the
bureaucracy would have liked to be able to return runaways.
3\ For Athens see Dwight MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens, (Ithaca:
Cornell, 1971), 83. On the a g a - Us see Debra A. Katz, "A Computerized Study of the
AGA.US of the Ur III Period," M.A. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1979.
32 Compare Sigrist, Messenger, 41:2 and Hussey, Harvard Semitic Studies 4:82.
For transliterations and translation of these and subsequently mentioned texts see
Appendix I, which I hope will ease understanding for specialists.
 r
50 CHAPTER TWO
Yoshikawa, Acta Sumerologica 9:307, shows a mill-worker who
escaped from an official's guard. The official had to do menial
work as punishment for his lapse; the escapee seems to have
remained at large.
Frequently in connection with runaways texts note their
familial relations to other named persons. An example is Szlech-
ter, Tablettes Juridiques et Administratives 40, which also
indicates that the guard had retrieved persons, one of whom was
called the brother of a city governor. This text raises the issue of
the status of runaways; obviously not all of them were slaves or
dependent persons. The bureaucracy might brand as a runaway
someone who merely had deserted his post. A similar text is
Nikol'skii, Dokumenty 436, where almost everyone was identified
as a child of someone else. It is possible that this is the record of
the escape ofchildren, but it seems as likely that the parents were
held responsible for the truancy of adults involved, and the
recording ofthe family connection would assure that things would
go ill for the relatives.
The issue of status also is not clear in the remarkable text
Genouillac, Textes Cuneiformes du Louvre 2:5481, which
chronicles the twofold flight of a woman and where she slept
when she left the house. Before witnesses she then swore that she
would not flee again. This unusual text may include as a witness
~he king's own wife, Sulgi-simti, if her name is abbreviated as
Simti, so the milieu may be royal and exalted.33 The woman
succeeded in escaping twice and in passing some time each time
apparently in the homes oflocal worthies. It cannot have been too
hard to do, if one were able to convince the worthies to protect
33 But the queen's name is usually written dSul-gi-si-im-tum. See Marcel Sigrist,
Drehem, (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL, 1992), 222-246, for the woman and her
establis~ent. ~ompare the case of a free woman escaping in the Middle Assyrian
L~ws discussed In Chapter Three below. But the queen's name is usually written dSul_
gl-si-im-tum. See Marcel Sigrist, Drehem, (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL, 1992),222-246
for th~ woman an~ her establishment. Compare the case of a free woman escaping i~
the MIddle Assynan Laws discussed in Chapter Three below.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 51
one. A high status woman would find a warmer welcome than an
ordinary runaway, and there may have been ambiguities ofspousal
abuse and other community-dividing acts, which may have made
the worthies think protecting the woman would not bring punish-
ments.
Gomi, Selected Texts 333, shows a two-fold escape by a group
consisting of a mother, her son, and apparently another man.
Another woman is noted as "an old escapee," and two other
escapees are described only as children ofthe persons escaped but
returned. This is not just a list since witnesses "confirmed the
service status for the palace." There seems to have been some
question about whether these persons were obligated to serve, and,
though administrators had only a couple of them who had not
made good their escape, they wanted to affirm their obligations."
Myhrman, Babylonian Expedition 3:1, records an oath by a
slave, and his mother and sisters were the guarantors that he would
not flee. This may imply that the slave already had fled to be with
his family, but, perhaps because he was enslaved for their debts,
. ~
they were forced to swear that he would not flee.
<;ig and Kizilyay, Verwaltungsurkunden 1, have a slave who
escaped and had his eye or eyes put out. He took an oath that ifhe
fled again, he would be destroyed. The witnesses were not clearly
related to him. The mutilation for escape finds a parallel in an Old
Babylonian text noted below."
34 Compare too Adam Falkenstein, Die Neusumerischen Gerichtsurkunden, text 41,
2: 67-69, from Lagas, where the wife and daughters of an executed murderer, enslaved
as part ofthe murderer's punishment, escaped, were caught, and judges reaffirmed their
slave status.
35 Piotr Steinkeller, Sale Documents of the Ur-Ill-Period, (Stuttgart: F. Steiner,
1989),68-70, notes that warranty against slave flight was rare in cuneiform documents.
His text 94 ** exempted a slave seller from responsibility if a slave disappeared or died,
using Ii - g u ... d e= na 'butu from abiitu "to run away." Compare his text S3, 333-334,
where a seller had to deliver another slave girl because the first one sold had escaped.
36 See Raymond Westbrook, "Slave and Master in Ancient Near Eastern Law,"
Chicago-Kent Law Review 70:4 (1995): 1631-1676, 1670.
52 CHAPTER TWO REALITY OF FLIGHT 53

The status ofthe woman in Gomi, Selected Texts 125, is clearly already been issued. Here the administration clearly had an
slave, and her price is given. Fifteen days after an ordinary sale, interest in ascertaining who was really gone and in recovering
the woman fled. 'Who assumed the responsibility for her is losses.
unclear. A child escaped in Gomi, Selected Texts 519, and there We have an unusually high volume ofdocumentation for labor
was some sort of administrative mix-up there. The city governor practices and problems from the Dr III period. Because of the
had an official look into it, but somehow the report was not put in rarity ofmention ofescape we cannot correlate instances ofit with
order. The child must have remained free. other events, such as economic downturns." But we can draw
As in later slave systems, persons might return to their posts, some general conclusions about it. It appears to occur or at least
perhaps of their own volition, after having asserted their right to be recorded in the following months (numbers indicate instances
leave or otherwise define themselves. Keiser, Yale Oriental Series of escape noted, not numbers of escapees):
4:190 shows a gardener returned and perhaps entered into his
usual place. Month: I U 111 IV V VI VU Vlll
Another sort of text appears to address the problem of Escapes: 2 3 4 2
unallocated rations. Gomi, Acta Sumerologica 3:166, is among the
"fled and dead" texts that try to show what quantities ofgrain have Month: ix x Xl xu X111
not been distributed because of mortality and flight over several
Escapes: 2 3 1 2
months. The text dates from the year Amar-Suena 2, but the
people were a - r u - a "dedicated" apparently by family members
The growing season began in the spring, as did the year, and the
to serve in the administration or temple. In that text there were
harvest would be in months v and vi. This spread seems to indicate
eight fled and eight dead over the period of eight months. King,
that there was no seasonality to escape." There were instances all
Cuneiform Texts 10:28, is another "dead and fled" text, from the
through the year.
city of Lagas-Girsu. Escapes noted by month are as follows:
The following lists genders of escapees:
iii vi vi-xi ix no month
3 2 Ill.
Male 70
We will see below that there is no clear periodicity in Dr III
Female 1340
escape.
children (no gender indicated) 1
Sigrist, Syracuse 36, refers to a big escape, somehow different
from a simple escape in the same text. Perhaps there was a
distinction between short-term escape and permanent or longer-
term running away, as in the New World distinction between petit
38 The downturns are not documented in the price series from the period, but it is
marronage and grand marronage." clear in other texts late in the dynasty. See Snell, Ledgers, 196~20 I, and T. Gomi, "On
Legrain, Ur Excavation Texts 3:1018,seems to show rations for the Critical Economic Situation at Ur Early in the Reign of Ibbi-Sin," Journal of
dependent women who had fled, and the grain and wool had Cuneiform Studies 36 (1984): 211-242, and K. Maekawa, "Rations, Wages and
Economic Trends in the Ur III Period," Altorientalische Forschungen 16 (1989): 42-50.
39 Note there is also an escape in ezen SUlgi, which might be month vii if from
Lagas or month x if from Umma, Gomi, British Museum 125.
37 See R. Price, Maroon Societies, 3. 40 But note restored Legrain, Ur Excavation Texts 3:1018, with 134 fled.
54 CHAPTER TWO
The difference in the rate of escape by women makes good sense
when we assume the close connection with child-rearing that
women must have had; they were understandably reluctant to
leave small children, no matter how unpleasant the work they were
called upon to do.
Professions indicated include mill-worker, slave, smith,
silversmith, porter, and gardener; most ofthe rest must have been
unskilled laborers. This finding is different from the situation in
Barbados, where the skilled were more likely to escape, probably
because they had better connections to the world ofwage employ-
ment than farm laborers."
Escape was clearly tried by all sorts ofpersons, some perhaps
not even in particularly oppressive situations. In the texts
collected we do not see any clear indication ofgroup flight, but the
emphasis in several texts on filial and even fraternal relationships
ofthose who fled does imply that family played a large role in the
administrations' views of what was going on. In the interesting
case of the woman who had to swear after two escapes that she
would not try it again, we see that she had fled to the houses of
two men who were not obviously related to her. But our com-
mand ofUr III prosopography is not firm, and they may have been
uncles or cousins.
We may in general conclude that the administration tried to
avoid discussing escape because it made the bureaucrats liable to
return grain and other rations they could personally use. But the
phenomenon was a persistent one that must derive from the lack
ofacceptance by some members ofthe society ofthe idea that they
should work for others.
41 Gad Heuman, "Runaway Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Barbados," 210.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 55
7. OLD BABYLONIAN ESCAPE
Johannes Renger in his 1972 study examines flight in the Old
Babylonian period (2004-1595 B.C.E.).42 He finds the same kind
of paranoid reaction to the possibility of flight as one finds in
other slave-holding societies, notably in Cicero's late Republican
Rome and in the Ante-Bellum South ofthe United States. Renger
has one Old Babylonian text that lists those "fled and dead," with
3.2% fled, or 3 of93.43 Also he notes an interesting call in an Old
Babylonian letter for a pass system to control flight, though
perhaps only for a particular set of military personnel. The text
reads as follows:
To War'um-magir speak! This is what your lord says: Among the
rakba, fugitives established themselves. I took counsel with myself
as follows: this is what I thought: Yes! Fugitives have established
themselves. (And yet) a rakbum who goes to his village--unless he
obtains a document with my seal, he must not go! This (counsel) I
took and I wrote you accordingly. From now on a rakbum who can
show you a document with my seal may stay in his village and may
enjoy his house and his field. And as long as he stays, the house is
settled upon him. Before he leaves, let (a broken personal name)
lead him to the palace and let him bring here the tablet with my seal
for his identification. To him who does not have a tablet with my
seal, and comes to you, you must not grant permission to stay (in his
village)! Have him brought to me!
42 J. Renger, "Flucht als soziales Problem in der altbabylonischen Gesellschaft," in
Gesellschaftsklassen des alten Zweistromlandes, edited by Diezt Otto Edzard, 167-182,
(Munich: Bayerische Akademie, 1972).
43 Renger, "Flucht," 176-7 and n. 32 to H.H. Figulla, Altbabylonische Vertriige
= Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmiiler 13:104, (Leipzig: J.J. Hinrichs, 19 I4), especially
the end of column 3 and middle of column 5.
56 CHAPTER TWO
The tablet is sealed by Ibalpiel, king of Esnunna, a city in central
Iraq." This letter shows that such a pass system was not usual and
could not be counted on to control the flight of other persons.
Renger notes that except for slaves the Old Babylonian period
lacks mention of attempts to catch runaways, and he says that in
legal texts the actual consequences of flight seem small, as in
Hammurapi paragraphs 30 and 31, where a free man who owed
service to the state was gone a year without explanation and was
reinstated. Renger admits that the government hardly controlled
the marshlands, which must have been commonly used as
hideouts. He also suggests two degrees of flight: 1) going home
to one's village, and 2) trying to leave permanently, sometimes
through semi- or full nomadism."
Renger concludes that there was not a great deal of flight and
suggests reasons for that paucity:"
1) Agricultural stability endured from the Pre-Sargonic period
before 2334 B.C.E. into the first millennium;
2) New immigrants into Mesopotamia changed conditions and
made old tensions seem obsolete, as when the Amorites arrived
and replaced some of the inter-city tensions with inter-tribal and
regional tensions;
3) The sources may avoid speaking of flight, feeling that
discussion would only encourage it;
4) Ideology may militate against it, though Renger finds this
hard to judge. The idea that peasants were serving divinely
installed rulers was certainly one the rulers pushed, but did anyone
else buy it?
5) The success of state controls, partly through guarantees of
family members that the service would be done;"
44 A. Goetze, "Fifty Old Babylonian Letters from Tell Harmal," Sumer 14 (1958):
3-78, number 5, 23-24.
45 Renger, "Flucht," 177, 178.
46 Ibid., 181.
47 Ibid., n. 53.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 57
6) Edicts and other social measures, though corvees were
perhaps reduced in the Old Babylonian period under Lipit-Istar,
thus diminishing the number ofpersons who might be tempted to
flee.48
All ofthese factors appear important, with the possible exception
of ideology. But the success of state control probably was
intermittent; more likely it is that the state usually had low
expectations which could be and were met.
Recently Sophie Lafont published a very interesting text on
escape from Mari on the Middle Euphrates in Syria. The text
probably concerns a free servant of a bedouin leader who escaped
with two slave girls to Subartu, a land in the north. The owner
found the escapee and gouged out his eyes, but he then wanted to
kill him as an example to others. The Mari letter was written
because the owner needed royal approval to kill the man, and he
asked his supervisor to request execution. As usual with letters,
we do not know ifhe got permission to kill his servant. This is an
amazing case not just because it appears to show that the Mari
king reserved the death penalty to himself. It also shows that
extreme brutality was possible, though the owner felt he had to
explain that only his anger impelled him to gouge out the eyes."
48 Ibid., n. 54, and compare on Lipit-Istar, D.O. Edzard, Zweite Zwischenzeit
Babyloniens, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957), 96-97, on the prologue to his legal
collection, discussed in Chapter Three below.
a
49 Sophie Lafont, "Un 'Cas royal' l'epoque de Mari," Revue d'Assyriologie 91:2
(1997): 109-119. The text is as follows:
a-na be-li-ia qi-bi-[m]a
um-ma I-ba-al-pi-A[N]
IR-ka-a-ma
1 UJ.TOR fJa-ar-di-im fJa-ni-im
5. 2 geme sa-wi-ti-su it-ru-ma
a-na Su-bar-tim in-na-<bi>-it
u-ka-as-si-is-su-ma
i-na Su-bar-tim ts-ba-ta-as-su
i-na ap-pl-su
10. i-ni UJ.TOR-su
58 CHAPTER TWO
8. MIDDLE BABYLONIAN ESCAPE
From central Mesopotamia we have references to patrols seeking
escaped laborers, though we do not have a sense yet of the
percentage oflaborers who fled. From Syria and Palestine we have
frequent references to brigands who left their urban homes and
afflicted the little kings of the region. These brigands, termed
SA.GAZ "murderer" in Sumerian, read /Jiipiru in Akkadian, have
been interpreted as refugees. These refugee groups may have
supplanted nomads as pressure valves for the society, becoming
over the period from 1500 to 1200 RC.B. a mass phenomenon.
Treaties between states tried to check the outflow ofsuch persons
as we shall see in Chapter Three and may have succeeded to an
u-ga-al-li-il
Rev. a-na se-ri-ia
il-li-kam-ma
ki-a-am iq-be-e-em
15. um-ma-a-mi UJ sa-a-[t]u
lu-du-uk-ma i-na gilga-si-si-im
li-is-sa-ki-in-ma
wa-ar-ku-um i-na qa-ti-su
li-mu-ur an-ni-tam iq-be-e-em-ma
20. a-na-ku ki-a-am a-pu-ul-su
um-ma a-na-ku-ma
[b]a-lum be-li-ia mi-im-ma
[u]-ul te-ep-pe-es
a-na be-li-ia lu-us-pu-u[r]-ma
ma-li be-li i-qa-ab-be-e-em
lu-pu-us an-n[i-ta]m a-pu-ul-su
an-ni-tam la an-ni-[tam b]e-Ii li-is-pu[ -ra]-am
Say to my lord: Thus speaks Ibal-pi-El, your servant.
4-5 A young man of Hardum the bedouin accompanied two slave-girls, friends of his,
and he fled to Subartu. 7. Uardum rejoined him and seized him in Subartu. 9. In his
anger he gouged the eyes ofhis young man. He came to find me and said, "I want to kill
this man and he should be placed on a pole that everyone after learn from his example."
19. This is what he said, and I responded thus: "Without my lord, you cannot do
anything. I will send to my lord, and I will do all that my lord says." Here is what I
responded to him. May my lord write me what should happen.
REALITY OF FLIGHT 59
extent. Subsequent refugees may have left the sedentary areas and
turned to nomadism. 50
The causes of the phenomenon ofmass flight may have lain in
the growing efficiency of kings to control peasant life and of
creditors to press for payment of peasant loans. Peasants increas-
ingly over the course of the period may have acted on their desire
not to cooperate in these efforts by leaving and joining with
brigands. Middle Babylonian kings seemed uninterested in the
"justice and truth" that Old Babylonian kings upheld and first
millennium kings supported. This insensitivity may be only
apparent because we do not have extensive royal inscriptions from
Middle Babylonian Syria especially. But the lack of reference to
these values may also derive from a genuine lack of concern on
the part ofruling classes for the downtrodden, who turned to flight
to express their dissatisfaction. Ideas of social justice may have
been kept alive in non-royal circles who came to the fore after the
demographic crises around 1200 RC.B. 51
In spite of the lack ofreference to such issues in royal inscrip-
tions from the period, archival texts do show that kings sometimes
tried to impose an edict of freedom or remission of debts. We can
tell because the archival texts try to avoid the edicts' conse-
quences. Relevant texts come from Nuzi in central Iraq; they will
be considered in Chapter Three below.
Archival texts from Middle Babylonia have several instances
of flight. Once an Blamite fled. Another text shows a long-term
flight lasting about nine years of absence. Texts from contempo-
50 lA. Brinkman, "Forced Labor in the Middle Babylonian Period," Journal of
Cuneiform Studies 32 (1980): .17-22. Mario Liverani, "Il Fuoruscitismo in Siria nella
tarda eta del bronzo," Rivista Storica Italiana 77 (1965): 315-336,317,323-326,328-
329, and his "The Collapse of the Near Eastern Regional System at the End of the
Bronze Age: The Case of Syria," in Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World, edited
by Michael Rowlands et al., 66-73, 69, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
See in general Jean Bottero, "Habiru," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 4 (1972-1975): 14-
27.
51 See in addition to the studies cited above M. Liverani, "~yaYK e MI~QP" in
Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, 6: 55-74,63, (Milan: Giuffre, 1971).
60 CHAPTER TWO
rary Ugarit promise that the slave-buyer will get the money for a
debt-slave from a guarantor if the slave should flee. Also of
interest are the texts in Nuzi where lUlpiru-brigands enter slavery
presumably to pay off their debts."
One can see in general that in spite of the comparative weak-
ness of the states of the period, the phenomenon of flight became
more important than before and even became, in the case of the
biipiru, a mass phenomenon threatening the existence ofsome of
the states.
9. NEO-BABYLONIAN ESCAPE
Muhammad A. Dandamaev produced a massive study of slavery
in Babylonia which looks at the institutions of slavery in the late
period, from 626 to 331 B.C.E. Though he does not focus on
runaways, he has numerous references to them and the responses
of the bureaucracy of that time to the problem."
52 H.P.H. Petschow, Mittelbabylonische Rechts- und Verwaltungsurkunden der
Hilprecht-SammlungJena, (Berlin: Akademie, 1974), text 8, 26-7, and 32-3, and text
20, 50. For Ugarit see texts in CAD A 1:46c. See in general M.1. Mirzoiev, "0 rabstve
v kassiskoi Vavilonii," VestnikDrevnei Istorii 4 (1988): 109-131. For the Nuzi texts see
Moshe Greenberg, The Ijablpiru, (New Haven, American Oriental Society, 1955),23-
29.
Note the phenomenon was found in New Kingdom Egypt, as noted by Wolfgang
Heick, "Sklaven," Lexikon der Agyptologie 5:7 (1984): 982-987, 984: "Wieder
eingefangene fluchtige Sklaven wurden zum Tode verurteilt. Trotzdem durften sich in
den entlegenen Gegenden wie den Oasen Banden gefluchteter Zwangsarbeiter (I;zsbw)
wie auch von Sklaven gebildet haben, deren Bekampfung durch die Polizei belegt ist.
(Runaway slaves recaptured were sentenced to death. In spite ofthis in regions hard of
access like oases bands couldbe formed by escaped forced laborers and also slaves, and
the struggles of the police against them are attested)." Thus runaways and maroon
communities were known.
53 Slavery in Babylonia, (Dekalb, IlIinois: Northern IlIinois University Press, 1984),
translating the 1974 Russian volume. The index to the English edition is quite
inadequate on this issue under the topic Slaves, Temple, escapes of, 833, which has only
two entries. In fact I found references to escapees, including a few free persons, on the
following pages: 119, 129, 140, 153 n. 84,154-156, 159n. 90,161,163 n. 97,165-166,
184,215,217,220-228,235-237,272-3,296,330,382,386 n. 402, 392,421 n. 439a,
REALITY OF FLIGHT 61
In this period there were three kinds of slaves, at least as far as
their legal status goes: slavesin private households, temple slaves,
and royal slaves. We have little information about royal slaves,
and the temple slaves were definitely a minority of all slaves.
There were also dependent persons of various designations who
may not have been so important in the labor force as in earlier
periods. Free persons ofmoderate means might own three to five
slaves, and the number of slaves was much larger than in earlier
periods. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah show that Jewish
exiles returning from Babylon had slaves who constituted between
a sixth and a fifth of their number." This ratio may be indicative
of the percentages in the Babylonian population as a whole,
although in Dandamaev's count there are about 45,000 persons
attested in the texts of the period, and 1400 were slaves of one
sort or another while 200 were other dependent persons, for a
percentage of 3.5%, much lower than the returning Jews' 16 to
20%.
In the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods there were
frequent references to runaways. One notorious runaway, Bariki-
iIi, confessed that he made two escape attempts; in the second he
successfully posed as an official in the service of a free man. He
remained abroad many days before he was found. Earlier when he
was sold, it was for 23 sheqe1s of silver though most slaves
fetched a whole mina, or 60 sheqels."
Harborers continued to find it advantageous to take in runaway
slaves. In earlier periods legal collections, which we will look at
in Chapter Three below, demanded punishment for harborers; this
appears not to have been the practice in later times. 56
The practice of branding some slaves continued, and owners
wrote their own names on the slaves' hands. Not all slaves were
438-439,442-443,446,459 n. 498,490-499,505-507,509,511,513-514,533,537 n.
101,539,547,589-591,598-599,624,638-640,651, and 659.
54 Dandamaev, Slavery, 216-218.
55 Ibid., 221-222.
56 Ibid., 223, 227.
62 CHAPTER TWO
labeled in that way, but some who had been sold frequently had
the names of three owners on their hands. 57
Temple slaves were fewer in number, but they were worked in
larger groups and were continually involved in escape attempts.
Among the privately held slaves individual escapes predominated,
but among temple slaves there were group attempts. 58
Slaves who were caught sometimes were put in chains and
worked in special prison-like workhouses, run both by institutions
and sometimes by rich individuals. Since most slaves were of
local origin and most may not have been branded, it is easy to see
that slipping away into the community might have been easy. 59
And clearly not everyone who was caught was thrown into a
prison workhouse. Efforts to recapture slaves seem to have been
haphazard.
We can in general say that escape from work was a continuing
phenomenon in the periods of Mesopotamian history that have
been studied. Although it was not an overwhelming problem to
the bureaucrats of any documented period, with the exception of
the Syrian area in the late second millennium, where the bapiru
roamed, it was certainly an undercurrent that appears to assert that
at any time many Mesopotamians were unwilling to submit
themselves to the discipline that made for civilization at one level
but that also denied them rights and freedoms which they cher-
ished. These were not philosophers or political theorists, of
course, and it would be wrong to overinterpret their acts. To
understand them more fully, we must now tum to the ideology as
expressed by the literate elite.
57 Ibid., 229-231.
58 Ibid., 490, 496-497, 499, 651.
59 Ibid., 159-160,497,659, 103.
CHAPTER THREE
THE IDEOLOGY OF FLIGHT AND FREEDOM
If some of the common people fled, to fates not perceivable with
our available documentation, we must ask ourselves what the
literate elite and their masters who set policy believed about flight
and freedom. There is always the possibility that the written record
does not display the real range of emotions connected with flight,
and that there was more ambivalence of feeling, especially when
high-status women and men fled. Here we will look at several
genres of texts that were more or less officially sanctioned in
which we find elites expressing themselves.'
I. EDICTS
We cannot be sure that royal or authoritative statements that seem
similar to us would really have been seen as similar by the
ancients. We are not even certain of how the material preserved
in Sumerian may have affected material preserved in Akkadian.
As we range to other languages and cultures, we are self-con-
sciously collecting material that appears to us similar. But our
goal is not to posit the existence of a coherent tradition of elite
concern for freedom but rather to note the wide-ranging evidence
that at various times and places rulers boasted of advancing
freedom.
) In a sense Moshe Weinfeld's sprawling survey, Social Justice in Ancient Israel
and the Ancient Near East, (Jerusalem, Minneapolis: Magnes, Fortress, 1995),
expanding his 1985 Hebrew work, is an attempt to explore the ideology, but the range
of terms in which he is interested is broader than here, although many of the texts he
adduces are also of interest for us. Compare B.R. Foster, "Social Reform in Ancient
Mesopotamia," in Social Justice in the Ancient World, edited by K.D. Irani and Morris
Silver, 165-177, (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood, 1995).
64 CHAPTER THREE
An early example ofthe concern for freedom appears in a royal
inscription from pre-Sargonic Lagas that may be dated around
2500 B.C.E. The ruler Enmetena boasted that he "canceled
obligations for Lagas, having mother restored to child and child
restored to mother. He canceled obligations regarding interest-
bearing loans." His language plays on the literal meaning of the
term for the freedoms he was establishing in that he mentions
restoring children, the etymological origin ofthe term for freedom
or "canceled obligation." As in most royal inscriptions the point
is to make the ruler look good in the eyes of his subjects and his
gods. We have no archival texts from Enmetena's time that show
how this decree might have been put into effect, if it was.'
The Lagas ruler Uruinimgina used similar terminology in his
reform texts around 2350 B.C.E. :
He cleared and canceled obligations for those indentured families,
citizens of Lagas living as debtors because of grain taxes, barley
payments, theft or murder.
We know something of the political contexts of these statements.
The ruler was facing an increasingly desperate fight with a
neighboring city-state and wanted to assure support for his regime
from people previously downtrodden.' . codes establish freedom? They limned out restrictions on official
The kings of Mesopotamia from the Dr III period on periodi-
cally mentioned "setting freedom," sometimes at the beginnings
2 See Jerrold S. Cooper, Presargonic Inscriptions, (New Haven: American Oriental
Society, 1986),58, his La 5.4, 67 on the word play. The text, in Horst Steible, Die
altsumerischen Bau- und Weihinschriften, (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), I: 268-
269, number79, runs a m a g i , Lagaskie-gar, ama dumu i-ni-gi 4
v "Slave Release in the BiblicalWorld in Light of a New Text," in Solving Riddles and
dum u a m a i - n i - g i 4, a m a - g i 4 S e - u rs - rae - gar.
3 Cooper, Presargonic, 73; Steible, Weihinschriften 1: 308-311 : 12 : 13- 22:
dum u Lag a Ski, u r, - rat i -I a, g u r - g u b - b a, s e - s i - g a, n i g - z u
b - a, sag - g i s - r a - a, e- bun - b i, e - I u b, a m a - g i 4 e - gar, following
Cooper's suggestion to read e- bun, 74, n. 26. For the politics see Horst Klengel, et
aI., Kulturgeschichte des alten Vorderasien, (Berlin: Akademie, 1989), 51-52, and
Jerrold S. Cooper, ReconstructingHistoryfrom AncientInscriptions: the Lagash-Umma
Border Conflict, (Malibu: Undena, 1983),33-36.
IDEOLOGY 65
of their reigns, in special edicts, ofwhich parts ofthree have been
preserved from the Old Babylonian period. The term "setting
freedom" occurs more widely, though, in names given to years,
and we believe that there may have been many more ofthese acts,
even if they did not eventuate in written edicts that have come
down to us. We mentioned the texts in the first chapter. The
point to reiterate here is that the "freedoms" envisaged may have
been very specific and limited, and perhaps of limited durations.
From around 1646 B.C.E. in the Edict ofAmmisaduqa we see two
kinds of material being ordered. On the one hand the text enjoins
moral precepts that may be taken as representative of moral
thought within the society. On the other hand the text speaks of
specific kinds ofloans that would not be allowed, presumably for
a defined period of time,"
The texts were obviously somewhat removed from practice
since they came from kings in legal systems where most decisions
were made by panels of elders who apparently did not feel bound
by royal edicts but perhaps more by precedent. The exact function
of the edicts in the legal system may have been ambiguous since
there is evidence some aspects ofthis sort oflegislation did in fact
parallel practice, while other aspects did not. 5
In what sense did the decrees and the sometimes associated law
4 The basic study is Fritz R. Kraus, Kiinigliche Verfiigungen in altbabylonischer
Zeit, (Leiden: Brill, 1984). Compare Dominique Charpin, "L'anduriirum a Mari,"
MA.R.I. 6 (1990): 253-270, where he argues that though there are no such edicts from
Mari, references in archival texts to events "after the anduriirum" show something
similar was going on. On the relations of the edicts to each other see W.W. Hallo,
Untying Knots. Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C.
Greenfield, edited by Ziony Zevit, Seymour Gitin, and Michael Sokoloff, 79-93, 79-81,
(Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995).
5 Rivkah Harris, "The Naditu Laws of the Code of Hammurabi in Praxis,"
Orientalia Nova Series 39 (1961): 63-69, and Herbert Petschow, "Die [Paragraphen] 45
und 46 des Codex Harnmurapi. Ein Beitrag zum altbabylonischen Bodenpachtrecht und
zum Problem: Was ist der Codex Harnmurapi?" Zeitschrijtfir Assyriologie 74 (1984):
181-212.
66 CHAPTER THREE
intervention in the lives ofindividuals. They did not usually speak
ofreforming previous abuses, but Uruinimgina had done just that
earlier. So one could say that no general charters ofincreased civil
liberties were envisaged, but the enactments did aim for improve-
ment in economic life and in the lots of persons who had previ-
ously been oppressed.
When the treatment of actual slaves was considered, edicts
were not supportive of freedom for slaves. As noted in Chapter
One, Samsuiluna's short and poorly preserved edict makes it clear
that actual slaves were not to be freed by the edict, and
Ammisaduqa' s paragraphs 20-21 state that though the king wanted
to free persons who had been pawned for a loan, other slaves were
not to be freed by the edict.
Outside of central Mesopotamia, though we lack the edicts
themselves, we can see that a similar kind ofremission must have
been promulgated. Some Old Babylonian period Alalak:h texts
from northern Syria are contracts that seek to protect the parties
from interference in their agreements; the cliche is that "the silver
shall not be reduced, or subject to a freedom edict.:"
From somewhat later in the same period from Hana on the
middle Euphrates we have in the context of real estate deals a
similar phrase: This is a field "which cannot be reclaimed or
(subject to) remission ofdebt." Also there is a year name promul-
gated by a king of Hana that announces that it was the year in
which he set a remission in his land. Also a king of Hana with a
Kassite name had a year name in which he established ''justice,''
me-se-ra, which may mean about the same thing; the same king in
another year name proclaims he established ''justice'' a second
time, meaning it had not worked too well the first time.'
6 David J. Wiseman, TheAlalakh Tablets, (London: British Institute ofArchaeology
at Ankara, 1953),29:9-11 kaspum u-ul us-sa-ap u-ul it-ta-ra-ar, and among others
65:6-7, a slave woman shall not be freed, i-na an-da-ra-ri-im, u-ul i-na-an-da-ar.
7 See Kraus, Verfiigungen, 99-100, and the contract clauses in Olivier Rouault
L 'Archive dePuzurum, (Malibu: Undena, 1984), 13:16-17,14: 19-20,16:21-22 19: 14~
15. ' ofthe Hittites, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), dates the king 1237-1209.
IDEOLOGY 67
In the Hittite area is an instance ofa king' s boasting of freedom
that was manifestly incomplete. The Old Hittite King Hattusili I
(1550s RC.E.) conquered a North Syrian area called Hahhu and
claimed:
I, the great King Tabarna, have taken the grinding stones from the
hands of the female slaves and the work from the hands of the male
slaves, and I freed them from contributions and corvee. I have
loosened their belts and given them to the Sun-goddess of Arinna,
my lady.
The Akkadian version of the text adds: "Under the sky I have
established their freedom." But rather obviously they were free
only of their former labor, not of their bondage in general."
The edict of the last significant Hittite King, Tudhaliya IV
(1265-1240) implies a release ofdebts which was petitioned for by
a group ofcitizens, the men ofHatti. 9 The actual decree ofrelease
must have stood in the now broken section column I: 13-16. The
next column addresses instances where releases would not be
allowed including land that had been pledged (11:1-2) and blood
ransom (II: 3-6). Punishments for theft were not to be affected by
the edict (II:8-10). But a slave who had been punished for theft by
blinding would be released to his master (11:11-15). Later
passages related to royal granaries that had been unlawfully
opened (III: 3-11). Naturally having only one such decree from
this language area makes it hard to judge the reality of the
measure. The other Hittite edict, that of Te1epinu (1525-1500
RC.E.) regulates administration and the rules ofroyal succession
8 Translations after Erich Neu, Das hurritische Epos der Freilassung I, (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1996), 11-12. Does the Akkadian phrase mean to make the statement
more general? See Fiorella Imparati, "L'Autobiografia di Hattusili I," Studi Classici e
Orientali 14 (1965): 44-85,79,82.
9 See R. Westbrook and R. Woodard, "The Edict of Tudhaliya IV," Journal ofthe
American Oriental Society 110 (1990): 641-659,642. Note Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom
 68 CHAPTER THREE
and does not deal with debt release. 10 Because Tudhaliya IV stood
near the end of Hittite greatness, it is tempting to see his edict as
atte~pti~g to stave off decline, but in fact there is little sign of a
declme m state power under his reign, so a simplistic political
answer for why the edict was created appears not to work. 11
. The Hittite-Hurrian bilingual referred to briefly above deals
with the theme of remission of debt, but it is a song presumably
ab.out a distant .time and the precedents set then. The setting is
said to be Ebla In Syria, and the king ofEbla discusses remission
with the wealthy citizens, who are opposed to it. They speak:
Assuming that we release them, who will give us to eat? They are
our cup-bearers...they are our cooks...they spin wool for us! If you
want a debt-release, you must release your own male and female
slaves!12
Apparently the Eblaite king, Meki, presented the idea as the will
of the ~e~ther-god Tessu~, who had commanded it as "purifying
from sm. An eloquent nch spokesman opposed the idea in the
Eblaite assembly, and the assembly refused to authorize a general
debt release:
[If Tessub.] oppressed by debt(?), [as]ks(?) [for help], if Tessub is
(e~er). [in d~]bt(?), then everyone [will give] to Tessub. Everyone
wIlI.gIve [him] a half shekel [of gold], and we will [eachgive] silver
t~ him. But if Tessub is (ever) hungry, then each of us will give to
him one (measure)ofbarley....But ifTessub is (ever)naked, each of
10 S ' .
11 ee Westbrook and Woodard, 'Edict," 642, and Bryce, Kingdom, 114-118.
. See Bryce, Kingdom, 326-360 on the reign, 358-360 evaluating the king's
achievements
12
Harry A Hoffner, Jr., "Hurrian Civilization from a Hittite Perspective," in Urkesh
and the Hurrians. Studies in H.0nor ofLloyd Cotsen, (Malibu: Undena, 1998), 167-200,
1~2. See.a.lso Neu, l!~os, and his study, "Knechtschaft und Freiheit. Betrachtungen iiber
em ~umtlsch-hethltlsches Textenensemble aus Hattusa," in Religionsgeschichtliche
Beziehungen ~ischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament, edited by
Bemd.!a~owskl, ~laus.Koch, and Gemot Wilhelm, 329-361, (Freiburg, Switzerland,
and Gottmgen: Universitatsverlag and Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1993).
IDEOLOGY 69
us will clothe him...with a garment. But if Tessub is ill(?), each of
us will give him fine oiL.We will pour out a heap of grain for him
and we will redeem(?) him...from dire need(?). We will save him,
Tessub, from the creditor(?). But we will make no debt release.13
The idea seems to be that the wealthy would have been happy to
come to the aid of either the mythological god or his temple
establishment ifthey really were in trouble, but they saw no need
to help out mere poor people, in spite of the king' s perception of
the god's will for social justice to be done. In another part of the
fragmentary text a god, probably the same one, demands the debt
release:
If [you make] a debt release in Ebla, [the city of the throne,] and if
you [make] a debt [release], I will exalt your weapon[s...]. Your
weapons will begin [to conquer]enemies. [Your] plowed land [will
prosper] in glory. But if [you] do not make a debt release for Ebla,
the city of the throne, in the space of seven days I will come upon
you....I will destroy [the city of] Ebla, the city of the throne. I [will
make] it like <a city> that never existed. I will break the surround-
ing wall ofEbla's [lower] city like a cup. I will flatten the surround-
ing wall ofthe upper (city and make the area) like a garbage dump.14
Although we do not understand in what context this text was
preserved, and what it might have meant to Hittites or Hurrians, it
seems obvious that the eventual fall ofthe ancient and magnificent
city ofEbla in Syria was being attributed to the insensitivity ofthe
rich toward the poor and their failure to agree to a debt release.
We have notoriously few Hittite archival texts with which we
might weigh the practical application of the idea of debt release,
and this text is placed in what for the Hittites was ancient history,
presumably around 2400 B.C.E. The Hurrian text may be the
original and the Hittite a translation. This discussion seems to be
13 Ibid., 182.
14 Ibid., 182-183.
70 CHAPTER THREE
suggestively similar to that among Jews under Nehemiah, which
we wi11look at in Chapter Five below.
From Nuzi in central Iraq in the Middle Babylonian period
(1400-1200 B.C.E.) we have references in contracts written "after
the proclamation of the remission." Many others speak more
vaguely of agreements "after the new edict." As before the idea
was to guarantee that the contract would not be abrogated by an
order, probably by the king, that enforced his remission ofdebts. 15
Further afield is the New Kingdom Egyptian decree of Seti I
(1318-1304 RC.E.) found in Nubia. 16 There the point seems to
have been to limit depredations by Egyptian officials on dependent
laborers working for organizations in the Egyptian town of
Abydos, and the edict was probably not to be applied to the entire
population. The goal was "to prevent wrong being done to any
person belonging to the Foundation..." or Egyptian organization.
Cattle and women were not to be taken arbitrarily, but ordinary
corvee duty was still permitted.
Enactments may have had a direct effect, but were limited to
particular cities under particular rulers. For example, when
Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king ofBabylon, who ruled from
555 to 539 RC.E., installed his daughter as a priestess in Dr, he
exempted the temple from all demands for corvee labor.'?
15 Texts are quoted in CAD A 2:1166 under andurdru; others are adduced under
sadatu "edict," CAD S 3:195. See in general Barry Eichler, Indenture at Nuzi, (New
Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress, 1973),32-34.
16 William F. Edgerton, "The Nauri Decree of Seti I. A Translation and Analysis
of the Legal Portion," Journal ofNear Eastern Studies 6 (1947): 219-230, quotation
from 221, I.A.2. See also Kenneth A. Kitchen, "Nauridekret," Lexikon der Agyptologie
4:3 (1980): 361-362and HelmutBrunner, "Immunitat," ibid. 3 (1971): 151-152,noting
there are other tax exemption decrees from the Old Kingdom, but the Nauri decree is
more detailed. For a fictionalreflectionofthe decree compareChristianJacq, Ramses.
The Son ofLight, (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997),301: "Seti published his decree
all over the country, even as far as Nauri in the Nubian desert, where it was strikingly
carved on a stone twice as tall as a man."
17 SeeM. A. Dandamaev,Slavery in Babylonia. 45 andn. 2: su-bar-ra-su-nu as-ku-
nu "I establishedtheir freedom."
IDEOLOGY 71
Herodotus briefly mentions an edict issued after the Persian
king Cambyses' death in 522 RC.E. by a pretender to the throne:
Forno soonerdidhe come to the thronethan forthwithhe sentround
to everynation under his rule, and grantedthem freedom from war-
service and from taxes for a space ofthree years.18
Another Persian decree about which little is known is referred to
in the Biblical book of Esther, 2:18, referring to Xerxes, around
480 RC.E.:
Thenthe king gave a great banquetto all his princes and servants; it
was Esther's banquet. He also granted a remission of taxes to the
provinces, and gave gifts with royal liberality. 19
In the Greek tradition we have reflections on the work of Solon,
the Athenian lawgiver ruling 594/3 RC.E., in the composition
known as "The Constitution ofAthens," by a student ofAristotle,
after 322: 20
18 Herodotus III, 67: freedom or exemption from war-service is !X't€A€lTJV
<J'tpa'tTJlTJ<;; taxes are tribute, <j>opo<;.
19 iln\!J):) nN )~1::l}l) )~1'U"J:::>? ?n::l nn\!J):) 1?):)n \!J}l~)
):)n 1':::> nN\!J):) )n') n\!JY m)'1):)? rrom 1nON
The Septuagint omits the last phrase and translates the one before it Kat ii<!>€<Jtv
E1tol!1<J€V "and he made a release."
20 On the doubts aboutthe author see Peter J. Rhodes, "Athenaion politeia," in The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth,
(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress, 1996,3rd edition),203. On the problemsof seeingthe
work of the historical Solon in these materials see Claude Mosse, "Comment s'elabore
un mythe politique: Solon, 'Pere fondateur' de la democratie athenienne," Annales
Economies Societes Civilisations 34:3 (1979):425-437, most ofthe materials probably
coming from the fourth, not the sixth century, 436.
Note that later traditionheld that Solon and other lawgivershad been influenced by
Egyptians;see Diodorus Siculus (d. 30 RC.E.), I, 79, 98, translatedin Edwin Murphy,
The Antiquities ofEgypt, (New Brunswick, London: Transaction, 1990), 99-100, 126-
128,and Anne Burton, Diodorus Siculus. Book I. A Commentary, (Leiden:Brill, 1972),
194, equating Diodorus's B01<XOpt<; with Bakenrenef (720?-715 RC.E.), a 241h
Dynasty king of Egypt, about whom "Very little is known...apart from the evidence of
the Classical authors."

72 CHAPTER THREE
As soon as Solon had been entrusted with full powers to act, he
liberated the people by prohibiting loans on the person ofthe debtor,
both for the present and for the future. He made laws and enacted
a cancellation of debts both private and public, a measure which is
commonly called seisachtheia (the shaking offofburdens), since in
this way they shook off their burdens. In regard to this measure,
some people try to discredit him. For it happened that when Solon
was about to enact the seisachtheia, he informed some of his
acquaintances of his plans, and when he did so, according to the
version ofthe adherents ofthe popular party, he was outmaneuvered
by his friends; but, according to those who wish to slander him, he
himself shared in the gain. For these people borrowed money and
bought a great extent ofland; and a short time afterwards, when the
cancellation of debts was put through, they became very rich. It is
said that this was the origin ofthose who later were considered to be
ofancient wealth. However, the version ofthe friends ofthe people
appears much more trustworthy."
The controversial nature of Solon's freeing is clear in the discus-
sion, but the close connection to Ancient Near Eastern rhetoric
about it is more obvious in a composition attributed to Solon,
quoted in the same source:
My best witness before the tribunal of posterity will be the great
mother of the Olympian Gods, black Earth.
For I removed the markstones of'bondage" which had been fastened
upon her everywhere; and she who had then been a slave is now
free.
I brought home to Athens, to their fatherland, many Athenians who,
lawfully or unlawfully, had been sold abroad, and others who,
having fled their country under dire constraint of debts, no
longer spoke the Attic tongue-so wide had been their wander-
ings.
21 Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp, Aristotle's Constitution ojAthens and Related
Texts, (New York, London: Hafner, Co1lier-Macmillan 1950 1974) 73.
22 ' , ,
These were stones set up on the lands offarmers who had mortgaged their land.
IDEOLOGY 73
I also restored to freedom those who here at home had been sub-
jected to shameful servitude, and trembled before their
masters."
And a little later in the same composition Solon says:
I enacted laws for the noble and the vile alike, setting up a straight
rule ofjustice for everybody."
Plutarch, who lived till after 120 C.B., in his life ofSolon used the
same poem to show Solon's achievement, but noted that "some,
as Androtion [died 340 B.C.E.], affirm that the debts were not
canceled, but the interest only lessened," though Plutarch doubted
that. 25
The Rosetta Stone, the key to the decipherment of Egyptian
after it was discovered in 1799 C.E., records decrees in the reign
of Ptolemy V Epiphanes in 196 B.C.E., loosening some govern-
mental burdens:
...and of the revenues and tax-collections existing in Egypt he
entirely remitted some and others he has lightened, in order that the
native people and all others might be in a state of serenity during his
reign, and the royal debts, which both those in Egypt and those in the
rest of his kingdom owed and which were many in number, he
remitted, and those who had been led off to prisons and those who
were since long ago under accusation he freed from their charges. 26
Another Graeco-Egyptian ruler Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II and his
sister and wife proclaimed an amnesty in 118 B.C.E. apparently at
23 Ibid., 79.
24 Ibid., 80.
25 Plutarch, Life of Solon 15f., in The Lives ofthe Noble Grecians and Romans,
translated by John Dryden, (New York: Modem Library, n.d.), 106.
26 Roger S. Bagnall and Peter Derow, Greek Historical Documents:The Hellinistic
Period, (Chico, California: Scholars, 1981),226-230,227.
74 CHAPTER THREE
the conclusion of a civil war between the king and his sister.
Among the elements they proclaimed is the following:
And they remit to everyone the arrears of the corvee-tax."
Also officials were not to "impress any of the inhabitants of the
country for private services...nor compel them to work without
payment on any pretext whatever." The royal family also
legislated against enslavement for debt:
And they have decreed that collectors of foreign debts shall not on
any pretext whatever attach the persons ofthe cultivators of Crown
land or those who work for state interests or the others whom the
previouslyissued decrees forbidto be broughtup for accusation,but
the exactionoftheir debts shallbe made from their property in so far
as it is not exempted in the present decree.
It is not clear that this is a general exemption, and we do not know
what exactly a foreign debt is. 28 There were several other Ptole-
maic edicts of remission that have not been so well preserved.
Rostovzeff speculated that they must have been a genre that was
traditional in Egypt which the Greek rulers accepted, calling the
genre 1:& <lnA<Xv8p<I>7t<X "acts of kindness to people." 29
2. LEGAL COLLECTIONS
In Mesopotamian law codes, a related genre of texts, economic
distress appears in the few texts with preambles as the major
27 A.S. Hunt and C.C. Edgar, Select Papryi 2, (Cambridge, London: Harvard and
Heinemann, 1934, 1964), item 120, 60-61: arears of the corvee-tax is O<!>€lAO/lEVOU
A€l1:0UPYlKOU. Compare Bagnall and Derow, Documents, 80-85.
28 Ibid., 72-73. "Foreign debt" is 'T:OUe; 'T:~V ~€VlK~V 1tpaK'T:Opae;.
29 Michael Rostovzeff, The Social and Economic History ofthe Hellenistic World,
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1941), 2:878-882.
IDEOLOGY 75
motivation for the composition ofthe texts, but that was probably
a literary topos or cliche. The kings wished to be seen doing
something effective in the face of economic crises, but there were
no mechanisms for determining if an actual economic crisis
existed, and there is little indication that kings were sophisticated
in their economic thought. Still, it is significant that the assump-
tion was always that the government ought to have some sort of
response to a perceived economic crisis."
Let us look at two of the prologues that discuss freedom.
Around 2050 RC.E. a king in the so-called Ur-Nammu Code
writes,
I freed the Akkadians and foreigners (?) in the lands of Sumer and
Akkad, for those conductingforeign maritime trade (free from) the
sea-captains, for the herdsmen (free from) those who appropriate
oxen, sheep, and donkeys. At that time, by the might of Nanna, my
lord, I established the freedom of Aksak, Marad, Girkal, Kazallu,
and their settlements, and for Usarum, whatever (territories) were
under the subjugation of Ansan."
The term used here is the same for manumission of slaves, and the
image is one offreeing up commerce from governmental interfer-
ence.
From about 1930 RC.E. in the prologue to Lipit-Istar's legal
collection the king boasts:
At that time I undid the slavery and established the freedom of the
sons and daughtersof the city of Nippur, the sons and daughters of
the city ofUr, the sons and daughtersofthe city ofIsin, the sons and
30 Dietz Otto Edzard, "Soziale Reformen im Zweistromland bis 1600 v. Chr.:
Realitat oder literarischen Topos?" Acta Antiqua 22 (1974): 145-156.
31 Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, (Atlanta:
Scholars, 1995), 15-16. For transliteration of this and subsequent texts see Appendix
II.
 76 CHAPTER THREE
daughters of the lands of Sumer and Akkad, who were subjugated
[by the yoke?] and I restored them to their place."
The language is ofgeneral freedom, but the reference might be to
the special privileges and exemptions that people in the two cities
mentioned ought to enjoy, as well as to a more general freedom
for all of Sumer and Akkad.
When the subject ofrefugees arises in the legal texts, one finds
predictably that the powers that be were not sympathetic to flight.
And people who knowingly harbored such slaves were subject to
penalties as, presumably, the slaves were."
The earliest relevant text is from Lipit-Istar, king ofIsin:
Lipit-Istar 12Ifa slave-girlor slave ofa man has fled within the city
and it has been confirmed that he (or she) dwelt in the house of
(another) man for one month, he shall give slave for slave.
13 Ifhe has no slave, he shall pay fifteen shekels of silver.
Here the householder encouraged or harbored the runaway for a
considerable period; the reason he might do so was his need for
additional labor. This was a breach in ruling-class ethics, but the
short-term advantage to the harborermust have been more obvious
to many than the advantages of ruling-class solidarity. The idea
of the punishment seems to be that the slave's labor would be
32 Ibid., 25.
33 Raymond Westbrook, "Slave and Master," 1670-1673, surveys these texts on
flight. Compare W.G. Clarence-Smith, "Runaway Slaves and Social Banditry in
Southern Angola," in Out of the House of Bondage. Runaways, Resistance and
Marronage in Africa and the New World, edited by Gad Heuman, 23-33, (London:
Frank Cass, 1986),27: "When labour was scarce, masters did all they could to entice
slaves away from their owners." And see Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the
Law, 1619-1860, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996),334-335,
noting that harboring was seen to be related to "inveigling," which was getting someone
else's slave to work for you; at first such conduct was only "ungentlemanly," but
increasingly it was seen as a crime. Still, whites did take in runaways, sometimes for
altruistic motives if they felt them cruelly treated by others, and sometimes for selfish
motives to increase their own labor force; see Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll,
(New York: Vintage, 1976), 42, 644.
I
IDEOLOGY 77
repaid with another slave's labor, perhaps just for a month. The
monetary equivalent is attested occasionally as a low price for an
Old Babylonian male slave in texts from about the same era as
Lipit-Istar; it would seem a punitively high amount to pay for the
use of a slave for a month."
From somewhat later in the same period comes the collection
of legal instances in Akkadian language found at Esnunna in the
Diyala region of northem Iraq. A relevant passage is:
Esnunna 50 If the governor, the river commissioner or another
official, whoever it may be, seizes a lost slave, a lost slave-girl, a
lost ox, a lost donkey belonging to the palace or a muskenum and
does not surrender it to Esnunna but keeps it in his house, allowing
more than a month to pass, the palace shallprosecute him for theft.35
Again the issue here is that a member of the ruling class failed to
surrender an escapee, or any other kind of animate property,
including animals. The exact punishment is not stated, but the
government felt an obligation to intervene, though note that the
culprit was a government official, not a simple harborer ofescaped
property.
In the next paragraph the law-givers deal with the problem of
slave movement:
Esnunna 51 A slave or a slave-girl of Esnunna who bears fetters,
shackles, or a slave hairlock shall not leave the gate of Esnunna
without his owner's permission.
Here the issue was prevention of escape, and the hope was
apparently that all slaves would have some such mark indicating
their status. This stipulation seems within the purview ofthe city
34 On Mesopotamian slave prices, see Howard Farber, "An Examination of Long
Term Fluctuations in Prices and Wages for Northern Babylonia During the Old
Babylonian Period," M.A. Thesis, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, 1974,24.
35 Roth, Law Collections, 66-67. A muSkenum was probably a simple citizen; see
Martin Stol, "Muskenum," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 8 (1997): 492-493.
78 CHAPTER THREE
government to regulate access through the city gate. Each of the
signs of servitude was, however, easily removable, though one
might look funny after a haircut to remove a top-knot. It is easy
to see that the regulation was not sufficient to stop escape.
The opposite case is also treated:
Esnunna 52 A slave or a slave-girl who has entered the gate of
-Esnunna in the custody of the (foreign) envoy shall bear fetters,
shackles, or a slave hairlock but remains in the custody of his
master.
Here the authorities wished to assure that the removable signs of
slavery were maintained at least within the city even if foreigners
were involved. This appears to indicate that the authorities could
not rely on custom elsewhere in their cultural sphere to guarantee
that there would be a physical manifestation of slave status, and
they saw that this fact complicated their administering of the
regulations about slaves, and it kept them from preventing the
escape of slaves.
Esnunna 30 also is concerned with the ostensibly free person
who leaves:
If a man repudiates his city and his master and then flees, and
someone else then married his wife, whenever he returns he will
have no claim on his wife."
The possible penalty besides the loss ofhis wife is not discussed,
and what the relation to the master might be is also passed over.
Flight clearly could be attractive to persons of several statuses.
36 Note the parallel with Hammurapiparagraph 136 without a master but with the
same judgment, Roth, Law Collections, 107:
If a man deserts his city and flees, and after his departure his wife enters another's
house--ifthat man then should return and seize his wife, because he repudiatedhis
city and fled, the wife of the deserter (munabtim) will not return to her husband.
IDEOLOGY 79
From about 1760 B.C.E. the much larger collection made under
Hammurapi deals with escaped slaves in two places, paragraphs
15-20 and 226-227:
Hammurapi 15 Ifa man has helped either a male slave ofthe palace
or a female slave ofthe palace or a male slave ofa private citizen or
a female slave ofa private citizen to escape through the city-gate, he
shall be put to death.
Again the first problem tackled is the member of the ruling class
who actually helps a slave escape; beyond the city-gate lay fields
and then the steppe, where a slave could disappear. The harshness
of this stipulation is in contrast to the earlier collections dealing
with a similar situation and is typical of Hammurapi's codifica-
tion. It may be argued that Hammurapi was trying not to impose
a desert toughness on the city-dwellers but to assure that legal
decisions were applied consistently, even ifthe culprit were rich
and could buy his way out ofthe punishment under other concep-
tions of law."
Next the harborer is considered:
Hammurapi 16 If a man has harbored in his house either a fugitive
male or female slave belonging to the state or to a private citizen and
has not brought him forth at the public proclamation of the herald,
that householder shall be put to death.
The harboring is "hiding." The punishment is the same, but the
instance is different in that the slave had not escaped the city. The
herald had yelled abroad the fact of the escape, and the culprit
ignored the news. Again the culprit probably hoped to increase his
own labor force. The administrationbelieved that local authorities
would be organized enough to have a herald walk around yelling
37 See J.J. Finkelstein, "Arnmisaduqa's Edict and the Babylonian 'Law Codes,",
Journal ofCuneiform Studies 15 (1961): 91-104,98.
80 CHAPTER THREE
this news. This is certainly a basic element of a system to detect
escaped slaves, but it may not have been widespread.
The next paragraph proceeds to the reward due one who returns
a runaway:
Hammurapi 17Ifaman caught a fugitivemale or female slave in the
open and has taken him to his owner, the owner of the slave shall
pay him two shekels of silver.
A reward is envisioned for a free man's doing his duty to the slave
society. The "open" is the steppe, the uncultivated area between
city-administered farmland. Two shekels was a substantial
amount, although a fraction of the value of the slave.
The case was then elaborated:
Hammurapi 18 If that slave has not named his owner, he shall take
him to the palace in order that his circumstances may be investi-
gated, and they shall return him to his owner.
The slave did not have to cooperate in his own capture. The
supposition was that local knowledge obtainable by the adminis-
trators would be sufficient to elucidate what the slave would rather
have hidden. It is not clear what might happen if the slave were
unknown, or, indeed, how one would know that the slave was a
slave, especially if he or she denied it. Paragraph 18 underlines
the basic assumption of a slave-holding society, that the govern-
ment especially should concern itselfwith making sure the servile
were in their places.
The person who succeeded in the clandestine harboring was
considered next:
Hammurapi 19 Ifhe has kept that slave in his house (and) later the
slave has been found in his possession, that man shall be put to
death.
This instance seems to be the same as paragraph 16, though
different verbs were used iirtaqima versus iktaliisu). In 19 he had
IDEOLOGY 81
kept or retained the slave, who might otherwise have wished to
leave, even to return to the rightful master, but this paragraph is
clearly a continuation of 17 and 18, where the slave had been
caught outside. Again, ruling class solidarity was broken, and a
harsh punishment was meted out.
Lawmakers then examined the possibility of escape:
Hammurapi 20 Ifthe slave has escaped from the hand ofhis captor,
that man shall so affirmby god to the owner ofthe slave and he shall
then go free.
The person who was trying, but failed, to do his duty to the slave
society would suffer in that it would be unpleasant to have to take
an oath, but the legal text held that he ought not to be punished
because he had once caught the wily escaping slave.
In later paragraphs Hammurapi' s compilers were concerned
with the manipulation of the slave haircut:
Hammurapi226 Ifa barber cut off the slavehaircut of a slavenot his
own without the consent of the owner ofthe slave, they shall cut off
the hand of that barber.
The context is that ofworkers who were not careful in their work,
and here the barber was in collusion with the escaping slave.
Also, though, the owner could allow the removal ofthe mark, but
we do not know why one would do so except at the time of
manumission. The next section deals with a free person's having
a barber remove a slave's slave haircut:
Hammurapi227 Ifa man deceiveda barber so that he has cut off the
slave haircut of a slavenot his own, they shall put that man to death
and immurehim at his gate; the barber shall swear,"I did not cut (it)
off knowingly," and then he shall go free.
A free third party was the one to suffer if he passed as the master
and allowed the slave haircut to come off. Then, reasonably, the

82 CHAPTER THREE
barber was not liable, and the man suffered a horrible fate at his
own gate.
From a later time and less clearly connected to the Mesopotam-
ian tradition we have the Hittite Laws. The Hittite compilation
may have been made over several generations, starting perhaps as
early as 1650 RC.E. and culminating around 1200 B.C.E., from
Asia Minor, now Turkey. Its relevant passages include:
Hittite 22 If a male slave runs away and someone brings him back,
ifhe seizes him nearby, his owner shall give shoes to the finder; if
he seizes him near this side of the river, he shall pay 2 shekels of
silver; if on the other side of the river, he shall pay 3 shekels of
silver."
This section addresses the rewards to come to the one who
returned a runaway, in increasing amounts depending on the
distance over which the returned had to bring the slave; it is
amusing that shoes were used as a cheap money for this purpose.
Hittite 23 Ifa male slave runs away and goes to the land ofLuwiya,
his owner shall pay 6 shekels of silver to whoeverbrings him back.
If a male slave runs away and goes into an enemy country, whoever
brings him back shall keep the slave for himself.
Luwiya was distant from the Hittite capital, but it seems to have
had political connections with Hatti so that Hittite legal claims
might be enforceable there." The tariff of rewards increases,
culminating in the reward ofthe slave himself, who must have cost
more than six shekels.
38 Roth, Law Collections, 220.
39 See Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., The Laws ofthe Hittites, (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 101,
and E. Laroche, "Luwier, Luwisch, Lu(w)iya," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 7 (1988):
181-184.
IDEOLOGY 83
Hittite 24 If a male or female slave runs away, the one at whose
hearth the slave-owner finds him or her shall pay one month's
wages: 12 shekels of silver for a man, and six shekels of silver for a
woman."
The principle here as elsewhere is that the harborer must pay for
the work that the slave presumably did for him. The version
reproduced here implies that the slave was away only a short time,
while the New Hittite version foresees a year's absence before
discovery. The stipulation clearly shows that some people did
harbor slaves, and among the punishments for harboring, this one
is a light one. .
Finally in the Hittite collection is an obscure stipulation that
may relate to a runaway:
Hittite 173bIfa slave declareshimself free from his owner, he shall
go into a clay jar.
The punishment is quite obscure. Some suggest that the slave was
to sit in a cistern and think about misdeeds as a punishment or
perhaps that he should submit to an ordeal that would determine
guilt. The verb implies physical assault on the master, and in the
New Hittite context the punishment probably led to death;
obviously this rebellion was abad thing."
The Middle Assyrian laws from before 1070 B.C.E. did not
concern themselves with this sort of question, but we learn
obliquely of attitudes when lawgivers dealt with wives who
deserted their husbands:
40 The Old Hittite manuscript from around 1700 B.C.E. reads thus; the New Hittite
manuscript from around 1200 reads "shall pay one year's wages: 100 shekels of silver
for a man 50 shekels of silver for a woman." See H. Hoffner in Roth, Law Collections,
238 n. 15';the transliteration in Appendix II gives the New Hittite reading.
41 Roth, Law Collections, 234, and see H. Hoffner's note, ibid, 240, n. 56. Hoffner,
Laws, 139 and n. 476 and 219-220. Compare Fiorella Imparati, Le Leggi lttite, (Rome:
Ateneo, 1964): "he will be punished with an ignominious capital punishment, the
character of which still remains obscure" 305 and n. 2.
84 CHAPTER THREE
Middle Assyrian 24 If a man's wife, having deserted her husband,
has entered the house of another Assyrian, either in the same city or
in some neighboring city, where he set her up in a house, residing
with the mistress of the house, staying the night three or four nights,
without the master ofthe house knowing that the man's wife was
residing in his house, and later that woman has been caught, the
master of the house whose wife deserted him shall cut off (the ears
of) his wife and (not) take her back; they shall cut off the ears ofthe
man's wife with whom his wife resided; ifhe pleases, her husband
may pay three talents thirty minas (12,600 shekels) of lead as her
value, or if he wishes, he may take his wife back. However, if the
master of the house knew that the man's wife was residing in the
house with his wife, he shall pay triple. However, ifhe has denied
it by declaring, "I did not know," they shall go to the river for the
water ordeal. However, if the man in whose house the other man's
wife was residing has turned back from the river, he shall pay triple;
if the man whose wife deserted him has turned back from the river,
he is clear since he shall bear the expenses for the river ordeal.
However, if the man whose wife deserted him does not cut off (the
ears of) his wife and takes her back, there is no punishment at all."
The principle is the same as for the harborer of slaves in earlier
compilations. Punishments were monetary for the harborer, but
the runaway wife suffered physical mutilation, as did her friend.
The cases show that one might assume female solidarity, as the
female friend harbored the runaway from a possibly abusive
situation. And the focus ofthe section is on whether the husband
ofthe friend knew the runaway was present. The Middle Assyrian
Laws concern themselves especially with female behavior, and
these instances are directly connected to the assertion of male
power over females, but the lawgivers recognized that the men
were not always fully informed, even about who was in the house.
The river ordeal was used, as the oath was earlier, as a way of
invoking the gods' assurance that justice was served.
42 Roth, Law Collections, 161-162.
IDEOLOGY 85
The following chart presents a scheme of what is discussed in
laws:
Laws on Runaways
Collection: Lipit-Istar Esnunna Hammurapi Hittite Middle
Assyrian
Date 1930B.C.E. 1900 1760 1200 1077
slave punished ttl
harborer punished ttl ttl ttl ttl
slave haircut ttl ttl
The interesting thing about the legal material is that it did not
usually deal with the punishment ofthe escaping slaves. Although
they might be punished privately by their owners, very little is said
about this issue. Instead the slave appears to be a non-person
around whom free persons commit acts that may be punishable.
The harborer, who must have been a common figure to judge from
the laws, was punished for stealing the labor ofthe runaway slave.
One gets from the Middle Assyrian case the image of a sprawling
household in which the master might not even know if his wife
were harboring a runaway.
From the legal material one cannot confidently deduce what
actually happened in particular instances of flight. It is clear that
slave flight was a preoccupation of the ruling classes, and it was
uniformly condemned. The fact that free persons aided slaves
implies that the class solidarity some of the rulers would have
liked to foster was not universal, and, more concretely, that free
persons had clear consciences about appropriating other people's
slaves ifthey happened to run away. We do not know from legal
material how the successful runaway was regarded. It is probable
that the runaway who did not attain his own village might suffer
in a limbo ofstatus, where a harborer might treat him like a slave,
 86 CHAPTER THREE
but others might not know ofhis former servitude. He might have
been held hostage by the new master because ofhis former status,
and that might have been almost as bad as being a slave.
3. TREATIES
Another source for ideological information is the international
treaty. There, however, the question is acutely posed of whether
the runaways envisioned were of slave status. It does not appear
that they frequently were. Erich Ebeling suggested that there was
an ancient distinction between the flight ofthe free and that ofthe
unfree. While it is conceivable that he was right, it does not
appear that there was any difference in the vocabulary of flight;
that is, the same terms were used to describe escape, regardless of
the person's status."
It is well to remember why the two categories ofrunaways, free
and slave, would be of concern to the authorities. Free runaways
. were a worry because of their potential political power. As in the
case of the exiled Syrian prince Idrimi, which we will examine
below, a free exile, ifhe were well-connected, could raise an army
among his foreign hosts and eventually return to rule in the place
ofthose who had made his life unpleasant. Thus rulers would try
to require the return ofexiled free persons who were revolutionar-
ies.
Slaves and other laborers appeared to be less of a threat to the
well-being of rulers in that they rarely could raise armies abroad,
and probably it would not have occurred to most of them to try.
43 "Fluchtling," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 3 (1957): 88-90. It might also be
argued that there was a distinction between debt -slaves and other slaves. Hammurapi' s
collection (paragraph 117) and the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 21:2-11 and Deuteronomy
15: 12-18) legislated leniency for the debt-slave and limited the years ofservice to three
and six, respectively. The reason for the three-year term may derive from the idea that
a loan should be considered paid offwhen the equivalent ofthe principal had been paid,
and agricultural loans were usually at 33 1/3% annual interest, as suggested by Michael
Hudson, "How Interest Rates Were Set, 2500 BC-l 000 AD," Journal ofthe Economic
and Social History ofthe Orient 43,2 (2000): 132-161, 158.
IDEOLOGY 87
Persons of low status, they probably mostly hoped simply to get
away from their oppressive situations, and usually they had no
conception of returning to free others. Even the much later and
better documented Roman slave revolts showed little concern for
establishing the freedom of others; instead Spartacus and his
fellows wished to make themselves masters of other slaves. One
might argue that in societies in which the work of slaves was
essential, slave escape would be just as important as the escape of
non-slaves in the view of the state, but it is fairly clear that the
rulers did not see the situation in that light. They did not conceive
that the gradual decay of their stock of slaves would eventuate in
a total depletion ofslaves, which might affect their economic well-
being. We believe that usually the number ofslaves in Mesopota-
mia was not high anyway, and thus the escape of even all slaves
might be seen as economically meaningless. Even in later
societies that were much more dependent on slaves, it appears that
owners frequently tolerated runaways and did not bother to search
for them because it was too much trouble, and the absenteeism
usually did not lead to successfullong-tenn flight."
International treaties date from the third millennium, and their
number grows in the second and first millennia, and a common
element is the agreement to return each other's refugees. It
appears that what was envisioned was political self-exiles who had
run afoul of the home regime; it was expected that the friendly
foreign regime would make it its business to return such disaf-
fected people to their homelands and to their home governments,
where their fates could be decided. Such treaties, ifput into effect,
would mean that, ifthe regimes controlled neighboring areas, the
borders in those directions would be closed to flight by the
44 See the survey by Wolfgang Rubinsohn, Die grossen Sklavenaufstande der
Antike, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), and Keith R. Bradley,
Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989), and Heinz Bellen, Studien zur Sklavenjlucht im romischen Keiserreich,
(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971). Compare William Dusinberre, Them Dark Times. Slavery
in the American Rice Swamps, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), reference
courtesy of Richard Lowitt.
 CHAPTER THREE
88
disaffected. And yet, given the mountainous terrain between
Mesopotamia and the east, and the desert to the west and south,
there must still have been ample spaces to which to escape, if
return to one's farming community were out of the question for
political reasons. .
It does not seem likely that until deportations in the first
millennium B.C.E. there were very many politically motivated
refugees. The refugees from cities discussed above ~n the la~e
second millennium in Syria might be a large exception to this
generalization." . valued as slaves than men, though it was thought possible that
The earliest treaty reference is a broken one from the third-
millennium agreement between Elam in what is now Iran and
Naram-Sin, the king ofAkkad, ruler ofMesopotamia around 229?,
B.C.E. The king pledged, "I shall not take for myself a refugee,
meaning, presumably, he would not take in people fleeing from
Elam to his COurt.46
A concern for the return ofrunaways dominates the short treaty
found at Alalakh in northern Syria (now Turkey) between Idrimi
47
and Pilliya, dating to around 1500 B.C.E.:
...they will always return their respective ~gitive~, ~that is,) ~fI~i~i
seizes a fugitive ofPilliya, he will return him to Pilliya, and if'Pilliya
seizes a fugitive ofIdrimi, he will return him to Idrimi. Anyone who
seizes a fugitive and returns him to his master, (the owner) will pay
as prize of capture 500 (shekels of) copper if it is ~ man,. ~ne
thousand as prize of capture ifit is a woman. However, If a fugitive
from Pilliya enters the land ofIdrimi and nobody seizes him, but his
own master seizes him, he need not pay a prize ofcapture to anyone.
45 On borders see Steven Grosby, "Borders, Territory and Nationality in the Ancient
Near East and Arrnenia," Journal ofthe Economic and Social History ofthe Orient 40: 1
(1997): 1-29, though one may be skeptical about how clear ancient self-definitions of
the state were.
46 Walther Hinz "Elams Vertrag mit Nararn-Sin von Akkade," Zeitschriji fUr
Assyriologie 58 (1967): 66-96, 91-93, iv 15-16: "Einen Fliichtling werde ich nicht bei
mir aufnehmen," restoring [pu-ti-]ik-ra in Elamite, explained, 76.
47 Erica Reiner in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 532.
IDEOLOGY 89
In whatever city (it is suspected that) they conceal a fugitive, the
mayor and five elders will make a declaration under oath. From the
very day on which Barattarna [another prince] has sworn this oath
by the gods together with Idrimi, from that day on it is decreed that
fugitives have to be returned.
Here actual slaves with masters were apparently envisioned, not
political refugees as in some other treaties. The really interesting
thing is the vast difference in the prizes offered for women over
men, indicating in this circumstance that women were more highly
either might escape."
A treaty between Tudhaliya II ofthe Hittites and Sunassura of
Kizzuwatna from about 1450 B.C.E. has the following suggestive
passage:
Ifa fugitive from Hatti goes to [Kizzuwatna], Sunassura shall seize
him and give him back to His Majesty. But if someone hides a
fugitive, and he is discovered in his house, he must pay twelve
unfree persons. Ifhe cannot come up with twelve unfree persons, he
himself [must be killed]. Ifa slave hides a fugitive, and ifhis master
will not make restitution on his behalf, will not pay the twelve
unfree persons, ifhis master does not make restitution on his behalf,
he must forfeit the slave himself. And the provision for Sunassura is
the same."
48 See in general Mario Liverani, "L'Estradizione dei refugiati in AT 2," Rivista
degli Studi Orientali 39 (1964): 111-115. This vast difference in assumed price derives
from the value of women as concubines and wives and implies a slave system for this
period at least more like systems in Islamic lands than those in the New World, where
heavy manual labor was needed most, and men were more valuable. See in general
Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World, (New York: New Amsterdam, 1989), 79-
104. In Southern Mesopotamian legal collections children offemale slaves fathered by
the master were free, as one may deduce from Harnmurapi 170-171 (Roth, Legal, 113-
114), where if a free father acknowledges children, they divide inheritance equally with
children of a free mother; ifthe father does not acknowledge them, they and the mother
are still said to be free.
49 Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, (Atlanta: Scholars, 1996),2:5-7, 21-22.
Kizzuwatna was in southeast Asia Minor; see H.M. Kummel, "Kizzuwatna," Reallexi-
kon der Assyriologie 5 (1976-1980): 627-631.
90 CHAPTER THREE
This penalty for harboring seems extreme, and it is odd that it is
to be paid in unfree persons. One gets the impression that
harboring was frequent and, since it usually was an upper-class
crime, was usually overlooked. Note that the slave himselfmight
have the opportunity to harbor others and would be punished with
the same fine of twelve persons. In the slave's case, it would be
his owner who suffered for the slave's crime. But then it was
probably the free owner who benefitted from the harboring
anyway.
In an edict probably functioning as a treaty found at the north
Syrian city ofUgarit the Hittite king Suppiluliuma (1380-1346
RC.E.) declared:
Thus he said: If in later days refugees of Nuhas or Mukis, or other
countries, going forth from their countries to Ugarit enter into the
service of the king of Ugarit, no other king of another country will
take them back from the hands ofNiqmadu, king ofUgarit, or from
the hands of his sons or the sons of his sons, forever. My Sun, the
great king, made an agreement thus.
The Hittite king here rewarded the loyal king of Ugarit with the
right to receive refugees from an enemy or former enemy king-
dom."
The Egyptian treaty of 1280 RC.E. between Ramses II and the
Hittites is also relevant:"
[If a great man flees from the land of Egypt and comes to] the Great
Prince of Hatti, or a town belonging to the lands of Ramses Meri-
50 Jean Nougayrol, Le Palais royal d'Ugarit 4, (Paris: Imprimerie nationale,
Klincksiek, 1956),52, text 17.369 A. Mukis was a kingdom to the north ofUgarit
which eventually fell into the Hittite sphere of influence but for a time was an enemy.
See H. Klengel, "Mukis," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 8 (1995): 410-412. Related is
text 17.132, 40-43,36-37 on soldiers from Mukis, and 17.334, 11-15, 54-55, in
connection with the kingdom ofNuhasse.
51 Albrecht Goetze in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 200-201; the Hittite
version, ibid., 203, and Beckman, Diplomatic, 90-95; these are paragraphs 12 and 15.
These treaties have not been transliterated in Appendix II.
IDEOLOGY 91
Amon, the great ruler of Egypt, and they come to the Great Prince
ofHatti, the Great Prince ofHatti shall not receive them. The Great
Prince of Hatti shall cause them to be brought to User-maat-Re
Setep-en-Re, the great ruler of Egypt, their lord, [because] of it. Or
if a man or two men--no matter who--flee, and they come to the land
of Hatti to be servants of someone else, they shall not be left in the
land ofHatti; they shall be brought to Ramses Meri-Arnon,the great
ruler of Egypt. [Next paragraph: same for Hatti.]
If a man flees from the land of Egypt--or two or three--and they
come to the Great Prince ofHatti, the Great Prince ofHatti shall lay
hold ofthem, and he shall cause that they be brought back to User-
maat-Re Setep-en-Re, the great ruler of Egypt. But, as for the man
who shall be brought to Ramses Meri-Amon, the great ruler of
Egypt, do not cause that his crime be raised against him; do not
cause that his house or his wives or his children be destroyed; [do
not cause that] he be [slain]; do not cause that injury be done to his
eyes, to his ears, to his mouth, or to his legs; do not let any [crime be
raised] against him. [Next paragraph: same for Hatti.]
The treaty depicted here did not envision large numbers of
political refugees, and it is not clear how the case of the "great
man" was distinguished from the latter case. It may be that a
really important person would suffer punishment for his flight.
But the less important persons appear to be promised safe conduct
and amnesty back to their home realms ifthe foreign king went to
the trouble of returning them. Whether this stipulation would be
put into effect is doubtful, but it was certainly in the treaty to
assuage the conscience ofrulers faced with fearful foreign political
refugees."
Perhaps more usual is the treaty between the Hittite king
Mursili II and Tuppi-Tessub of Amurru, in central western Syria,
around 1250 RC.E.: 53
52 M arlo . P restige
. L'rveram, . and I.nterest, (Padua: Sargon, 1990), 109, suggests in
general that commoners would lose their freedom ifretumed but high status political
refugees would probably be killed.
53 Goetze in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 204-205; Beckman,
Diplomatic, 54-59.
92 CHAPTER THREE IDEOLOGY 93

Paragraph 13 Ifanyone ofthe deportees from the Nuhasse land or of Treatment of Fugitives in Hittite Diplomatic Texts
the deportees from the country of Kinza whom my father removed
and myselfremoved escapes and comes to you (if) you do not seize Beckman # Allied Country Treatment
him and turn him back to the king of the Hatti land, and even tell Approximate Date
him as follows: "Go! Where you are going to, I do not want to 1 Kizzuwatna Return Hittite fugitives.
know," you act in disregard of your oath. 15th cent. RC.E.
2 Kizzuwatna Return Hittite fugitives; harborer
Paragraph 15 Ifa population or a fugitive takes to the road and while pays 12 unfree or is killed;
betaking themselves to the Hatti land pass through your territory, put 1450 B.C.E. slave harborer pays too.
them on the right way, show them the way to the Hatti land and 4 Ugarit Nuhassi, Mukis fugitives may
speak friendly words to them! Do not send them to anyone else! If 1350 RC.E. stay with king ofUgarit
you do not put them on the right way, (if) you do not guide them on 5 Amurru Return Hittite fugitives; if
the right way to the Hatti land, but direct them into the mountains or 1350 B.C.E. noble or slave fled,
speak unfriendly words before them, you act in disregard ofthe oath. king may return them. If one
escapes to Aziru, he must
Paragraph 17 Furthermore, ifa fugitive comes to your country, seize
return him; king will not return
him!... fugitives.
6A Mittani Return Hittite fugitives; king
In these stipulations the rights of the king of the Hittites were 1350 RC.E. of Mittani will not return fugitives.
uppermost; his friends had to be treated as the king of Amurru's 7 Nuhassi Return Hittite fugitives; may
friends, and his enemies as his enemies. 1350 RC.E. seek noble or slave fled, and
Other texts illustrate the more usual situation where the king may return him.
8 Amurru Return fleeing captives from
Ugaritic king had to return Hatti's own refugees:
1330 RC.E. Nuhassi; help fugitives to
If, outside of Hatti a refugee flees, may Niqmepa capture him and Hatti; return Hittite fugitives.
9 Ugarit Return fleeing captives from
[send him] to the king ofHatti; [ifnot, you transgress your] oath. If
1330 RC.E. Nuhassi; may seek noble or
a refugee out ofUgarit [flees and] goes Ito Hatti] the king of Hatti
will not [retain him"]." slave, and king may return them;
return Hittite fugitives.
10 Hapalla Return Hittite fugitives; I will
These and other Hittite treaties are summarized in the following 1330 RC.E. not return fugitives from
table:
Hapalla, but will return craftsman who
does not deliver his work.
11 Mira- Return Hittite fugitives;
1330 RC.E. Kuwaliya I will not return fugitives
from Mira-Kuwaliya, but will return
craftsman who does
not deliver his work.
54 Jean Nougayrol, Le Palais royal d'Ugarit 417.79+374,98; for transliteration 12 SehaRiver Return fugitives fleeing
see Appendix II. Compare also 17.238, 108; 18.114, 108, and 18.04, 241.

(
 CHAPTER THREE IDEOLOGY 95
94

1330B.C.E Hittites, Hittite fugitives. he comes back into your territory. Are you now, my brother,
13 Wi1usa I will not return fugitives, but favorably disposed to this conduct? Now, my brother, write at least
1300B.C.E. will return craftsman who this to him: "Rise up, go forth into the Land of Hatti. Your lord has
does not deliver his work; return Hit- settled his account with you? Otherwise come into the Land of
tite fugitives. Ahhiyawa, and in whatever place I settle you [stay there]. Rise up
15 Egypt Return Hittite noble fugitive, with your prisoners, your wives and children, and settle down in
1270B.C.E. also if only one, two, or another place. So long as you are at enmity with the king of Hatti,
three; return Egyptian fugitives. exercise your hostility from another country. From my country you
19 Ugarit If'Nuhassi, or Mukis troops shall not conduct hostilities.t'"
1350B.C.E. enter, you may keep
them. While this is not a treaty, it does show that the problem of well
20 Ugarit If Nuhassi troops come as fugitives, placed political refugees was an international issue of continuing
1330B.C.E. you may keep them. concern for the Hittites, if not for the Ionians, since we do not
27 W. Anatolia Return Hittite fugitives, know ifthere was a response to this plea."
1430B.C.E. even craftsmen. In the treaty between Niqmepa ofAlalakh in northern Syria and
Ir-Tessub of Tunip around 1200 B.C.E., actual fugitive slaves
Summary of Mentions
were discussed:
Return Hittite fugitives 13
Hittites to return foreign fugitives 4
Paragraph 5 Ifa fugitive, a male or female slave, ofmy land flees to
Hittites refuse to return foreign fugitives 4
your land, you must seize and return him to me, (or) if someone else
Hittites to return craftsmen 4
seizes him and takes him to you, [you must keep him] in your
Slaves discussed 4
prison, and whenever his owner comes forward, you must hand him
over to [him]. If (the slave) is not to be found, you must give (the
One can see from the summary that the major concern was the owner) an escort, and he may seize him in whatever town (the slave)
return of presumably free refugees to the great Hittite king. is found; (in any town where) he is not found, the mayor and five
Harboring was only discussed in the single text reviewed above. elders will declare under oath: "Your slave does not live among us
Actual slaves are only rarely mentioned, and as an afterthought in and we do not conceal him"?--if they are unwilling to take the oath,
Numbers 5, 7, and 9, with the slave harborer in Number 2. but (eventually) return the slave, [they go free], but ifthey take the
Also relevant is the Tawagalawa letter sent by Hattusili III oath and later he discovers his slave [among them], they are
(1275-1250 B.C.E.) to the king ofAhhiyawa, presumably a Greek-
speaking part of Ionia. Hattusili attempted to get the king on his
side, and he reproached him with harboring the political dissident
Piyamaradu. The relevant passage is column iii 55-iv 5:
55 Bryce, Kingdom of the Hittites, 323, and Ferdinand Sommer, Die Ahhiyawa-
According to this rumor, during the time when he leaves behind his Urkunden, (Munich: Bayerische Akademie, 1932), 14-17.
56 The letter is unique in that it foresees giving options to the refugee, ifhe did not
wife, children and household in my brother's land (the land of the
conduct hostile activities against Hatti, as noted by Liverani, Prestige and Interest, 110.
king of Ahhiyawa), your land is affording him protection. But he is
57 The text is actually in the second person: "my slave lives among you and you
continually raiding my land; whenever I have prevented him in that,
hide him."
96 CHAPTER THREE
considered thieves and their hands are cut off, (moreover) they will
pay 6,000 (shekels of) copper to the palace."
This passage is extremely suggestive since it shows that the
escaping slave had a good chance of disappearing into a nearby
community, in spite of the efforts of the authorities. A length of
time was assumed to have passed between the city fathers'
refusing the oath and their giving up the slave; obviously a lot of
political jockeying was happening within the community, and
these stipulations cannot be seen as more than pious wishes. But
they are also images ofwhat some in the power structure thought
ought to happen under ideal circumstances.
The text next addresses the harborer:
Paragraph 6 If a man, woman, ox, donkey, or horse [is found] in the
house of somebody (and the owner) identifies it, but (the man in
whose possession it was found) declares: "I have bought it," if he
can produce the merchant (from whom he bought it), he goes free,
but ifhe cannot produce the merchant, he who has identified it,...he
will declare under oath ["It is my..."], but ifhe is unwilling to take
the oath, [he is considered a thief and his hands are cut off.]
The lost slave was exactly like the lost animal, as in the Esnunna
legal collection paragraph 50 discussed above, and the slave's own
views of the matter were irrelevant. The buyer would have to
document the slave, and the flight of the slave might make the
merchant then liable to being proved a thief of the first owner's
property.
The next paragraph considers the harborer who claimed he was
not harboring a runaway:
Paragraph 7 If you hold a man in custody, he may do (forced) labor
with a...man, (but) if (the latter) [takesoff] his fetters, shaves offhis
slave mark,...and they catch him, he is considered a thief. If he
58 Erica Reiner in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 53 I.
IDEOLOGY 97
declares: [The man is mine], he will declare under oath as follows:
[(I swear) that the man is mine]; ifhe is unwilling to take the oath,
[he is a th]ief.... If the criminal, man, woman, or boy, does (forced)
labor in his house, and (the owner?) seizes him, he is considered a
thief, and (the criminal's) master will have him declare under oath:
I have captured him in the open country personally...
This means that someone who has been captured as a runaway
might work for the man holding him, but that person could not
alter his slave status. The person holding him was free from
blame ifhe were willing to say that he captured the runaway in the
country, where other witnesses would be absent.
From Syria in the Aramaic language around 750 B.C.E. the
treaty found at Sefire envisions that a lesser king would return
those who fled from a greater king:
Ifone of my officials or one of my brothers or one of my eunuchs or
one of the people under my control flees from me and becomes a
fugitive and goes to Aleppo, you must not pro[vide f]ood for them,
andyou must not say to them: Staypeacefully in your place, andyou
must not cause them to be disdainful ofme. You must placate them
and return them to me. Ifnot, they shall [remain] in your land to be
quiet there until I come and placate them. If you cause them to be
disdainful of me and provide food for them and say to them: Stay
where you are and pay no attention to him, you will have betrayed
this treaty.59
Again there seemed to be real fear of a politically well-connected
fugitive who got the cooperation of a lesser king.
One can see that in the treaties so far recovered from the
Ancient Near East which deal with this matter the major concern
was returning refugees, who were usually assumed to have been
free and politically active individuals, arriving in small groups.
Presumably we are looking at the very highest levels of societies
and their interaction with counterparts at the tops of other societ-
59 Franz Rosenthal in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 660.
98 CHAPTER THREE

ies. The issue of harboring remained, and in fact was the major
issue even ifnot explicitly discussed since not returning fugitives
would be by definition harboring. CHAPTER FOUR
The ideology of flight and freedom as revealed in edict, law,
and treaty was that refugees must be returned. BU~ law ~as FLIGHT IN LITERATURE AND STORY
addressed to the free and in general did not concern Itself with
slave punishments for escape. And treaties mostly addressed even
We classify the written material from the ancient world that has
more exalted audiences who may have dealt with free and
come down to us in three broad categories. Archival texts were
politically influential refugees as well as the occasional slave. The
composed to record information needed by a bureaucracy; we
ideology was to conserve property rights, but the texts reveal that
studied how flight and freedom were found in such texts in
everyone knew that free persons did violate property rights by
Chapter Two. Monumental texts were written to commemorate
exploiting runaways whenever possible.
greatness and to be treasured forever. In Chapter Three we looked
at flight and freedom in such official texts. Here we will look at
the issues in literary texts. Such texts were composed with various
purposes in mind, but all ended up as part of a curriculum used by
people training to be scribes. They come to us because these
scribes in training and their teachers copied them over. They thus
are less official than either archival or monumental texts and may
approach our modem ideas ofliterature, though sometimes they
may not. Some have called these kinds of texts canonical in that
they were supposed to be copied in a more or less fixed form over
time.'

1. NON-NARRATIVE TEXTS

In the materials studied by scribes and copied by them are

references to a series of texts to be studied by priests specializing
in exorcisms. They were to use these texts to accomplish
practical ends through magic, in one case the returning of a slave
who had fled. The first millennium copy we have is from the
Assyrian capital of Assur, but apparently it was included in the

) On the three categories see William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson, The
Ancient Near East:A History, second edition, (Fort Worth: Harcourt, Brace, 1998), 154-
157.
100 CHAPTER FOUR
earlier Babylonian curriculum of the incantation priest. 2 Having
made a clay doll to represent the fled slave, the exorcism priest
was to address the door, saying the following seven times before
the sun-god:
o door of the bedroom, you who are so firm,
I have firmed up your support with oil and wine.
Just as you swing out from your position,
but tu[rn back] the other way to where you were,
(So) may so-and-so, a runaway slave, swing out
But turn back the other way to his master's house.
A broken line indicates you may do the ritual in the tenth and
eleventh months, that is, winter and very early spring (line 17).
Additional interesting lines include:
If a slave has fled, his flight having been heard of,
or not heard of, (before) that man has come back,
you should sieve in the night? (a pattern) like the feet ofthe fled one,
[to the ashes with a sieve
on the threshold] of the main door and speak thus:
Night, veiled bride,
So-and-so, the runaway, will come back, and his feet will [stay?]
or he will not return and say "I will stay far away"...
The so-and-so was to be replaced in actual use by the name ofthe
slave. The concern of the text to try to control what was not
controllable is clear. The incantation priest was paid for his
troubles, and so his voice was unlikely to reflect anything but the
concern ofthe rich to have a valuable investment return.
As part ofthe Mesopotamian dictionary-making tradition, seen
in bilingual Sumerian and Akkadian texts in Assyria in the seventh
2 Erich Ebeling, "Eine assyrische Beschworung, urn einen enflohenen Sklaven
zuriickzubringen," Orientalia Nova Series 23 (1954): 52-62; translation of the most
coherent part is from Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses, (Bethesda, Maryland: COL,
1993),2: 897; lines 5-11 are after Ebeling.
FLIGHT IN STORY 101
century RC.E., there is a set of phrases scribes needed to know
that deal with runaways. They are as follows:
He ran away from the house of his lord.
When he ran away, someone returned him.
He put a foot-wood on him.
He placed a copper chain on him.
He passed a pestle.
Your one who runs away is caught.
His eyes he gouged out.
He strengthenedhis servitude.'
These increasingly oppressive phrases show the scribe looked
forward to the runaway's return and punishment which was
thought of as being increasingly painful. In such a laconic list
there is no room to say who would be punished in what way, but
mutilation was contemplated, as in the Old Babylonian example
discussed in Chapter Three. Perhaps the passing of the pestle,
usually a sign that a deal has been struck, implies in this context
that the escapee was to be sold.
The same slave-holder attitude is to be seen in the Sayings of
Ahiqar, an Aramaic composition probably originating around 500
RC.E. and studied in Egypt and the rest of the Near East for
hundreds of years afterwards, showing up in several different
languages. The composition was apprently intended to teach
ethics and wisdom to literate slave-holders. The relevant section
IS:
3 Benno Landsberger, Materialien zum sumerischen Lexikon I, (Rome: Pontificial
Biblical Institute, 1937),28-9; Tablet 2 iv 7'-15'. Compare also the language from an
Old Babylonian collection oflegal phrases giving a guarantee, presumably by a debtor
giving up a family member as a pledge to a creditor: "If she dies, flees, disappears, or
falls ill, he shall compensate in full for her assigned work." [t] u k u m - b i [ b a -
u g7] [b a - an -] za b- a [ti] - g u b a - an - d e u t u - r a b a - an - t u a- g is-
gar - r a - n i - s e b i - i b - s i - s i - g e. See Martha Roth, "Scholastic Tradition and
Mesopotamian Law: A Study of FLP 1287, A Prism in the Collection of the Free
Library of Philadelphia," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1979,48, to
column viii 3-10.
102 CHAPTER FOUR
He who acquires a runaway slave or
a thievish maid [does evil and ruins?] the
reputation of his father and his progeny
by his own corrupt reputation.'
The saying underlines the stupidity ofbuying a slave that is known
as a habitual runaway, and the perspective is that of the rich
person's attempting to minimize losses.
Among canonical texts about the dynasty ofAkkad (2334-2193
RC.E.) two note that Sargon, the dynasty's founder, had liberated
a city and struck offthe citizens' bonds. His grandson narrated the
story of a revolt against himself as follows:
In his days my father Sargon conquered the city of Uruk and
established [fre]edom for the Kishite [people], and had their [slave-
marks] sheared off and their shackles [smas]hed...5
The point here was to emphasize the ingratitude of the rebellious
peoples and the kindness ofthe founder of the dynasty.
In Egypt a letter used as a model to instruct scribes of the
thirteenth century RC.E. runs:
I was sent forth from the broad halls of the palace...in the third
month ofthe third season, day 9 [about May], at the time ofevening,
following after these two slaves....When my letter reaches you, write
to me about all that has happened to [them.] Who found their tracks?
Which watch found their tracks? What people are after them? Write
4 James M. Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar, (Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983),55-56 Saying 6; see transliteration
in Appendix II. The Syriac translation reads, more simply: "Do not get a slave that is a
runaway," "bd' "rwq'.
5 This is the version from Mari; See Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Legends ofthe
Kings of Akkade, (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 233-235, lines 5-8;
similar is the Geneva version, 243-244, lines 18-20.
FLIGHT IN STORY 103
to me about all that has happened to them and how many people you
send out after them.6
The junior scribe apparently needed to know the vocabulary of
slave pursuit, but the imagined pursuit did not actually capture the
slaves; perhaps real pursuits also rarely did.
In contrast to such attitudes in the Mesopotamian collection of
incantations called Surpu "burning" are two passages that indicate
the cherishing of freedom as a value. The texts are Neo-Assyrian,
from around 700 RC.E. One is the complaint ofsomeone afflicted
with misfortune, and the incantation priests are to confess he was
a sinner:
Who estranged companion from companion,
who did not free a captive, did not release a man in bonds,
who did not let the prisoner see the light (of day),
who said to the captive: "Leave him captive!" to the man in bonds:
"Bind him tighter!"
He does not know what is a crime against god, he does not know
what is a sin against the goddess. 7
The sinner did not know these acts were sinful, but the society did.
Naturally not much precision is possible aboutthe imagined social
context, but probably the sinner was felt to be a man of authority
who did not attempt to reduce the affliction ofpeople under him,
and releasing the captive had been in his purview, and he ought to
have done it.
A positive reflection ofthe same values is seen in a later tablet:
6 John A. Wilson in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 259. Slaves were only
prominent in Egypt in the New Kingdom Period, from which this text comes. See on
Egyptian slavery Antonio Loprieno, "Slaves," in The Egyptians, edited by Sergio
Donadoni, 185-219, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997; first in
Italian: 1990),200-212 on the New Kingdom.
7 Tablet ii 28-32, Erica Reiner, Surpu, (Graz: Archiv fur Orientforschung Beiheft
11,1958), 13.
104 CHAPTER FOUR
It rests with you, divine Marduk, to keep safe and sound ...
to set free the prisoner, to show (him) daylight,
him who has been taken (captive), to rescue (him)...
Him whose city is distant, whose road is far away,
(Let him) go safely to [h]is [city]
to return the prisoner of war and the captive to his people
(That he may) see (or be seen?) in the presence of his people."
This value is an extension of the Code of Hammurapi's goal of
having the rich and powerful not oppress the weak, but the focus
on freeing from restraint and encouraging the freedom of move-
ment is decisive is revealing freedom as a value, at least for the
patrons of these texts. Mesopotamians sometimes attributed
freedom from particular obligations to the gods, and this shows
their high estimation of it.9
2. FLIGHT NARRATIVES
There are several texts that reflect stories of flight. Not all are
canonical or what might be seen as literature; one is actually on a
monument. They are not, however, explicitly about the escape of
slaves or dependent persons. The reason for this is probably that
the audience envisioned for them was first the literate scribes and
then the members of a free ruling class. Such persons might be
attracted to stories of persons like themselves in sorry states, but
they would not usually care about slaves.
Even if the free and the slave runaways cannot be assumed to
have had the same experiences, we ought to examine the material
conveying stories about flight because we have it and it is
analogous to slave flight. It may, further, help define ideas of
8 Ibid., tablet iv 2 and 31-36, 25-26.
9 See G. Ries, "Lastenfreiheit," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 6 (1980-1983): 508-
511.
FLIGHT IN STORY 105
freedom, regardless of how oppressive the conditions being
escaped really were. My guess is that in any case escape allowed
a new self-definition, at base economic in that the escapee had to
seek new ways to feed herself. But the new self-definition could
also be social, political, and even psychological, as the runaway
saw himself in a different light merely because of the different
geographical place to which he fled. In justifying examination of
the texts about free or ostensibly free runaways, we may fall back
upon a purely practical reason. In the Ancient Near East we lack
slave narratives such as came to be written in the Americas. That
literature was apparently directly tied to the growth of the
sentiment for abolitionism in Western and particularly in British
and American culture in the last century, and thus in a sense it is
suspect in that it is written to play to the assumptions of white
non-slave readers who expected a certain kind of suffering to be
depicted. 10 We must assume that the experience of flight may
have been similar in general for persons of different statuses, and
though we can never be sure about that in any given instance, I
believe we must look at the relevant material, especially since the
status of slavery and dependent labor may not have been uni-
formly defined and uniformly understood anyway. Many Ancient
Near Eastern languages in polite speech used the term "slave" to
refer to the speaker, but a distinction was always made between
that usage and real servitude. Still, other stories appear to indicate
the assumption that escape from slavery and escape from political
dilemmas were similar.
In societies where travel was difficult and rare, flight by people
who were not supposed to travel was frequently seen as an act of
10 S ee 'In genera 1Henry LoUIS . Gates, Jr., ed., The Classic Slave Narratives, (New
York: Penguin, 1987), p. ix: "In the long history of human bondage, it was only the
black slaves in the United States who--once secure and free in the North, and with the
~enerous encouragement and assistance of northern abolitionists-created a genre of
hterature that at once testified against their captors and bore witness to the urge ofevery
black sla~e to be free and literate." Given the paucity of direct slave testimony in any
other penod, we should be thankful for, and utilize fully, what we have from analogous
free individuals.
106 CHAPTER FOUR
rebellion, meant to undermine the social order. The ultimate
rebellious flight may be suicide, but that seems not an important
act in the Ancient Near East. II
There were some famous stories about individual political
fugitives. The Tale of Sinuhe was popular in Egypt of the late
second millennium; it concerned a courtier who was somehow
upset about the transition from the rule of Amenemhet I in 1962
B.C.E. to that of his son, Senusret 1. 12 The story might be
fictional, but it reflected Egyptian attitudes and was copied
frequently in later times. Sinuhe snuck from the Western Desert,
where he had been with the army, through Egypt and the Eastern
Desert into Syria-Palestine, where he established himselfas a sort
of Egyptian consul and advisor to local princes. He very much
missed Egypt, though, and took the first opportunity to return and
be reconciled with the king, though this opportunity came many
years after his flight. In the meantime it is clear that he gloried in
his ability to make a life in the alien world, and though one might
have to stretch the evidence to speak ofcharacter development, it
does appear that Sinuhe grew in stature in the foreign environ-
II See Cristiano Grottanelli, "Archaic Forms of Rebellion and their Religious
Background," in Religion, Rebellion, Revolution edited by B. Lincoln, 15-45, (New
York: S1. Martin's, 1985), reference courtesy of David Geggus; Grottanelli discusses
Sinuhe, the Egyptian Story of the Two Brothers, Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, and
Samson. He writes, 20, "In all these texts, flight is presented not just as a way to escape
some specific oppression or punishment, but as a rebellious act, signifying refusal ofthe
whole social setup." Although all these stories have travel as an element, the Two
Brothers, Elijah, Elisha, and Samson do not have quick escapes as major enduring
motifs in the same way as the stories we shall consider here. For the Two Brothers see
Miriam Lichtheim,Ancient Egyptian Literature, volume 2, (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1976), 203-211; the younger brother flees to the Valley
ofthe Pine, presumably Lebanon or Syria. For Elijah see I Kings 19:3, off to hear the
still small voice; for Elisha 2 Kings 9:3, telling the anonymous anointing prophet to flee
the scene of the anointing, and for Samson see Judges 14-16, which ends with his
suicide.
12 John A. Wilson, "The Tale ofSinuhe," in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by
James Pritchard, 18-22, and compare Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature,
1: 222-235 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). For recent interpretations
see Anthony Spalinger, "Orientations on Sinuhe." Studien zur altiigyptischen Kultur 25
(1998): 311-339.
FLIGHT IN STORY 107
ment. When he returned, though, it was as a courtier, and the
royal children, who remembered him, were influential in bringing
him back. His main sentiment seems to have been gratitude to the
king for bringing about his return, though he had once feared him.
The tale was cherished in later generations because Egypt
continued to be interested in Western Asia. The tale also under-
lines how important Egyptians thought proper burial within Egypt
itselfwas to a successful death. The political issues that prompted
Sinuhe to flee were not examined within the tale, and the flight
seems to be an unfortunate aberration in his exemplary career.
This cannot be the way successfully escaping slaves felt about
their flight, but it is almost certainly the way the elite would have
liked to believe they felt about it.
Unusually in the ancient world, Sinuhe depicted the actual
moment of flight, as word came of the king's death and of the
immediate departure from the army of the crown prince, now the
new king:
Now the royal children who had been following him [the prince] in
this army had been sent for, and one ofthem was summoned. While
I was standing (nearby) I heard his voice as he was speaking and I
was a little way off. My heart was distraught, my arms spread out
(in dismay), trembling fell upon all my limbs. I removed myselfby
leaps and bounds to seek a hiding place for myself. I placed myself
between two bushes, in order to 'cut (myself) off from the road and
its travel. 13
Years later Sinuhe justified himselfto the king after he had invited
him to return home:
13 Wilson, "Sinuhe," 18-19. Spalinger writes, "Sinuhe expected violent trouble in
the royal residence..., a grave situation that might involve his own death; hence, he
leaves. The man is therefore a coward, and if the recognition of that behavior is
challenged, the text describes this in few words," "Sinuhe" 328. He was in Spanlinger's
view not involved himselfin any plot; later in confronting an enemy and not fleeing, he
overcame his fears and became worthy of restoration, 339.
108 CHAPTER FOUR
Now this flight which the servant made, it was not planned, it was
not in my heart, I had not worried about it. I do not know what
severed me from (my) place. It was after the manner of a dream...
There was fear of civil unrest as Sinuhe fled, but he gave no clear
reason for flight. Perhaps he was simply insecure about his
official position and feared a chaotic transition between reigns,
even though we regard this as a successful instance ofco-regency,
where an old king in his lifetime had his heir installed as co-regent
to ease the transition at his death."
The story of Moses in the Bible seems to be of a similar
structure to Sinuhe's, and yet the undatable but supposedly early
text involves the hero leaving Egypt because of a crime he
committed, then returning to champion his people, whom he then
led out of the country and back to their collective homeland.
There is no reflection on the moment of flight. 15
Noteworthy are the pair of political tales from Syria in the
middle of the second and early first millennium. About 1500 a
young man, the Syrian prince Idrimi, found himself forced to flee
into exile, and his laconic monumental inscription on a rather ugly
statue of himself recounts his adventures, which allowed him to
collect a force of warriors and eventually to recapture the capital
city of his fathers, Alalakh in Syria, now in Turkey, where his
inscription was found. He wrote that he lived in Canaan, a region
south of his home city, for seven years and became the leader of
other exiles from Alalakh, who acknowledged him because ofhis
Wilson, "Sinuhe," 21, 19. On co-regency see William W. Hallo and William
14
Kelly Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History, 243 and n. 12.
IS See Martin Noth, Exodus, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 30. After
committing murder, Moses learned there were witnesses: "Then Moses was afraid and
thought, 'Surely the thing is known '" (Exodus 2: 14b). But he did not flee then: "When
Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh ..." (Exodus
2:15a).
FLIGHT IN STORY 109
royal birth. 16 The relevant portion ofthe inscription reads as follows:
An evil deed happened in Aleppo, the seat ofmy family, and we fled
to the people ofEmar, brothers ofmy mother, and we lived (then) in
Emar. My brothers, who were older than I, stayed with me but none
of them had the plans I had. I (said to) myself: "Whoever is in the
house of his family is the great son of a prince, (while) who is with
the people of Emar is a slave!" (So) I took with me my horse, my
chariot, and my groom, went away and crossed over the desert
country and even entered into the region of the Sutian warriors. I
stayed with them (once) overnight before the throne of Zakkar, but
the next day I moved on and went to the land of Canaan. I stayed in
Ammia in the land of Canaan; in Ammia lived (also) natives of
Aleppo, of the country Mukis, of the country Ni' and also warriors
from the country Ama' e. They discovered that I was the son oftheir
overlord and gathered around me. I became chief; I had command.
For seven years I lived among theijiipiru-people. (Then) I released
birds (to observe their flight) and looked into (the entrails of) lambs
(and found) that after seven years Adad/Tessub had become
favorable to me. So I built boats, made Nulla soldiers board them,
approached the country Mukis via the sea and reached shore below
Mt. Casius. I went ashore and when my country heard of me they
brought me cattle and sheep. And in one day, and as one man, the
countries Ni', Ama' e, Mukis and my city Alalakh turned to me. My
allies heard (about this) and they came into my presence. As soon
as they had concluded a treaty with me, I protected my allies.
Idrimi studied bird omens and animal sacrifices, and he saw
favorable omens from Adad or Tessub, the storm god who made
rainfall agriculture possible. His attack on the Alalakh region was
successful because people supported him who were related to the
16 A. Leo Oppenheim, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by James Pritchard,
557-558 with corrections suggested in the discussions by Edward L. Greenstein and
David Marcus, "The Akkadian Inscription of Idrimi," Journal of the Ancient Near
Eastern Society 8 (1976): 59-96, and by Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz, "Die
Inschrift der Statue des Konigs Idrimi von Alalah," Ugaritforschungen 13 (1981): 201-
269. For Idrimi see Horst Klengel, "Idrimi," Reallexikon der Assyriologie 5 (1976):32-
33. See the transliteration in Appendix II.
110 CHAPTER FOUR
exiles who had befriended him, and he toppled the usurping
regime apparently without a battle.
For Idrimi the escape was an unfortunate interlude, but one in
which he obviously learned political skills that allowed his
eventual triumphant return. It may be that some slaves escaped
when the situation in the household changed for the worse, and
they too would have welcomed a chance, rather unlikely for them,
to return as lord ofthe very same household, as Idrimi was able to
do. This prince was the same person who entered into the treaty
with Pilliya discussed above in Chapter Three; that text. shows
both princes promising to return each other's fugitives. So
Idrimi's experience as a fugitive himselfseems not to have colored
his later thought or made him more sympathetic to fugitives.
These two texts give us a rare insight into ruling class attitudes
and show that class considerations in this case overcame any
possible effect ofexperience. The reestablished king did not recall
his own life of exile in ways that affected the treaty into which he
entered. Or perhaps he did in that he had seen how effective and
dangerous an unreturned exile could be, and he wanted to avoid
allowing exiles to organize as he had once done.
The other tale with a similar plot is the story of David in Israel
around 1000 RC.E. 17 David had risen according to the biblical
book of 1 Samuel from being a court musician or common soldier
to being a military leader under King Saul, but Saul was envious
of the popular acclaim David's military successes brought him,
and eventually he sought to undermine David's position and even
to kill him. With the collusion ofSaul's son David made good his
escape to the desert fringes of Judah, where he made a safe haven
for his family and began to attract and to organize guerrilla
fighters from the disaffected in his society. He made his living
marauding in the desert and collecting protection money and
promising not to raid landholders and shepherds. At sheep-
shearing time in the spring he is said to have approached one large
17 Giorgio Buccellati, "La 'camera' di David e quella di Idrimi, re di Alalac,"
Bibbia e Oriente 4 (1962): 95-99.
FLIGHT IN STORY 111
sheep-owner, named Nabal (literally "Fool"), for a contribution to
his men. Nabal answered, "Who is David and who is Jesse?
Today the slaves are many who have broken away, each one from
his lord" (1 Samuel 25:10). David ended up getting his goods, but
Nabal resented David's escape and his status. Nabal's rejection of
David underlines the notion that the experiences of a free refugee
and an escaped slave may in such cases have been similar."
Also as one reads 1 Samuel with a view to the flight involved,
it seems not unlikely that the great dithering that David did before
actually escaping parallels the experience ofsome other escapees.
Sinuhe left on impulse, but most successful escapees probably
planned ahead. David believed he needed to sound out his political
master, Saul, about the likelihood of a productive future in his
court, and Saul was of two minds. Sometimes he was consumed
by envy ("an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul" 1 Samuel
18:10), and other times not, so that right up till the moment of
escape David was unsure what he would do. He was also retained
by ties of affection to Saul's household; he left a wife there, and
much was made in the stories about his affection for Jonathan,
Saul's heir, and Jonathan's for him (1 Samuel 18-20). Therewere
ofcourse later dynastic reasons for playing up these relations since
they tended to legitimate David's eventual claim to the throne, and
yet they make sense as a restraining factor to any runaway.
For some time David appeared to stay in the vicinity, and this
too may not have been uncommon among runaways. He enlisted
the help, though not the political support ofpriests at Nob, and an
official of Saul was present to observe this aid, which the king
interpreted as treasonous help to a runaway (1 Samuel 21).19
It is hard to make sense ofthe early story ofDavid's encounter
with the Philistine king (1 Samuel 21:10-15), where the king sent
18 1 Samuel 25: 10 ~'N O'~'~l1Y.lil O'1:J.}l ):J., orn '~'1:J. 'Y.l1 1)1 'Y.l
1')12'1. ')~Y.l
Hebrew quotations are from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia 4th edition, 1990.
19 On the politics of this incident see P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, 1980), 365-367.
112 CHAPTER FOUR
him away because he seemed mad; he did end up with the
Philistines, but the earlier story may reflect David's uncertainty
about what political role to try to play now that he was no longer
part of the Israelite power structure. The role he perfected was
that of a peripheral figure, available for opposition to Saul, but
also to support the Philistines when such support did not alienate
his base back in his home area ofJudah. 1 Samuel 22: 1-2 sketches
his base in politics and how it grew:
David departedfromthere (Philistine Gath) and escaped to the cave
of Adullam; and when his brothersand all his father's house heard
it, they went down there to him. (2) And every one who was in
distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was
discontented, gathered to him; and he became captain over them.
And there were with him about four hundred men.20
David's followers may be seen as a kind of mobile maroon
community in that they were all trying to escape something,
although runaway slaves were not explicitly mentioned. Such
communities are well-known in other ages, especially as nomads
on the desert fringes of the Near East. Not all nomads derived
from such former sedentaries, at least as far as their memory goes,
but some must have, in any period."
20 ))J.N n)J."'::n ))nN )Yr.:l'lJ)) D?1Y mYr.:l"'N \??r.:l') D'lJr.:l1)11?') (I)
ilr.:l'lJ )'?N rri»
'lJ'N"':J) N'lJ) )?,'lJN 'lJ)N"':J) P)::::lr.:l 'lJ'N"':J )'?N )::::lJ.pn')(2)
'lJ'N mNr.:l YJ.1N:J my )'il') 1'lJ? Dil'?Y 'il') 'lJ!))'r.:l
Compare the 1816 description of maroon activity by the governor of South Carolina,
quoted in Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1943),258:
A few runaway negroes, concealing themselves in the swamps and marshes
continguous...,not having been interrupted in their petty plunderings for a long time,
formed the nucleus round which all the ill-disposed and audacious near them
gathered until at length their robberies became too serious to be suffered with
impunity.
21 For the fluidity between the nomad and the sedentary see Fredrik Barth, Nomads
ofSouth Persia, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961).
FLIGHT IN STORY 113
Saul spent some time and money seeking the fugitive, but
without success. David's friend Jonathan even contacted him in
one of his haunts and reaffirmed his support for him (1 Samuel
23: 16-18). There were good dynastic reasons for preserving this
speech in which Jonathan seems to envision David's becoming
king, but the fact of continued contact in spite of flight makes
sense from later analogous situations. The wild story of David's
creeping into Saul's camp and cutting offhis skirt to taunt him (1
Samuel 24) led to another dynastic promise (:20-22; and compare
1 Samuel 26:25 with the stealing of a spear and water bottle).
After this period of Saul's active but fruitless pursuit, David
determined to flee further, again to the Philistines (1 Samuel 27: 1-
4), and the added distance did keep the master from seeking the
servant any more.
David parlayed his good behavior into a grant ofa village from
the Philistines after a year and a third (1 Samuel 27:5-7). He
began his regime ofraiding, mostly against traditional enemies of
the Judahites, and he lied to his Philistine master, making him
think David was raiding Israelites too. This vassal-like position in
another, foreign, and for David's purposes looser, political system
allowed him to build up his local political support. Because ofthe
Philistine distrust ofhim he avoided fighting on the Philistine side
in the battle in which Saul died, and when he returned to his
village and found it raided, he avenged himself on the raiders,
being sure to send some of the spoil "to his friends, the elders of
Judah" (1 Samuel 30:26), and this may have been his earlier
practice too.
Like escaping slaves, David returned to a different role from
the one he left, and his ability to do so derived from his very
successful escape. It was political chance, and the religious would
say divine will, that allowed David to build a power base in that
alternative community. It might well have turned out differently
if Saul's son had more vigorously attempted to succeed him and
if he had outlived his father. In that regard the experience of
slaves might have been similar in that they fled when the master's
attitude toward them changed for the worse, and the attitude ofthe
114 CHAPTER FOUR
master's heir toward them would determine whether they wished
to stay away after the master's death.
Because ofthe all-important fact that David did become king,
it was hard for later observers dispassionately to look back at his
pre-royal days, and certainly the preservation of the stories owes
much to the importance offirming up the flimsy relations between
the legitimacy ofthe family ofSaul and the new dynasty ofDavid.
But the outlines of his flight do make a certain sense. As with
other Israelite stories, there are such shameful elements present
that a narrator uninterested in anything besides the glory of the
dynasty would have omitted them, as the Chronicler did, writing
several hundred years after the Samuel-Kings narrators." David
had chosen flight and in so doing had tried on a new identity, as an
independent political and military chief. He had made new
connections, with old enemies mainly, but he also was careful to
secure his home base, and, when circumstances conspired to
deprive Israel of its ruler, he was ready.
The contemporary slave would not have succeeded as well,
even in the best of circumstances. But one may imagine that the
successful runaway would have liked to maintain some contact
with the home community from which she had fled, if possible
bringing family members along, or, as in David's case, being
joined by them later. And though a new identity was forged in
freedom, some elements of the old were preserved. In David's
case one may say that he became dependent on a new set of
professional behaviors in that he became a full-time raider or
pirate. Some might say that his function for Saul's government
had been similar; only the targets were different. The escaped
slave might also have been exchanging one farming plot for
another, so that the rhythms of life would remain similar in
freedom. And yet something had changed. David was no longer
the servant of another, and he could wend his way, with his new
22 Contrast the truncated 1 Chronicles 10-11. See J. Botterweck, "Zur Eigenart der
chronistischen Davidgeschichte," in Festschriftfur V. Christian, edited by K. Schubert,
12-31, (Vienna: Notring der wissenschiiftlichen Verbiinde Osterreichs, 1956).
FLIGHT IN STORY 115
community of what looks to us to be multinational supporters,
onto a new stage.23
3. CONCLUSIONS
The ideology ofthe literate about flight and freedom was ambiva-
lent. On the one hand the public order was felt to be broken by the
escapes through the permeable membrane ofslavery and depend-
ent labor, and this was a very bad thing. Free persons ought, under
that ideology, to cooperate to return runaways. And states too,
insofar as they had the strength and political will, ought to
exchange runaways, though the persons frequently envisioned
were politically powerful and potentially revolutionary to their
home states.
The ideologists saw that in fact the ideal system did not obtain,
and that free persons did harbor runaways. Those persons
obviously were to be punished, but the systems of thought
provided a tariffofwrongs, where simple harboring would be less
bad than transporting a runaway. The stories of characters who
escaped show moreover that intellectuals could see that escape
was a chance for restructuring one's identity, and that sometimes
such an option was unavoidable, even by the most faithful and
historically portentous figure like David. Escape provided a way
ofimproving prospects and changing fortunes, and the geography
of the Near East, with nearby deserts, mountains, and marshes,
meant that escape was always an option. Nomads melted into the
desert each autumn, the mountaineers retreated to their mountain
fastnesses each summer, and no one could track the marsh-
dwellers. One could follow in their footsteps and become, if one
23 The supporters are multinational as we see them in 2 Samuel 23, where some are
neither Judahite or Israelite. See my "The Structure ofPolitics in the Age ofDavid," in
the Luigi Cagni Memorial Volume, (Naples: in press), Table I, where I count 3
foreigners, 1 Trans-Jordanian, and 5 of unknown origin among his "mighty men." But
the whole idea of nationality is one that arose probably as a result of David's dynasty
and almost certainly would have been meaningless in his own time.
116 CHAPTER FOUR

were lucky, free ofold encumbrances, and ifone were very lucky,
one might end up even better off than that. CHAPTER FIVE

FREEDOM IN ISRAEL

It is important to look at the legacy of Israel separately on this

issue because it allows us to gain another perspective, and one that
proved central in the later development of the idea of freedom in
the early modem West. As noted before, the key thing to remem-
ber when we try to understand the stories of the Bible, which are
our only real source for Israelite history, is that they come to us in
a very different way from the ways other Ancient Near Eastern
texts have reached us. Whatever the original purpose of a
Mesopotamian text, it is physically extant and can be studied as a
physical object before us. That is not true ofBiblical texts, which
we have only in later copies, copies that may have been open in
some periods to elaboration, addition, and deletion, though it is
clear that at some point, probably late in the first millennium
B.C.E., the people who copied them came to feel that they ought
not to be altered, and they took great pains to assure that the texts
were accurately copied. Biblical texts are canonical in the sense
noted above in that they come to us as part of a self-renewing
tradition of copying.
Biblical texts are of interest because they come from people
who were not well represented among authors in other Ancient
Near Eastern societies. Almost everything we have from the rest
of the Ancient Near East is from kings and people paid by kings,
and consequently the texts display a bias toward institutions kings
supported. There are some important and interesting exceptions,
but there are not many of them.
In Israel in contrast one can see that kings did not dominate the
surviving literature. The attitude of the literature toward kings
was sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but always at a
distance from the royal center. To simplify one might say that the
Hebrew Bible was composed by people more sympathetic to
118 CHAPTER FIVE
prophets, the religious visionaries who were frequently critical of
leaders, and most ofwhom may have been personally unknown to
kings. Of the prophets who left books only Isaiah seems to have
had any direct interaction with a king of Israel or Judah. So to
contemporaries the compositors of the Bible may have been
obscure intellectuals not in touch with the great political decisions
of the day and not always in sympathy with the people making
them. We believe that literacy was not a royal monopoly in Israel,
and it probably was not in some periods of Mesopotamian history
either, but dissenting literature did not get studied much in
Mesopotamian educational traditions; in Israel it did.
The reason for this difference in ideological situation may be
a simple and external one. Much ofthe work ofthe Bible's writers
criticizes power structures and predicts on the basis of the
experience of other small states in the region that the structures
would crumble before the Assyrian Empire and later the Babylon-
ian Empire. These predictions proved correct, and the people who
preserved the words of prophets and others may have done so
because the opponents to kings wanted to guard against the rise of
other similar politicians, and they wanted to inculcate the values
that they held and their view ofthe God ofIsrael as a single world-
ruling entity. This must have seemed a quixotic idea to outsiders,
but to the intellectuals and their successors, it made perfect sense,
and world history as it was then understood was incorporated into
divine history.
What this means for the study of flight and freedom is that the
intellectuals might take positions that were not predictable on the
basis of their being part of the ruling class, even though they
probably mostly were of a high social status. They may not have
been involved directly in administration ofsystems to keep people
in slavery and servitude, and so they felt free to criticize the people
that were in charge. The intellectual tradition long outlasted,
indeed outlasts, the political, and when Judaean independence was
put to an end in 587 RC.E., the prophets and their friends did not
stop being critical of what was going on.
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 119
It will be remembered that Patterson was categorical in his
rejection ofIsrael's having any important contribution to Western
ideas of freedom. He writes, "[Israel's] epic history, in which its
Egyptian sojourn was retrospectively reinterpreted as slavery, has
no special part in the history of individual freedom." Patterson
does not elaborate on his refusal to examine Israel; one can only
speculate that the refusal is based on his admiration for the
elaborateness ofthe Greek discussions which he does examine. It
could be that Patterson would follow Martin Ostwald's later
formulation that "Hebrew 'redemption' is not a progress from
domination by a tyrant or occupation by an alien power to
independence and freedom, but rather an escape from slavery to
Pharaoh to service (=slavery) to God."'
This understanding is a possible one, and yet it seems to be
based on a superficial reading oftexts like Exodus 10:26, where
Moses commands the people, "and also your cattle shall go with
us; there shall not.remain a hoof, for from it we will take to serve
the Lord our God, and we will not know with what we will serve
the Lord until our coming there." They were to escape to the
wilderness to serve the Lord, but that service was not just servi-
tude; it involved religious sacrifice and ceremony, as one sees in
the parallel expression Exodus 5: I, where the Lord speaks through
Moses to the Egyptian king, "send my people so they may have a
festival for me in the wilderness.'?
Thus the "service" to which Moses called the Israelites to
escape was not slavish obedience to God or a new priestly power
I O. Patterson, Freedom I. Freedom in the making ofWestern Culture. (New York:
Basic, 1991), 33. Compare also 405, where he concedes, "The vision of Israel emerged
from the bondage of Egypt," and culminated in the story of Jesus, "the ultimate
veneration ofchoice," 406. Martin Ostwald, "Freedom and the Greeks," in The Origins
ofModern Freedom in the West, edited by Richard W. Davis, 35-63, 43. Richard H.
King notes that Patterson has "a puzzling blind spot" on the importance of the Exodus
story for liberation, perhaps because this story refers to collective freedom, which
nonetheless is part of freedom; see his review of Patterson, Freedom I, History and
Theory 31 (1992): 326-335, 333-334.
2 1::lY'J npi UY.lY.l 'J iltl1£l1N'lln N'J ))Y.ly 1'J' mpzrn» Exodus 10:26.
120 CHAPTER FIVE
structure but rather the worship due an ancestral deity. Eventually,
of course, religious thinkers would occasionally advocate a
theocracy or rather a hierarchy, where priests ruled, but others
were not sure the priests were really good enough to deserve a
share in God's authority.'
At some point in the development ofIsraelite thought a concern
for the individual's freedom to interpret scripture and God's will
became a prominent feature. But it may be that the clearest texts
about this are late and might arguably be under Greek influence,
ifonly indirectly. It is nonetheless obvious that many and perhaps
most Western thinkers have not seen the escape to the wilderness
as an escape from one tyranny to another, but something quite
different that does have direct implications for later thought about
human freedom."
A sustained argument in that direction comes from Michael
Walzer in Exodus and Revolution. Walzer points out that the word
for redemption in Hebrew as in English came from a legal term
meaning to buy the freedom of a slave. He argues that Jewish
religion can be understood as a theology offreedom. Some in each
generation certainly saw Jewish religion as emphasizing freedom,
and the stories talk of rebellion in the wilderness by Israelites
against their leaders and of murmuring, the criticism of leaders.
Such stories were probably preserved in order to discourage that
3 See the critique of priests in Exodus 32, where Levites were favored. Those
. lower-status cultic practitioners might sometimes have been lumped together with
priests, and all priests were supposed to be from Levitic families, as Moses had been.
But such stories show that the conception of who should lead was not monolithic. See
on the problems of the passage Brevard S. Childs, The Book ofExodus, (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1974),561-562.
4 The tension even in the Biblical era between the authority ofthe text and the need
to interpret it for current needs is stressed by Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation
in Ancient Israel, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 542-543. He says, .....the texts and
traditions, the received traditum of ancient Israel, were not simply copied, studied,
transmitted, or recited. They were also, and by these means, subject to redaction,
elucidation, reformulation, and outright transformation. Accordingly, our received
traditions are complex blends of traditum [content oftransmission] and traditio [process
of transmission] in dynamic interaction, dynamic interpretation, and dynamic
interdependence."
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 121
behavior, and yet the memory of dissent, even wrongheaded
dissent, is of importance in the later tradition. 5
As Ostwald saw, the word for service and for servitude were
the same in Biblical Hebrew, but Walzer writes, "The difference
is this: slavery is begun and sustained by coercion, while service
is begun and sustained by covenant." That is, the people had
agreed to serve the Lord, and thus they had given up some oftheir
freedoms for a greater liberation from political oppression in
Egypt. The date when a covenant was invoked for the first time
is an open question, and many would associate its advent with
Deuteronomy and the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 RC.E.
Still, even if it was later, it must have been based on some sort of
earlier tradition, and it seems in retrospect to be compatible with
ideas of individual liberty,"
Walzer traces the anti-monarchic strain in Israelite thought,
especially in the stories of Judges. Here it seems that the
sovereignal freedom was claimed by individuals who were not
themselves kings. Walzer goes on to argue that the idea of
revolution against established authority is a Western idea that
starts in Exodus, and that Exodus shows the beginning of a long
5 (New York: Basic, 1985), esp. 24-25. He attacks directly views like Ostwald's
above: "The Exodus, after all, would look very different had the people simply
transferred their slavish obedience from Pharaoh to God," 73. Compare David Daube,
The Exodus Pattern in the Bible, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1963),45: "That,
paradoxically, this change of master follows from a.rescue into liberty is already an
element in the original scheme: a captive bought back becomes his ransomer's
bondman, ..."
Among the profound echoes of Exodus note that Denmark Vesey, the 1822 leader
in Charleston, South Carolina, of the most developed American slave conspiracy, read
to his followers "how the children ofIsrael were delivered out ofEgypt from bondage,"
quoted by Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1943),269, with his emphasis. See David Robertson, Denmark Vesey,
(New York: Knopf, 1999), 138-139.
6 Walzer, Exodus, 74. On the problem of dating covenants see George Mendenhall
and Gary Herion, "Covenant" in Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David N.
Freedman, I: 1179-1202, 1183, (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
122 CHAPTER FIVE
struggle which was not quickly or easily brought to fruition in a
specific free society but is an ongoing mission."
Walzer writes in the heat of the 1960s even though his book
was published later, and the interest in Latin America in liberation
theology based on the Exodus story is in the background of his
thought. One can argue that it is not only the Exodus story itself
that speaks of liberation in a way that is sympathetic to escaping
slaves. But before exploring freedom beyond Exodus, let us
consider the words used.
I. TERMINOLOGY
Israel had a somewhat different vocabulary of freedom, but one
that may at several places be connected to the Sumero-Akkadian
discussed above. The simplest to explain is hofsi; "free," a reflex
of Akkadian bupsu noted above.
Most uses of 1}.ofti are almost certainly relatively late in the
course of Israelite history. References always refer to freedom
from slavery or constraint, except for the enigmatic 1 Samuel
17:25, which is in a passage that the Septuagint omits and
therefore may be a late addition to an earlier text; David was being
told what Saul planned to do for the soldier who killed Goliath:
...the king will make him rich with great riches and he will give him
his house, and the house of his father he will make free in Israel.
It is not clear what exactly this might mean, though commentators
have usually suggested that it implied exemption from taxation.
Sometimes 1}.ofti means "freedman," and the existence of a term
for freedman means that there was a recognized class offreedmen,
7 Compare the anti-monarchic texts Judges 8:23: "The Lord shall rule over you,"
O:::l:l ?'lIY.)~ mil" as Gideon rejects the kingship, and Hosea 8:4 "They have set up
kings, but not by me [the Lord]," ~mY.) N?l l:::l'?Y.)il Oil. See Walzer, Exodus, 128-129,
133,149.
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 123
although one must be careful to admit that classes in the modem
sense might not exist. 8
Job 3: 19 shows that death was perceived as dissolving human
bonds, and was a place where "the slave isfree from his master."
The Lord in Job 39:5 has also "let the wild ass go free," implying
that the term is more than a technical term in slave-holding and
approaches the general meaning oifree in English. Isaiah 58:6b
has the Lord choosing to "set oppressed onesfree," again arguing
for a broad understanding, while Jeremiah 34:9-16 used the same
term "set free," literally "send free," in the context of actual
manumissions of slaves."
Another word in the Bible is sometimes translated remission of
debts, and is usually linked with a year in which that was to
happen. All references are apparently from during the exile to
Babylon, and it is conceivable that the term, d'ror, cognate to
Akkadian andurdrum, is influenced by it if not directly derived
from it. But, as noted above, the practice of setting freedom in
edicts had apparently died out with the Old Babylonian period,
around 1595 B.C.E., though reference to such "freedoms"
continues into the Middle Babylonian period. But the term might
not be likely to have made a strong impression on exiled Jews
years later. Still, its use is vague and its contexts seem to imply
that the remission had a place in the ideal vision of behavior
8 I Samuel 17:25b l~:lN n~:l nNl l?ln~ m:l-nNl ?n) 1'l1Y l?y')il U1'l1Y~
?N1'l1~:l ~'lI!)n il'llY~
9 Job 3: 19 1~)1Ny') ~'lI!)n 1:lYl Nlil O'll ?11)1 rap
"The small and the big are there, and the slave is free from his master."
Job 39: 5 nns ~Y.) 1ny n11Um ~'lI!)n N1!) n?'lI"")Y.)
"Who sent the wild ass free, and who opened the bonds of the savage ass?"
Isaiah 58:6c iprun il\?m-'.J:::ll o~\!J!)n O~~1~1 n?'lIl
"And send the oppressed ones free, and break off every yoke."
Jeremiah 34: lOb 'n?:l? O''lI!)n mn!)\!JJlN 'lI'N n:ly-nN 'lI'N n?'lI
1W orny
"...to send each one his servant and each his maidservant free without working them any
more ..."
124 CHAPTER FIVE
among religious intellectuals and may not have had much reflec-
tion in social reality.'?
Leviticus 25:10 looks forward to an ideal time and commands,
Andyou shallsanctify the year of fifty years, and call a remission in
the land for all its inhabitants; it will be a jubilee for you, and you
will return each to his possession of land and each to his family.
The idealism of the command is clear in what follows since you
are not to sow or harvest in that year, trusting to God's benefi-
cence. Leviticus may presuppose the events of the Jeremiah and
even the Isaiah passages discussed below. Ezekiel 46: 17 foresaw
a gift from a leader reverting in the year of the remission. Isaiah
61: 1 also foresaw a blessed year for the remission, and the people
immediately affected were "captured ones," not necessarily
debtors, as one might think. This development implies that the
term remission was not limited to debt. II
10 F. Stanley Jones, "Freedom" in Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David N.
Freedman, 2:855-859, (New York: Doubleday, 1992). See M. Liverani, ":EY./lYK E
MI:EQP,"inStudi in onorediEdoardo Volterra, 6:55-74, 61, 63 (Milan: Giuffre, 1971).
II Leviticus 25: 1Ob 1111Omnp) illV O'Vnnil 1l)VnN OnV1pl.
'(1N:l il':lV'?:J'J
See. R. North, "D'ror," in Theological Dictionary ofthe Old Testament, edited by G.
Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 3:265-269, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1978). This verse is the source for the quotation on the American Liberty Bell:
"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," there
mistranslated as in the King James Version. Contrast the Revised Standard Version:
"proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." Note that the Liberty Bell
only became a symbol of freedom in the course of the Abolitionist agitation in the
1830's; see Eric Foner, The Story ofAmerican Freedom, (New York: Norton, 1998),89.
Compare David Kimball, Vernerable Relic: The Story ofthe Liberty Bell, (Philadelphia:
Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 1989),38,44,55-60; it was "the Old
State House Bell" before then.
Ezekiel 46: 17 1l)V'Y )'J nmm )'1:lyn 1nN'J m'Jnm runn )n'""':J
nmn Oil'J )'):1 m'Jm IN N'V)'J n:lV) 1111il
"And when he gives a gift from his inheritance to one of his slaves, it will be his until
the year of remission, and then it shall stay with the prince; but his inheritance will be
for his sons."
Isaiah 61:1 'nN mil' nvn )Y' ''JY mil' ')1N n11
:l'J""'1:lV)'J V:ln'J ')n'Jv omy 1V:l'J
j 1:460. See also the discussion of terms in Chapter One above.
I
I
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 125
In light oflater developments in Hebrew and in other languages
of the region it may be of interest too to note that the Hebrew
Bible uses a term which is usually translated "noble" which later
will become the standard term for free, hor, perhaps related to the
ethnic term burru noted above in Akkadian contexts. The term in
the Hebrew Bible is always plural and usually paralleled to words
for "princes," "elders," or "officers" and denotes people of
responsibility and wealth, though a hereditary nobility in Israel at
any period seems very unlikely. The references are the textually
problematic Isaiah 34:12, a prediction of doom; Jeremiah 27:20,
referring to the king and the important people taken into exile; 1
Kings 21:8, referring to the people to whom Jezebeel wrote in
order to get Naboth out ofthe way; Ecclesiastes 10:17, where the
sage praised a land whose king is a son of a "noble" (Revised
Standard Version: "free man"), contrasting to a land ruled by a
child (:16); and Nehemiah 2:16,4:8, 13,5:7,6:17,7:5, 13:17,
where contemporary leaders and opponents were called "noble.?"
In later Hebrew the term for freedom is /Jeriit, derived from
hor, "noble," and the term /Jofti continues too. Sometimes these
are technical terms referring to manumission from slavery, but at
others a more general sense may be implied."
rnpnpa O'11ON'J) 1111 O'):lV'J N1P'J
"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to announce good news to the humble, to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to captives, release to those in prison."
12 See 1. Van der Ploeg, "Les chefs du peuple d'Israel et leurs titres," Revue
Biblique 57 (1950): 40-61, and his "Les 'Nobles' israelites," Oudtestamentische Studien
9 (1951): 49-64.
13 See /Jifyrut "freedom" in Morris Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the
TalmudBabli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, (Brooklyn: Shalom, 1967),
126 CHAPTER FIVE
2. PRACTICE IN NARRATIVES
While David was an exile trying to avenge a raid on his own
village, he came upon an Egyptian slave who had been left behind
by his Amelekite owner because he was sick. The Egyptian
admitted his status, and David asked him to show him the camp of
the raiders; he agreed, if David would swear not to kill him and
not to give him over to the hand of his owner. David apparently
agreed. 14 This story does not concern a runaway as such, but
David, for his own strategic reasons was willing to feed and
support the man because he could tell him something he needed to
know. David in the text did not assert any general principle, but
the narrator apparently found his behavior reasonable.
Probably a more typical story, which is not sympathetic to
escape, is one casually told at the-end of the David stories in the
time of Solomon his son. A notable named Shiinei who was
related to Saul had publicly ridiculed David when he was in
distress, blaming Saul's death on him (2 Samuel 16:5-13).
Solomon announced to him that he would have to stay in Jerusa-
lem, having built a house there; ifhe ever left the city, he would
be killed. But Shimei forgot the duty to remain under city arrest:
1 Kings 2:39-40 And it happened after three years that two of
Shimei's slaves fled to Achish son of Maacah, king of Gath, and
people told Shimeisaying, Look, your slavesare in Gath. So he got
up and saddledhis donkey andwentto Gathto Achishto requesthis
slaves, and Shimei went and returned the slaves from Gath."
Naturally this lapse gave Solomon the chance to have him killed
although Shimei's act seems to be perfectly innocent in political
14 I Samuel 30: 15: ')IN''J. ')1)tln-oN) 'm'y'ln - DN; the story is in I Samuel
30:11-16.
15
'vn'lJ? D'1J.}I""')'lJ m1J.) D')'lJ 'lJ?'lJ ~jJn 'il') I Kings 2:39
rm l'1J.V mil 1nN? 'vn'lJ? 11')') m l?n il:lVnlJ. 'lJ':lN7N
'lJ':lN7N nm 1?') nnn-nN 'lJJ.n') 'vn'lJ DjJ') 40
mn )'1J.VJ1N NJ.') 'vn'lJ 1?') )'1J.VJ1N 'lJjJJ.?
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 127
terms; he was not threatening the king or kingdom. It was assumed
that the owner had the right to pursue the slaves. It is of interest
that the court of Achish in Gath was also the goalof David when
he decided to run far away from Saul (1 Samuel 21 :11 [English
:10D, where he feigned madness, and again in 27:2 with his
guerrilla band." It is possible that Shimei's slaves, like David,
were aware of the political tensions between the states of Israel
and Gath and so surmised that they might be less likely to be
retrieved from there. The political situation must have changed in
Israel's favor between the times of the two stories, and so Achish
and his officials were more inclined to inform an Israelite that his
escaped slaves had sought refuge in Gath.
There are several other instances ofescape, and the assumption
seems to be always that this is an illegitimate effort. Hagar was
the only person obviously a slave who escaped in Hebrew Bible
stories. She fled when she successfully bore Abraham a child but
then incurred the wrath ofher mistress Sarah, who had suggested
that she serve as a surrogate mother for her. An Egyptian, she fled
in the direction ofEgypt along the way of Shur, when the messen-
ger of Yahweh found her near a well and asked where she was
going. Instead of explaining where she was headed, she said she
was fleeing from before her mistress; the messenger ordered her
back to Sarah with the promise that her son would found a great
people, but she would have to submit herself to her lady. Later
when Sarah had herself successfully borne Abraham an heir, she
insisted on Hagar's explusion with her son, and the two ended up
in roughly the same southern wilderness again. This time they
were not clearly heading for Egypt but were wandering near
Bersheba. Again Yahweh intervened to protect them. The son
lived in the desert of Paran, in the same general area, and Hagar
16 Note that the differences in the fathers' names may indicate two different kings
were meant, though the similarity of the names may argue against that view: I Samuel
27:2 Maok (lwn) versus I Kings 2:39 Maaka (il:lvn). See Duane L. Christensen,
"Achish," in Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David N. Freedman, 1:55-56, (New
York: Doubleday, 1992).
128 CHAPTER FIVE
his mother managed to arrange for a woman from her homeland of
Egypt as a wife for him. Like many other runaways, Hagar was
heading home, and when expelled from her household, the
traditions hold that she managed to use her ties to the homeland,
just as the other branch of the patriarchal family attempted to do
in getting brides for Isaac and for Jacob. 17
Other princelings and would-be princelings besides David fled
unpleasant courts. In 1 Kings 11:17, :23, and :40 the Aramaean
prince Hadad fled to Egypt, Rezon of Damascus fled from
before his lord and then returned to oust him from Damascus, and
Jereboam fled to Egypt to avoid Solomon's wrath. 18
The case of the prophet Jonah, called on to confront the
legendarily evil Ninevites, may be a play on the situation of the
escaped slave. Certainly he had great trouble eluding his lord and
eventually had to carry out the distasteful duty ofpreaching to the
Ninevites. The prophet argued that his flight derived from his
knowledge that the Lord would forgive the evil people (Jonah
4:2). Since he did not agree with forgiveness for such as they,
flight was the only option, although Jonah was aware of God's
great power and ability to find even fleeing prophets."
17 The storyofthe flight is in Genesis 16:1-16; expulsion is in Genesis 21:8-21. For
the Road of Shur see David A. Dorsey, The Roads and Highways ofAncient Israel,
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 120. For Paran see
Jeffries M. Hamilton, "Paran," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David N.
Freedman, 5:162, (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
18 Of the 67 occurrences ofthe verbal root n.,:l "to flee" only one other might be
seen as alluding to slavery, Isaiah 48:20, where the Second Isaiah exhorted the exiled
Israelites to return to the Land of Israel from Babylonia:
Go out from Babylon; flee from Chaldeans; D~l\!):>Y.:l 1n.,:l ?:l:lY.:l 1N~
in a voice ofjoy speak; let this be heard. m-n ))l~Y.:l\!Jn 11~)n m., ?1P:l
They have taken her out to the end ofthe earth. '{.,Nn n~j71Y mN~~)i1
Say: The Lord has redeemed his slave Jacob. :lpy~ )1:lY mi1~ ?Nl 1.,Y.:lN
But ifone looks closely at this, it does not fit in with observed realities and remains only
an image since the former owner has bought back the slave, who is now exhorted to flee
to the land of the lord (and Lord).
19 See Robert J. Ratner, "Jonah, The Runaway Servant," MAARA V 5-6 (1990):
281-305, who has briefly surveyed Ancient Near Eastern references to runaways.
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 129
3. LEGAL COLLECTIONS
Some legal texts deal with escape and freedom, and they are not
likely to have been put into effect in a slave-holding society, even
if the numbers of actual slaves were small and their work of
negligible value. Thus it is of great interest to try to understand
how these admonitions might have been included in the Israelite
legal material. The texts stress a tradition in Israelite thought that
was SYmpathetic to the downtrodden, especially because the
Israelite intellectuals remembered that they had been slaves in
Egypt. Deuteronomy 23: 16-17 (English 15-16) may derive from
Northern intellectuals before 722 B.C.E.; what it exhorts is quite
revolutionary in light ofother Ancient Near Eastern traditions and
Biblical practice as seen at least in the 1 Kings 2 story:
Do not give up a slave to his masters who saves himself from his
masters to you. (17) With you he shall live in your midst in the place
which he shall choose in one of your gates in a place that seems
good to him; do not oppress him. 20
20 1~)lN DYY.:ll~?N ?~)~"'\!JN 1~)1N-'JN l:lY .,~mn-N? (16)
unn N? 1? :l)\?:ll~"Y\!J lmo{ .,n:l~"'\!JN mpY.:l:lp"p:l :l\!J~ lY.:lY (17)
Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy, (philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 147, suggests that
the last verb is a legal term meaning to reduce to slavery, not just general oppression.
Note that he misses the contrast with the Ancient Near East, referring to the Alalakh
treaty discussed in Chapter Three. This misapprehension derives from the mistake ofthe
first editor of the Alalakh treaty in not translating the strong oaths as negatives, as
corrected by M. Liverani, "L'Estradizione dei refugiate in AT 2," Rivista degli Studi
Orientali 39 (1964):111-116, 111-112. Other treaty writers also would find Deuteron-
omy's solicitude for the welfare of the slave incomprehensible. See Moshe Weinfeld,
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), and his "The
Origins ofHumanism in Deuteronomy," Journal ofBiblical Literature 80 (1961): 241-
247. Gerhard Von Rad, Deuteronomy, 147. See in general David Brion Davis, The
Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
Raymond Westbrook, "Slave and Master," 1673, suggests that this must refer to an
international context between nations: "It makes perfect sense, however, when applied
to the international sphere, where no right of recovery existed unless expressly
authorized by treaty. The passage can therefore be seen as a polemic against such treaty
provisions, and a prohibition on the authorities in Israel against ever including an
extradition clause in their treaties with neighboring states." He argues that since the
slave got to choose his place ofresidence, he was by definition not an Israelite; I am not
130 CHAPTER FIVE
There is no particular context to this statement, and the basis for
thinking that this concern for the escaping slave did derive from
Israelite experience is other statements in Deuteronomy, which
may not be closely related to these verses. Commentators have
guessed that the slave envisioned was not one escaping from an
Israelite owner but from a foreign land who for some reason
showed up in Israel, and yet that is not explicitly stated. If this
stipulation had been put into effect consistently and included
Israelites enslaved in Israel, slavery could not have lasted in Israel,
as it obviously did. We may conclude that this remained a moral
admonition on which few, if any, were tempted to act.
But it is remarkable that it was put forward at all. We can
attribute this fact to the origins of Deuteronomy among critics of
the status quo who were willing to extend their humanistic vision
to include some slaves who had managed to escape their masters.
This passage shows clearly and explicitly that there were Israelite
thinkers who actually empathized with slaves and valued even the
slaves' freedom; this empathy is more explicit than anything
adduced from Classical Greek literature."
In this same vein is the rule against "stealing men" which did
not mention slavery but which appeared to condemn the practice
by which many were enslaved. Exodus 21:16 reads, "Whoever
steals a man, whether he sells him or is found in possession of
him, shall be put to death. "22 If such stipulations were actually to
sure the context was international since it was not explicitly defined, and the
Deuteronomic humanism may have been more powerful than practice.
21 David Brion Davis, The Problem, 71, summarizes Euripides' feelings: "...while
Euripides raised no protest against the injustice of slavery, he sensed that its origins
were filled with dramatic pathos." Stoics viewed slavery as part ofthe imperfections of
the world to be borne by the truly free person, ibid., 76. Compare the several passages
adduced in Patterson, Freedom I, 88-132.
22 nY.n) m» )1):1 N~n)) n:JY.n\!J)N :1In
Compare the somewhat more explicit Deuteronomy 24:7, which seems to expand the
Exodus verse: "If a man is found to have stolen a soul from his brothers from the
children oflsrael and has entered into commerce with him and sold him, then that thief
is a dead man, and you must bum out the evil from your midst."
"N1\!J' '):1n )'nNn \!J£l) :1)) \!J'N N~n)"):J
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 131
be enforced, the institution of slavery would have been stamped
out. Since it clearly was not, we may assume again that this is an
egalitarian wish that could not be put into effect.
The same distance from reality may inhere in the Jubilee
legislation, which is part of the latest large collection of laws in
the Bible, the Holiness Code, apparently connected with priests.
The idea seems to be that in the fiftieth year the society should
return any land alienated in the last 49 years (Leviticus 25:10). In
that context the legislators envisioned a temporary abolition of
debt slavery among Hebrews:
Leviticus 25:39 And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and
sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave. (40)
He shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall
serve with you until the year of the jubilee; (41) then he shall go out
from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own
family, and return to the possession of his fathers.
The motivation is explicitly that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt
(Leviticus 25:42). This legislation is not tantamount to abolition
of slavery, but it does edge closer to abolition than other legal
proposals from the ancient world."
A temporary servitude was envisioned in the passages that
speak of slavery for seven years for Hebrew slaves only; other
slaves presumably served in perpetuity. The oldest stipulation is
probably the one at the very beginning of the oldest extensive
collection oflaws, the Covenant Code, Exodus 21:2: "When you
buy a Hebrew slave six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he
shall go out free (or as a freedman) for nothing." Slaves who did
l:l1pn Y1il n1Y:1)xmn ann nrn n:JY.n n-,nynm
23 1:1Y nny n 1:1yn-N" 1"-':J):») 1ny TnN 1m'''):J) (39)
1ny ny' ":1'il m\!J-'y 1ny il'il' :1\!Jm:J 1':J'lJ:J (40)
:1)\!J' )'n:1N mnN7N) mn£l\!JY.l7N :1\!J) my )'):1) N1il1nyY.l N~')(41)
David Brion Davis, The Problem, 62-90. The Stoics in the Hellenistic period opposed
slavery in principle, but it was only until Quakers in the eighteenth century began to
question their earlier involvement in slave trading that there arose an organized
movement for abolition, 72-78, 291-332.
132 CHAPTER FIVE
not wish to go free but wished to remain with the families whom
the masters had provided could so declare and have their ears
bored as a sign of their permanent slave status, and they could
serve forever (:6).24
Females were to be dealt with differently, unless they had been
made wives of owners or owners' sons and had not been treated
properly with regard to food, clothes, and marital duty; if ne-
glected, then they might "go out for nothing; there is no money"
(Exodus 21:7).25 The reason for the difference in treatment
apparently lay in the different roles envisioned for men and
women. The women could look forward to being honored wives,
and if they did not get their due, they could go free. But the men
were seen as potential heads of households who would value
freedom and might even choose it over adherence to their slave
families. It is perhaps ironic in light ofPatterson's arguments that
freedom was first perceived as a value because of the experience
of females that they were not more favored with access to
freedom in Exodus.
In the parallel sections of Deuteronomy freedom for women
definitely moved to the fore. Deuteronomy 15:12 is explicit that
the seven-year rule should apply to women as well as men. The
terminology is a bit different, since "you are to send them forth
free," while Exodus had the man merely "going forth." The role of
the manumitter was paramount, and this is in line with Deuteron-
omy's purpose as an admonition to those who had power over
others to treat them more justly. Not only were they both to go
free; they were also to get gifts of sheep, grain, and wine to start
them off in their new lives of freedom (:13-14). And the motive
for such magnanimity was historic: "And you will remember that
you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God
ransomed you; because ofthat I order you to do this thing today."
The sermonizers realized that this endowment and especially the
24 om ~'lJ!)n? N.::l~ nVJ.'lJ:n 1J.V~ 0~)'lJ 'lJ'lJ ~1J.V 1J.V mpn ~:l Exodus 21:2
25 'lo:l )'N. mn ilN.::l~)
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 133
manumission itselfmight be hard for slave-owners to accept, but
they rationalized that the slave served six years for "halfthe wage
of a hired laborer," and thus that the slave owner was getting a
great deal. 26
In the dark days after the initial Babylonian conquest in 597
RC.E. and the exile of some of the opinion leaders Jeremiah 34:
8-17 shows how the remission was supposed to work but did not
actually work. Jeremiah related that the Judahite king Zedekiah
had made a covenant and called a remission for the Judahites "to
send forth each one his Hebrew slave and slave girl," and the
people did so but then captured them and reimposed slavery. So
the prophet reproached the slave-holders with the Lord's threat
and used the term remission ironically:
34: 17 So thus says the Lord. You did not hear me to call a remission
each for his brother and each for his fellow; here I am calling a
remission for you--the speech of the Lord--for a sword and plague
and famine, and I'll turn you into a terror to all the kingdoms of the
earth."
26 Deuteronomy 15:12: lY.lVY.l ~'lJ!)n ))n?'lJn vs. Exodus 21:2: mn ~'lJ!)n? N.::l~.
Deuteronomy 15:18: 1~:l\!J 1:l\!J m'lJY.l "half the wage of a hired laborer."
This raises the question of how much slaves cost and what the wage of a hired
laborer was. We cannot say from texts contemporary to Deuteronomy in Israel, but
there are slave prices preserved in Genesis 37:28, where the Ishmaelites paid 20
(shekels) of silver for Joseph, and Hosea 3:2, where he paid 15 (shekels) of silver and
a homer and a measure of barley (about 120 liters) for an adulteress.
We have the following wages attested in the Bible:
Judges 17:10 10 (shekels) for a priest along with his apparel and living;
2 Chronicles 25:6 3 (shekels) for a mercenary for the duration of a campaign;
Nehemiah 5:15 40 shekels for the salary of governors in the past;
Zechariah ll: 12 30 (shekels) for a shepherd.
These are not all twice the attested slave prices, but they are of the same order of
magnitude.
On the measures see Marvin A. Powell, "Weights and Measures," in Anchor Bible
Dictionary, edited by David N. Freedman, 6:897-908, 903, (New York: Doubleday,
1992).
27 mV1? 'lJ~N.) )mN.? 'lJ~N. 1n1 N.1jJ? ~?N. onvY.l'lJ-N.? OnN. mm 1Y.lN.i1:l P?
J.V1il?N.) 1J.1il?N. J.1nil-?N. mil~-oN.) 1)11 O:l? N.1jJ »m
'l1N.il m:l?Y.lY.l ?:l? ilvn? O:lnN. ~nm
134 CHAPTER FIVE
The prophet referred to the idea that Hebrew slaves should serve
only seven years, and admitted that earlier generations had not
obeyed that rule (Jeremiah 34:14). So the prophet predicted that
God's wrath, in the form of the Babylonians, would decimate
Judah (:22). Obviously Jeremiah's complaint refers to neglect and
then abuse ofthe provisions for seven-year slavery. It is not clear
that the freeing of slaves was conceived as a normal part of the
jubilee year procedures, but it seems a logical extension from a
lesser to a greater proposition. If it was required to free Hebrew
slaves in the seventh year of their service, then naturally such a
liberation would be included in the general liberty of the land."
But it does not seem likely that in a society that continued to
regard slave-holding as necessary such mass manumissions would
ever have been anything but a step taken in an acute crisis.
The chronological problems of whether Jeremiah may have
been reacting to the Holiness Code are not easily resolved, and for
our purposes they are not particularly important. It is sufficient to
note that in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. some
thinkers in the southern kingdom believed that God's will required
that slavery among their fellow-countrymen ought to be curtailed,
its duration limited, and the condition ofthe freedmen ameliorated
through the endowment of start-up supplies for a life of freedom.
After the return from exile we hear ofNehemiah's reforms, and
though he did not use terms for freedom and release, he was
concerned to curtail debt-slavery by making rich persons provide
credit for the poor. The downtrodden complained to him, " ...we
are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of
.our daughters have already been enslaved..." in order to pay taxes
(Nehemiah 5:5). Nehemiah's answer was to accuse the nobles
(~orim!) of exacting interest and to shame them into lending
28 See Christopher J. H. Wright, "Jubilee, Year of," in Anchor Bible Dictionary,
3: 1025-1030, and compare Ezekiel 46: 17, where the Jubilee year is called the year of
the d'r6r "freedom." The practice of the Jubilee year had fallen into neglect at least as
early as the first century of our era; compare George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First
Centuries ofthe Christian Era, (New York: Schocken, 1971),2: 135-138, and 340 n. 1.
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL 135
money and grain without interest (Nehemiah 5:6-13). Nehemiah
must have thought that this measure would free up credit for the
poor and allow them to avoid slavery." This again shows that
Nehemiah must have seen freedom as a community value for
which he encouraged sacrifice.
Later practice certainly lagged behind these thinkers, if in fact
any slave-holders paid attention to them at all. But it is not a far
step from such humanity toward slaves, maybe initially only
toward Hebrew slaves, to humanity toward any slaves. It is,
however, not necessarily a quick or easy step to make. Champions
of the Greek miracle will be happy to point out that the same
feeling, that fellow-Greeks really ought not to be enslaved, was
current among intellectuals at Athens a hundred years or so later. 30
One may thus argue that what we have found in Israel is not
unique in the ancient world, and I would agree. But what one
finds in Greece also is not unique. The legacy of how those two
traditions interacted is a complex one that cannot be fully followed
here. I think nonetheless we have shown that the seeds oflove of
liberty were present in both cultures, but the manifestation ofhow
those seeds developed is not likely to have been similar in both
places simply because ofthe different historical experiences ofthe
bearers of the traditions. It does not seem likely to me that the
ideas ofmodem liberty have persisted unchanged from these early
times, but certain elements that constitute important hallmarks
within modem liberty were found in the ancient world.
29 See in general Eberhard Klingenberg, Das israelitische Zinsverbot in Torah,
Misnah. und Talmud. (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977).
30 See the references in Yvon Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece, (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1988),47-53,50-51.
 CHAPTER SIX

FREEDOM BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS

We have seen that the terminology.for flight and freedom existed

in the Ancient Near Eastern languages, and there is no question
but what underlings in various states ofunfreedom fled. When we
tum to the goals expressed in the Introduction, we can say that
some have been met. First, on eluding authority on the ground, we
can say that because of the laconic nature of the administrative
documents from which such information comes, we usually cannot
say much about why people fled, but we have seen some interest-
ing things about how they did so. Group escape was rare, in
contrast to other traditions of escape. On the second goal of
assaying what elite understandings were offlight and freedom, we
have examined the ideology offlight and freedom, what intellectu-
als wrote about it, and we know that kings and movers and shakers
took a dim view of flight, even if some of them might acknowl-
edge that flight had a role at least in their own educations ifnot in
letting offsteam in socially constraining situations. But citizens of
old cities and of upstart cities prized freedom, conceived as old
liberties secured for particular cities, and sometimes as curtailment
of some kinds of debts. Intellectuals, some not connected to the
royal courts, went further and proposed a freedom that might
rearrange oppressive economic conditions, at least periodically.
Their distance from power, though, usually kept such ideas from
being put into practice, especially in first-millennium Israel.'

! We cannot claim to have studied here running away as a phenomenon in anyone

community or time; this is a desideratum which could produce new insights into the
complexity oflabor, as suggested for the New World by Michael Naragon, "Communi-
ties in Motion: Drapetomania, Work and the Development of African-American Slave
Cultures," Slavery andAbolition 15:3 (1994): 62-87, especially 83: "Only by examining
drapetomania [the desire to run away] within its larger communal context can historians
grasp its root causes and significance..."
138 CHAPTER SIX
Our third goal of trying to see how escape experience might
have affected these elite understandings finds some data in the
Idrimi and the David stories. With Idrimi the feedback was
negative. A prince who came to power from his exile still entered
into a treaty promising return of refugees. The case of David is
less clear in that he did not legislate or make preserved treaties on
these issues. The tradition of the Hebrew Exodus did however
serve as a continuing motive for kind treatment of slaves and
might be connected with the extraordinary stipulations that
restricted return ofslaves and stealing ofpersons. These traditions
may be independent of David's stories, of course.
I. ARE TRADITIONS A UNITY?
The first and most basic question about the material we have
reviewed is whether the Ancient Near Eastern traditions about
flight and freedom constitute a unity in any sense. Certainly there
are continuities in both areas, and yet it must be underlined that we
do not really know how ideas flowed in the Ancient Near East and
how specific formulations might pass from one place to another.'
Probably the most famous of the cultural contacts, which has
little to do with flight and freedom, is the case of the goring ox,
which occurs both in the Code of Hammurapi and in the Bible.
There one might posit the existence of some sort of orally passed
down common law which elders in various communities em-
ployed to solve recurring problems. Or one might look to the
tradition of literacy itself where scribes in one culture were
exposed to the writings of another and transposed them into their
2 La Circulation des biens. des personnes et des idees dans le Proche-Orient ancien,
edited by D. Charpin, I-M. Durand, (Paris: Recherche sur les civilisations, 1992), has
a number of stimulating studies, but it constitutes only a starting place for such
questions as these. Trade shows that there was contact, and occasionallyin intellectual
affairswe can meet the Babylonian visitingprofessors, for example,at the Hittite court,
studied by Gary Beckman,"Mesopotamians and MesopotamianLearning at Hattusa,"
Journal ofCuneiform Studies 35 (1983): 97-114.
BEYONDMESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 139
own milieus. It is not possible given our state of knowledge to
decide in any individual case between these alternatives. But it
seems quite likely that each of them operated in some situations,
and that variants on them operated in many others. Ifwe ask only
if the Ancient Near Eastern tradition as a whole was a unity, we
must unequivocally answer that it was not, that it was a cluster of
cultures and language groups that shared some ideas but differed
in many others in different places and periods.'
Probably all we should concretely claim for flight and freedom
is to say that we have shown that several Ancient Near Eastern
societies confronted something like the issue of freedom in that
they legislated, even if they did not enforce, stipulations about
exemptions from some taxes and some kinds of debt. Viewed
from outside the societies and from two and more millennia later,
the societies seem to the interested observer to share a general
idea, which might well be universal, that governments ought
occasionally to intervene in social and economic affairs to assure
that justice was done, and the calling for freedom was one usually
cheap way for governments to be seen to be doing that. And yet,
ifan individual Hebrew speaker had been accosted and asked how
his institutions differed from those.of an individual, and earlier,
Sumerian speaker, in most periods he would be quick to point out
the vast differences and not the commonalities. Since we are
asking a manifestly ahistorical question, that is, how does our own
view of freedom compare to those of earlier groups, we may be
permitted to be struck by the differences.
Perhaps it would strengthen the case to emphasize continuities,
as Patterson did in connection with the Greeks, and it is true that
there are continuities. But candor calls us to admit ignorance both
3 The goring ox is in Hammurapiparagraphs250-252 and Exodus21:28-32;seethe
studies by J.J. Finkelstein, The Ox That Gored, (Philadelphia: AmericanPhilosophical
Society, 1981) = Transactions 71:2, and "The Goring Ox," Temple Law Quarterly 46
(1973): 169-290.The case of the EgyptianInstructionsof Amenemopeand the Biblical
book of Proverbs 22:17-24:34is the most striking case of extended literaryborrowing
in the Ancient Near East; see on this R.N. Whybray, The Book ofProverbs, (Leiden:
Brill, 1995), 78-84.
140 CHAPTER SIX
of how ideas passed on and of whether, all told, the institution
called in Akkadian anduriirum really was to be seen, except
lexicographically, in the Biblical cfror. 4 The future ofthis question
may be clarified as we find more Ancient Near Eastern texts that
may be seen as missing links between earlier and later traditions,
but now the question must remain a matter of conjecture. One
might consequently argue that one ought to refrain from specula-
tion on other questions about the history of freedom, but I
personally believe that Assyriologists in particular have too
frequently failed to tease out the implications of their studies for
the contemporary broader culture, and I do not intend to make that
mistake in this case.
2. DESCENT AMONG JEWS
It would be ofinterest to know how exactly the views about flight
and freedom that appeared in Israelite tradition descended to
Judaism in late antiquity. A great deal of study has gone into the
question ofdescent in general, though not, so far as I am aware, in
detail about flight and freedom.
In Jesus son ofSirach's wisdom book, which must have been
composed around 180 B.C.E. in Palestine and as Ecclesiasticus
became a secondarily canonical part ofthe Bible, we find advice
to the slave-holders:
33:24 (Greek :25) Fodder and a stick and burdens for an ass;
bread and discipline and work for a servant.
25 Set your slave to work, and you will find rest;
leave his hands idle, and he will seek liberty.
26 Yoke and thong will bow the neck,
4 M. Liverani, Prestige and Interest, 295, notes too that there may have been
varieties ofattitudes in the lower classes: "The presumption that peasantry was wherever
alike would mean to grant a monopoly of culture to the ruling elites. The diversities
were perhaps not less marked in the 'silent majority,' but these did not leave letters nor
display inscriptions."
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 141
and for a wicked servant there are racks and tortures.
27 Put him to work, that he may not be idle.
For idleness teachesmuch evil.
28 Set him to work, as is fitting for him,
and ifhe does not obey, make his fetters heavy.
29 Do not act immoderately toward anybody,
and do nothing without discretion.
30. If you have a servant, let him be as yourself,
because you have bought him with blood.
31. If you have a servant,treat him as a brother,
for as your own soul you will need him.
If you ill-treat him, and he leaves and runs away,
which way will you go to seek him?'
The slave-holders were admonished to be kind to slaves so that
they would not run away, but also to keep them busy so they did
not seek freedom because they had nothing better to do. Certainly
Sirach had no thought that runaway slaves ought not to be returned
to their masters.
It is clear that the later Jewish tradition in practice valued
freedom ofthought very highly, though probably not for all Jews,
just for those qualified through their training to have an opinion on
religious matters. When the elites that had run Judaea were
swallowed in the Jewish Wars of 70 and 135 C.E., only the
Pharisaic religious leaders continued to be a recognized group, and
their opinions were those that give us rabbinic Judaism, from
which all later Judaisms either derive or to which they arose in
opposition. One ofthe beliefs ofthe group was that there was an
oral law that showed God's will alongside and in elaboration of
the written law which the Hebrew Bible conveyed, and this law
was seen to be flexible in that responsible opinion in any age could
conceivably revise it. In practice the Jewish scholars became
attached to their understandings, and not many basic questions
were open to dispute. But the idea that some questions were open
5 "Servant" in this passage is oilee-tTle; "house slave"; "slave" is nate; "child."
142 CHAPTER SIX
and that God would manifest His will in the discussion was a basic
one that persists to this day.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of this valuing of
intellectual freedom is the story in the Babylonian Talmud about
whether a portable oven that had been made ritually unclean had
to be disassembled in order to have its purity restored. Disputants
proposed various solutions to this problem, and then a consensus
developed. But the Talmud says God spoke from heaven saying
that His view lay with the minority, but he would accept the
superior arguments ofthe majority. "My sons have defeated Me,"
He is said to have laughed."
This treasuring of freedom of thought did not extend to
behavioral norms. Most rabbis in the early centuries of our era
probably despised the untutored and illiterate masses, the "people
of the land," who might be Jewish in descent, but in religious
matters were seen as doubtful practitioners because of their
ignorance and thus were not qualified for the intellectual freedom
the rabbis prized. Also even rabbis continued to hold slaves,
though Biblical injunctions against having permanent Hebrew
slaves might have been taken seriously in some communities. 7
Some communities may have been concerned about the jubilee,
and jubilees may have been imposed in the limited way communi-
ties under alien rule might have been able to do so.
6 Baba Metziah 59b, The Babylonian Talmud, edited by Israel Epstein, (London:
Soncino: 1935),353:
Said Rabbi Jeremiah, That the Law had already been given at Sinai. We pay no
attention to a Heavenly Voice because Thou hast long since written in the Law at
Mt. Sinai, After a majority one must incline (Exodus 23:2). Rabbi Nathan met Elijah
and asked him what did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do in that hour. He laughed
and he replied, saying, My sons have defeated Me, My sons have defeated Me.
7 See Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, (New York,
Philadelphia: Columbia University Press, Jewish Publication Society, 1952),2:258-259;
on slavery in one community see S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, I. Economic
Foundations, (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 130-147,
and note 143: "A touchstone for the treatment of slaves is the frequency of reports or
discussions about their running away from their masters." Such reports are rare in the
Cairo Geniza documents which Goitein studies.
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 143
The Talmudic references to Deuternomy 23: 16-17 with its
stipulation ofnot returning the runaway include one where Rabbi
Judah the Patriarch, who flourished in the Land of Israel around
192-235 C.E., said the stipulation was limited to the case ofaman
who bought a slave on condition that he free him. Another
reference has Rabbi Hisda, a Babylonian of the late third century
C.E., arguing, "That refers to a slave who escapes from abroad to
Eretz Israe1." That is, all references agree that the stipulation was
not of general application and thus did not really undermine
slavery."
In contrast Benjamin al-Nahawandi, a Karaite, or anti-Rabbinic
teacher of the ninth century C.E., forbad the surrendering of any
fugitive slaves, Jew or Gentile. This is perfectly in line with a
Karaite's devotion to a literal understanding of the Biblical text,
but it is not clear that it made much difference to slave-holding
practices among Karaites. Elsewhere, though, Benjamin did allow
the sons of deceased debtors to be sold as slaves, basing himself
on 2 Kings 4's Elisha story, in which the prophet performed a
miracle creating olive oil that allowed a widow to avoid having
her sons sold into slavery; Benjamin argued that the prophet
thereby condoned slavery. 9
One can say in general that the great themes of Exodus, of
liberation from bondage, continued to reverberate in the hearts of
Jews. And yet, except in intellectual inquiry in theory, everyday
life among Jewish communities may not have manifested freedom
as a value any more than contemporary Greek-speaking communi-
ties or others without an Ancient Near Eastern background.
8 Yebamot 93a-b, The Babylonian Talmud, 634, essentially the same tradition as in
Kiddushin 62b-63a, 315. For the slave supposedly bought abroad see Gitlin 45a, 196.
9 For the Karaite see Leon Nemoy, Karaite Anthology, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1952), 335, 21, and H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History ofthe Jewish People,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 448.
144
CHAPTER SIX
3. DESCENT AMONG GREEKS AND CHRISTIANS
Another question of interest is how exactly the Greek tradition
descended. Although Alexander valued the Greek tradition, it was
not its philosophy that was of great importance to him, and
politically it must be admitted that his successors and their states
did not allow real civic freedoms or personal ones. The Stoic
school of philosophy, which became important in the last few
centuries B.C.E., did take important elements from the Classical
tradition about freedom and asserted, as the Jewish philosopher
Philo wrote, that every upright man is in fact free. The meaning
of this was that the pious human being, or rather man, was felt to
be able to control his desires and appetites and to direct his
thoughts wherever he wished, regardless of what his body could
be forced to do. This freedom was certainly valued by Stoics, but
it may not have been very general in the Greek-speaking world. 10
The Stoics did come the closest ofany ancient group to advocating
the abolition of slavery, feeling that it demeaned both the master
and slave to pervert the real freedom that the mind exercised. But
these sentiments did not become a social movement for abolition
III any sense.
Another stairway ofdescent ofideas offreedom is Christianity.
In particular the Apostle Paul dwelled on the freedom he had in
Christ and commended that freedom to his addressees. Though
10 From Philo see his "That Every Just Man Is Free," in Philo, F.H. Colson, editor,
(Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, Heinemann, 1967),9:1-101, esp. 79,
lauding the Jewish Essene sect for, among other things, supposedly refusing to hold
slaves. In fact the Damascus Document, which is related to the Dead Sea Scrolls
reputed to come from Essenes or people like Essenes, implies that sect members rna;
have owned slaves; see Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls, (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1981), 128. On other Stoics and freedom see David Brion Davis, The Problem, 72-78.
Amaldo Momigliano showed the Classical Greek interest was in what Patterson would
call sovereignal freedom, that is, not being subservient to others, but he also makes clear
that Herodotus demonstrated that the Persians were inimical to tyrants too and tolerated
democratic freedoms; see Momigliano, "Persian Empire and Greek Freedom," in The
Idea ofFreedom. Essays in Honor ofIsaiah Berlin, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1979),139-151, 141, 148.
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 145
some have formulated his thought as advocating freedom from the
Jewish law, from sin, and from death, recent study indicates that
Paul saw freedom in a Stoic light and asserted that one would have
more freedom, that is, freedom to do as one wanted, if one
accepted Christ. II He had apparently no coherent idea about how
the law might be overcome and in fact advocated modest obedi-
ence to community norms, It is hard to see how Paul can be said
to be handing down the Classical value of freedom except that he
used the same Greek word. When it came to actual slavery, Paul
was supportive of kind treatment to runaway slaves, but he
certainly did not see the freedom of slaves as a value. In the Letter
to Philemon he sent back a Christian runaway, imploring that the
Christian master treat the returnee as a brother as well as a slave. 12
Later, when Gospels came to be written, in Luke's understand-
ing ofJesus his first sermon at Nazareth focused on the proclama-
tion of freedom. Jesus in Luke 4:18 read Isaiah 61:1-2 in the
synagogue:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor;
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
And Jesus ends by saying, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing" (:21). Other traditions of Jesus did not stress the
aspect of freedom, but this is a significant link between a central
Hebrew Bible text on freedom and Jesus. 13
11 See F. Stanley Jones, "Freedom," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by
David N. Freedman, 2: 855-859, (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
12 See LA.H. Combes, The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early
Church, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998),59-63.
13 Luke diverges from the Septuagint which follows the Masoretic Text here; Luke
subtracts one phrase (iaua.u8cn 'toi>~ uuv't€'tptJJJJevou~'tfl Ka.pti(~, "to heal those
broken in heart") and adds another (anou't€iAa.t 't€8pa.uuJJevou~ tv a<!>eu€t "to send
146 CHAPTER SIX
The later Christian tradition was not noted for its attachment to
personal freedom. Indeed in the crises that wracked the early
church, one finds leaders quite willing to deny personal freedom
to opponents. The practice of excommunication, which might
deprive a person of such freedom, is attested even in the New
Testament itself apparently in 1 Timothy 1:19-20. But of course
it would be cavalier to say that the entire tradition rejected
freedom. There certainly were monks copying the Classical texts,
having the leisure and freedom to do so. And the freedom of the
church was the rallying cry for the eleventh-century reform
movement associated with Pope Gregory VII. 14
4. DESCENT AMONG MUSLIMS
Another strand ofdescent ofthe idea offreedom as a value may be
found in the Islamic world. There we find much study of the
Classical tradition, though with a bent toward the translation of
practical texts like medical ones." In spite of the Western view
that Islamic states continued a sort ofOriental despotism wherever
possible, the legal traditions in Islam were united in their seeing
the individual's freedom as a value. As reflected in my dedication
at the beginning of this study the basic assumption in cases of
doubt about the slave status of a person was to be for the free
status. The jurists asserted, ''the basic principle for all children of
away those shattered in a release"), which appears to emphasize the connection to
freedom or "release." Greek.ddieotv translates Hebrew deror, "release" or "freedom."
The New Testament text is from The Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland et aI.,
(Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1968).
14 SeeM ' H . Pope, "E xcommunication,
arvm The Interpreter
. . " .m 11 T 's Dictionary ofthe
Bible, edited by George Buttrick, 2:183-185, (Nashville, New York: Abingdon, 1962).
See Harold 1. Berman, Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Western Legal
Tradition, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1983),
85-119, on Gregory's work.
15 See in general Franz Rosenthal's compendium, The Classical Heritage in Islam,
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 147
Adam...is freedom." Manumission was seen as an especially
virtuous act, and in fact freed slaves had important roles down to
modem times in the army and the administration of several
Muslim-dominated states. 16
Franz Rosenthal studied the Muslim views of freedom in a
small and provocative book that assumes that the Greeks had
expanded the understanding of freedom and that this concept has
come to be the decisive one in world history. Rosenthal wrote
during the Cold War, and freedom's importance may actually have
grown since 1960. He notes that the Arabic word for free, hurr,
means not just free but ofoutstanding value, and suggests that the
term did not mean "freedom" in modem senses until modem
times. But the Muslims ignored Aristotle's argument that there
were persons who were slaves by nature, and legal traditions even
said the master should not call a slave his slave, but one should
refer to "my boy, my maid," because all humans were actually
slaves only ofGod. Although imprisonment was not primarily for
punishment, there were prisons, which were used to hold persons
before their innocence had been established; officials could not use
jailor torture to force confessions. Forced labor, an every-present
way of exploiting labor that did not lead to enslavement, had no
basis in Islamic law and was abhorred, though frequently imposed.
The story was preserved that Alexander had been told by Aristotle
that he would find it difficult to beat the Khurasanians because of
their "great love of freedom." This might refer either to personal
or civic freedom, but the phrase certainly denotes that the
Khurasanians of Iran reputedly held freedom as a value. But of
course the story was presumably first told in Greek. Note too that
16 See Robert Brunschvig, "cAbd," in The Encyclopaedia ofIslam, edited by A.R.
Gibb et aI., (Leiden, London: Brill, Luzac, 1960), 1:24b-40a, and Patricia Crone, Slaves
on Horses, (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980),74-81, for the
military roles of slaves in early Islam. Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of
Freedom Prior to the 19th Century, (Leiden: Brill, 1960),32 and n. 76.
148 CHAPTER SIX
since the love of independence of the bedouin was "entirely
unreflective," it was ignored by Rosenthal. 17
Rosenthal admits the Greek miracle, but he does argue that
freedom of thought and movement had a "tremendous emotional
impact" on "the average Muslim." But the idea ofcivic liberty was
not strong; a commitment to human liberty was nonetheless
clear. 18
One may question if such facts constitute the valuing of
freedom as a societal value, but it seems to me that Islamic
civilization can be said to have held that value at least as much as
Christian civilization did into the Early Modem Era. The more
recent development ofideas ofpoliticaI freedom appears to derive
from European influence, as in the 1840 call by Lebanese to
oppose Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian occupation, perhaps reflecting
the language of a British resident. Earlier uses are in contexts of
contacts with Europeans; a 1774 Russo-Ottoman treaty speaks of
the Tatars ofCrimea as "free and independent," though they were
not, and freedom appears as a political term in Arabic first in a
1798 declaration by Napoleon Bonaparte.'? The Syrian under-
standing of freedom with which we began this study probably
owes more to later Western thought than to the Islamic tradition
itself, though the word used derives directly from Muslim usage.
5. TOWARD A DEFINITION
The study of the ancient world opens the question of how we
define personal freedom. Freedom of movement would seem to
be important, and it was that freedom that ancient runaways were
17 Franz Rosenthal, Muslim Concept, 9-11, 30, 46-47,77-79, 101,104 n. 327.
18 Ibid., 120-121.
19 See Albert Hourani,Arabic Thought in the LiberalAge, 1798-1939, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983),61-62; compare also for later thinkers, ibid., 90,
100, 173, 176. And for the Ottomans and Bonaparte see Bernard Lewis, The Political
Language ofIslam, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 109 and 111.
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 149
seizing, and yet there may be other elements that are important to
us now that have developed only gradually and would not be
likely to show up long ago, as Lord Acton himself saw. Freedom
ofthought is now part ofpersonal freedom, and perhaps that only
became an issue when governments attempted to punish people for
not thinking a certain way; before such times, it does not appear
likely that it would have occurred to anyone to assert freedom of
thought since it had not been restricted. Village atheists probably
lived and died without having much impact on the written record,
especially in societies with very low rates of literacy by modem
standards. Some new aspects of freedom such as freedom of the
press may not have ancient analogues, and yet we seem to have at
least some hints that some people in the ancient past believed that
freedom of thought was important. 20
It is well to remember that nowadays even under dictatorial
regimes most people have freedom ofmovement, though they may
not be able to choose where they live or the sorts ofjobs they will
have. The limits offreedom in dictatorial settings are clearer than
in other systems, and ancient totalitarianisms may have strived
toward the ideal now attained in such states. But it does not
appear that ancient states were capable of the organization and
efficiency that has been required to attain high levels of control.
Systems of identity cards and in some parts of the world even the
requirement that people have family names are only recent
innovations; the Old Babylonian lord discussed in Chapter Two
who thought of a pass system for one category ofworkers was far
20 See my "Intellectual Freedom in the Ancient Near East?" in Intellectual Life of
the Ancient Near East = Comptes rendus de la 43eme Rencontre Assyriologique
Internationale, edited by Jin Prosecky, (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998),359-363. I
argued that criticisms ofkings, implicit in the Gilgamesh story and elsewhere, show that
the literate did not always accept the royal party line.
Modem calls for freedom are inevitably enmeshed in their political contexts, which
mayor may not be conducive to a valuing of personal freedom. November 21, 1996,
I heard by radio a rebel leader in Eastern Zaire shout, "Uhuru, uhuru, liberte, liberte!"
using the old Swahili word for freedom along with the French. Obviously he touched
a nerve in his auditors, but one cannot be sure that his government was more solicitous
of individual freedom than the one it replaced.
150 CHAPTER SIX
ahead ofhis time. So the more interesting point becomes why the
leaders of ancient polities would have attempted the control they
did. The answer must lie in the economic and social advantages
that they found in the potential ability to control the movements of
at least some of the persons who were dependent on them.
We are left with Aristotle's formulation that freedom was the
ability to do what one wants. Modems emphasize especially the
freedom to go where one wants. Naturally in all societies there
will have been and will always be some limits on that ability
regardless of whether freedom can be shown to be a cultural
value."
We may not soon be able to define more precisely what we as
a culture mean by personal freedom, and if we cannot do so, it is
possible that all studies like this that try to examine the pedigree
of this idea or bundle of ideas are doomed to frustration." But it
is important to overcome the stereotype ofthe ancient world, and
21 Aristotle, Politics, 131Oa28 and 1317a40, both times reporting the opinion that
freedom means doing what one likes, though in his view salvation comes by living
according to rule; see Stephen Everson, editor, The Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 129, 144; in each case the Greek is we; ~OUAE'tlXt, "as one
wishes." Arno Baruzzi, Die Zukunji der Freiheit, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1993), 145, writes, "Eine gute Definition von Freiheit heiBt: sich frei
bewegen konnen, frei iiber einen Platz gehen konnen, (A good definition offreedom is
to be able to move freely, to be able to go freely across a place)." Note the discussion
in Chapter One above about the etymology ofthe Akkadian anduriiru connected with
flowing and running where one wills and also connecting Greek eleuther with the verb
to go. Compare Marc Bloch on the limits to his own freedom in a modem free society,
Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1975),67: "I consider myselfto be a free man, but as a university professor, while I am
'free' for example vis-a-vis the state to use my vacation as I please, I am not free to fail
in my teaching during the school year."
22 Compare Felix E. Oppenheim, "Freedom," International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, edited by David L. Sills, 5:554-559, (New York: Macmillan and the
Free Press, 1968), especially 557: "There is no such thing as freedom in general; every
organized society consists of an intricate network of specific relations of both freedom
and unfreedom." See also Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1969), 172: "...the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal
and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of
childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past."
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 151
particularly the Ancient Near Eastern world, as unchanging and
entirely oppressive, dominated by totalitarian governments of
great efficiency, which managed to suppress their peoples most of
the time. Such was certainly not the case, and there are indica-
tions, as we have seen, of a variety in attitudes toward aspects of
freedom.
To return to Burckhardt's view of the individual and the state
in our epigraph, we may question his lumping those Assyrians,
Babylonians, and Persians together. They shared some aspects of
political culture, but not so far as to include all means of oppres-
sion. Burckhardt's casual "and so forth" indicates he was
generalizing and not particularly from situations actually known
to him in detail. Did the individual equate to evil? Not in many
aspects of Ancient Near Eastern culture, especially where the
individual's responsibility for wrongdoing was stressed, as in the
flood stories." In what sense the individual arose here and there
cannot be gauged through self-conscious and self-reflective essays
since that was not yet a genre save perhaps in wisdom
collections." The wild individualism Burckhardt himself docu-
mented in Renaissance Italy is not attested early." But the idea of
the individual against the group is sometimes seen in monumental
and canonical writings. Idrimi stands out from among his timid
brothers, and David killed his ten thousands. These individuals
were not like us, but they were persons who made and wanted to
23 Gilgamesh xi 181-182: "Charge the violation to the violator, charge the offense
to the offender," as in M.G. Kovacs, The Epic of Gilgamesh, (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989), 103, and compare the Old Babylonian Atra-Hasis III vi 25, in
W.G. Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-ljasis, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 100-101.
24 See Bendt Alster, The Instructions of Suruppak, (Copenhagen: Akademisk,
1974), W.G. Lambert, Babylonian WisdomLiterature, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), and
Miriam Lichtheim,AncientEgyptian Literature, 3 volumes, (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1973-1980).
25 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, (New York:
Modem Library, 1954, first 1860), especially his "The Development ofthe Individual,"
100-127. For a recent view of the issue see John Hale, The Civilization ofEurope in the
Renaissance, (New York, Toronto: Atheneum, Maxwell, and MacMillan, 1999), 420-
463.
152 CHAPTER SIX
make an impression. Civil and religious barriers may have
enforced a uniformity of thought, and castes too in the sense of
professional and family groups with specific expectations. There
may have been little trace left of the individual, but if there were
less, there would be no grounds for speculation. Burckhardt,
uninformed, thought there were no such texts, but the monolithic
despotism Burckhardt imagined did not elimate the self-assertion
of persons.
6. WHAT IS THE WEST?
If there is a legacy, it is a question to whom it nowadays devolves.
We might assert that the legacy comes down to the West. We
could assume that cultures that drew inspiration in some way at
various times from Greece and Rome ought to be included in the
West today. Some would have us still assert that there is a clear
ethic in the West that drives to capitalism, perhaps, or to demo-
cratic government, and to personal freedom. In the past Oswald
Spengler, and in the English-speaking world Arnold Toynbee,
have argued that civilizations are clearly definable separate entities
with particular styles ofthought and language and with life spans
in which they are born, thrive, and die. Spengler assumed the
discreteness of civilizations, and Toynbee argued that he could
find such entities in the past. 26
Anyone who studies history must admit that there are frequent
records of interaction between members of what may be seen as
different civilizations. Some of those interactions are disastrous,
such as the Columbian exchange, where the Old World got
26 Oswald Spengler, The Decline ofthe West, (London: George Allen and Unwyn,
1980), 1: 31: "Every Culture is its own Civilization." He goes on to discuss what one
is, 31-36. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study ofHistory, abridged by D.C. Somervell, (New
York: Dell, 1965), 1: 15-52, describes what he means by civilization and catalogues the
ones in which he is interested. See also in this vein, Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash
ofCivilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1996),40-48, arguing they are "cultural, not political entities," 44.
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 153
tomatoes and tobacco and the New World got decimating diseases
and imperial dominations. But many interactions appear not to
have been negative, as when the cultivation ofrice worked its way
from Southeast Asia to India and the Near East. Also, each ofthe
major literate civilizations turns out on close analysis not to be a
unity at least in regard to the origins ofthe people that constituted
it, and usually not in language and custom either.
In the West especially in the Modem Era we are inclined to see
the West as a changing set of cultural chords, to use Patterson's
word, to which there is a certain continuity, but also an openness
to new music, both literally and figuratively. One might argue that
the West is unique in that aspect ofadapting and assimilating new
elements, and it is easy to remember the Corinthians' characteriza-
tion of the Athenians as always seeking out the new. 27 But that
very statement raises interesting questions for the problem ofthe
unity of the West. Does it imply that the Spartans were not
Western, or did not want to be? Even the Greek world was
multicultural and held various views on the value of innovation
and offreedom. We may wish to stress one inheritance there, and
yet the ancient diversity argues against the idea that freedom arose
as a cultural value only in one place. One can also see that
especially the aggressive civilizations of the past were good at
drawing new people in and assimilating them to their ideals,
nonetheless allowing those ideals to be altered by the new
inductees, but only gradually, after several generations.
In our own day we are perhaps witnesses to the transformation
ofthe West into something much more self-consciously multicul-
tural. Some will resist elements that might lead in that direction,
and hence we see the emphasis on English as the official language
27 Thucydides 1.70 "The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are
characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution;..." in Richard Crawley's
translation, reprinted in Robert B. Strassler, editor, The Landmark Thucydides, (New
York: Free Press, 1996),40; the Greek for "addicted to innovation" is: ot !lev yE
VEW'tEp01tOWl...., or "doing new things." Recall lB. Bury's remark, A History of
Freedom ofThought, (London: Butterworth, 1913), 23, that his concern was not with
all Greeks but only Ionians and Athenians.
154 CHAPTER SIX
ofindividual states in the United States. But we should remember
that the interaction of cultures has occurred many times before
without necessarily leading to the eradication of either culture. 28
7. FREEDOM AND THE NON-WEST
Decolonialized people now face the question of how to relate to
the West, but much more basically of how to relate to freedom.
The ways we in the West react to their decisions may be deter-
mined by events over which neither they nor we have much
control. But it is sensible to see what our studies have shown in
regard to the question of whether the roots of freedom as now
understood in the West go back beyond Greece.
Traces ofsuch freedom can be found in many societies, perhaps
most coherently in the Ancient Near East. Naturally the Ancient
Near East through the Bible has had a long-lasting influence on
the Judaeo-Christian West and on Islam. But by the principle of
Occam's razor it seems simpler to assume that comparative study
of other groups will show that the desire for personal freedom is
in fact a universal value in all human societies." To make such
an assumption is simpler than to attempt to show in detail the
descent and diffusion ofthe value in one particular society and its
putative descendants. The descent will never be absolutely clear,
28 This is the thrust of Eric Foner, The Story ofAmerican Freedom, (New York:
Norton, 1998), to be tempered by the fact that the United States has usually exceeded
almost all other nations in the number ofpersons in prison, as noted by Scott Christian-
son, With Liberty for Some. 500 Years of Imprisonment in America, (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1998), ix.
29 The columnist A.M. Rosenthal, writing in The New York Times February 28,
1997, A35, proclaimed "Freedom is Asian" in his headline and argued, "For more than
50 years, in country after country, Asians have shown passion for political liberty and,
if it comes to that, readiness to fight for it." He writes contemplating the transfer of
Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese and does not address the question oforigin,
but he does question the statements of current dictators like those of the colonial
officials of the past that concern for freedom is not an Asian value. Rosenthal's
examples could be multiplied.
BEYOND MESOPOTAMIANS AND GREEKS 155
and the problem of elites versus popular values can only be
addressed in unusual cases and in modem times when literacy
spreads more broadly than ever before. But if the desire for
personal freedom is a universal, then the present calls for freedom
in many different contexts are not imitations of European norms,
as many conservatives in developing countries argue, but some-
thing else, something understandably human.
United States President William Clinton, on his 1998 China
trip, said in a speech at Beijing University, "I believe that every-
where, people aspire to be treated with dignity, to give voice to
their opinions, to choose their own leaders, to associate with
whom they wish, to worship how, when, and where they want.
These are not American rights or European rights or developed
world rights. They are the birthrights of people everywhere ..."30
Our analysis tends to support his views.
To conclude in this way does not deny the dynamism of the
West, however we might want to understand it. In the English-
speaking world especially resistance to government has led to a
particularly fecund formulation that has led to the spread of
political and economic freedoms, stemming from the Petition of
Right in 1628.31 But very frequently the advent of Westerners led
not to freedom but the sword, and only over the very long run
might one argue, say, that exposure to British values may have
been beneficial to the peoples of India. Even then, one could
admit that similar values might have been arrived at without
British intervention.
30 Quoted in The New York Times June 29, 1998, A8 column 5. Note David
Levering Lewis, "Ghana, 1963. A Memoir," The American Scholar 68: 1 (1999): 39-60,
53, wrote, "Individual liberty was a concept too luxurious in the short term for African
regimes [in the views of American expatriates and the rulers] whose survival depended
in the long term, it was asserted, on devising etatiste strategies to skip over as many of
the West's stages of capital formation and technological breakthrough as possible."
That was the common argument ofthe 1960's; Levering Lewis clearly distances himself
from it now.
31 See Douglass C. North, "The Paradox of the West," in The Origins ofModern
Freedom, edited by R. Davis, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995),7-34, esp. 34,
and the epilogue by Davis, 313-319.
156 CHAPTER SIX

When my wife and I were living in Baltimore in the summer of

1993 as I was working on the ideas for this book, we frequently
APPENDIX I
rode the excellent bus system there. At the time we had two rather
small children, aged two and three years, and we found that when
we boarded a crowded bus with them in tow, we were offered SELECTED ARCHlYAL TEXTS ON ESCAPE
seats for ourselves and the children. The ridership was predomi-
nately African-American, and we are not, and we found this Texts are presented here in alphabetical order by person and then
welcome graciousness unexpected, especially from people who place ofpublication. PN here means personal name.
might be envious of our relative, if modest, affluence and our
white race. In the course ofthe summer I came across the fact that <;lg and Kizilyay,
Neusumerische Rechts- und Verwaltungsur-
Baltimore before the Civil War had been the home to a higher kunden aus Nippur 1, 1. Nippur Amar-Suena 1
percentage of free blacks than any other city in the country, and I
came to feel that the self-confidence individual bus-riders felt , Gu-u-gu PN,
their compassion and sensitivity, might in some way be connected ir Ur-c1Nun-gal!-ka slave ofPN
to the long history of their ancestors in freedom. Naturally there ba-an-da-zah ran away from him
is no way to test this perception, but I continue to think that mu-dabs and was taken;
freedom changes people and probably makes them more humane. 5. igi-ni in-gar he put out his eye.
In Baltimore I thought I felt it. 32 mu lugal U4-a gin-a-ka Oath of the king-when going?
Does the response of those contemporary Americans really i-za.g-de-na I shall in the future run away,
descend in any sense from the Ancient Near East? I believe that ga-hul bi-in-du., let me be destroyed-he said.
it does not come down directly nor essentially, but rather that 1 Lugal-a-zi-] ] (Witnesses:) 3 PNs
human beings are always seeking to flee to freedom, however they 10. 1 A-ba-dEn-[ ]
may conceive it. 33 1 I-ti-[ ]
di-kuj-bi-me They are its judges,
dumu Nibru" sons of Nippur.
mu dAmar-Suena lugal Year: (Amar-Suena 1)

Genouillac, Textes Cuneiformes du Louvre 2:5481 Puzris-Dagan

Freedom's Port: The African-American
32 See in general Christopher Phillips,
Community ofBaltimore, J 790- J860, (Urbana and Chicago: University ofIllinois Press Ibbi-Sin 2
1997). '
33 Compare the observation of the Rev. Samuel 1. May in July, 1831, quoted in U4 Geme-Ba-u-ke, When Geme-Bau
Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 49: "The slaves are men. They have
within them that inextinguishable thirst for freedom, which is born in man." Also note
e i-sub left the house,
the statement offormer slave Margrett Nullin ofTexas, quoted in Eugene D. Genovese, ba-zah fled
Roll, Jordan, Roll, 128: "In slavery I owns nothin and never owns nothing. In freedom a-ra-l-kam the first time
I's own de home and raise de family. All dat cause me worryment and in slavery I has 5. e A-da-a-ka i-na-am she slept in the house of Ada
no worryment. But I takes de freedom."
158
iti ezen-dSul-gi
mu dI-bi-dSin lugal
a-ra-Z-kam-ma-as
1 Geme-Ba-u-ke,
10. e i-sub
ba-zlah]
rev. e I-sar-ba-da[n]
i-na-am
iti sul-ku-ku U4 2[5]
15. Igi dSu-dSin-i-li ra-gaba
lu-na,
Igi Da-ku-a asgab
Igi Mi-im-mi
Igi Ma-a-ma
u Si-im-ti dam-se
igi Bi-bi-se
nu zan-e-da-a
mu lugal-bi in-pad
sa Puzris-Da-gan"
25. mu en dInanna Unug[ki]
mas-e i-pad
Gomi, Acta Sumerologica 3:166 Sulgi 48/Amar-Suena 2 months
ix-xii Fled and Dead
30 sila se lugal zag.Nin-a-zu 30 royal quarts of grain for escaped
a-ru-a Ur-~ilga
zan 30 sila dBa-u-ib-gu-ul
a-ru-a Ur-dBa-u ku-dim
5. zan 30 sila Nin-hi-sag-sa, escaped 30 quarts for PN
a-ru-a La-la sipa
ug 6 30 sila dBa-u-ib-gu-ul
a-ru-a Ur-ra-ka-ni
zan 30 sila Nin-ku-zu
APPENDIX 1 ARCHIVAL TEXTS 159
month (viii) 10. zah 30 sila Nin-u.-a-ni escaped 30 quarts for PN
year (Ibbi-Sin 1) a-ru-aLu-dGis-bar-e dumu DR.AN dedicated by PN, son ofPN
for the second time zah 30 sila eNinav-zi escaped 30 quarts for PN
Geme-Bau a-~-a Ib-la-a-SI.BUL.BUL dedicated by PN
left the house, zan 30 sila Nin-a-zu escaped 30 quarts for PN
fled, 15. a-ru-a Lugal-ezen dedicated by PN
in the house of PN zan 30 sila dBa-u-ta-lu escaped 30 quarts for PN
she slept, a-ru-a A-tu dam-gar dedicated by PN, merchant
month: ?, day 25. iti gan-mas-ta from month (i)
Before Su-Sin-ili, the messenger, zan 30 sila dBa-u-lu-ti escaped 30 quarts for PN
the stone man? 20. [a]-ru-a Ur-dBa-u e-zu? dedicated by PN the ...
Before Dakua, the leatherworker Rev. [ ]20 sila Nin-en-kiis [escaped] 20 quarts for PN
Before Mimmi a-ru-a Ka-a-ni KU dedicated by PN, the ...
Before Mama [iti] ezen dDumu-zi-ta from month (vi)
and Simti, the wife zan 30 sila dBa-u-ki-sa-ra escaped 30 quarts for PN
beforePN 25. a-ru-a Ur-gar dumu Be-ni[] dedicated by PN, son ofPN
not to flee iti ezen dBa-u-ta from month (viii)
she swore by the name of their king ug, 30 sila Nin-Iu-sa--sa, dead 30 sila for PN
in Puzris-Dagan 30. a-ru-a A-kal-la dumu Ku-li dedicated by PN son ofPN
Year: (Ibbi-Sin 2) zah 30 sila Nin-en-kus escaped 30 quarts for PN
a-~-a Lu-URUxGANA-tem2ki ra-gaba dedicated by PN, the
messenger
zan 30 sila Nin-T.ama-mu escaped 30 quarts for PN
zan 30 sila Ne-sag-i-s~ escaped 30 quarts for PN
a-ru-a Ab-ba-gi I8 dedicated by PN
zan 30 sila Ku-dBa-u escaped 30 quarts for PN
35. iti se-il-la month (xii)
PN su-nigin 12 geme 30 sila-ta total: 12 female workers at 30
dedicated by Ur-Gilga quarts each
escaped 30 quarts for PN iti gan-mas-ta from month (i)
dedicated by PN, the silversmith su-nigin 1 geme 30 sila Total: 1 female worker at 30
quarts
dedicated by PN, the shepherd su-nigin 1 dumu 20 sila Total: 1 child at 20 quarts
dead 30 quarts for PN 40. iti ezen dDumu-zi-ta from month (vi)
dedicated by PN
escaped 30 quarts for PN
160 APPENDIX I ARCHIVAL TEXTS 161

su-nigin 1 geme 30 sila iti ezen dBa-u-ta Total: 1 female ba-ra-zal ba-zah having passed she fled
worker at 30 quarts from month x.x.x ur.-ri nu-kirig-se [before ]the gardener
(viii) x e-is-ta-se [before] ..
su-nigin 5 geme 30 sila-ta Total: 5 female workers at 30 igi? Lugal-nig-LAGAR.e.-se before? PN
quarts each 10. igi Ur-e-mah-se before PN
iti se-Il-la month (xii) side: mu Su-Sin lugal Year: (Su-Sin 1)
se-bi 12 gur 260 sila + 50 sila gur Their grain: (3910 quarts)
45. ka, a-ru geme us-bar in the granary dedicated? female
weavers Gomi, Selected Texts from the British Museum 333 Amar-Suena
20 sila Ur-si-gar 20 quarts for PN 2 month xi
gir Lugal-ki-gal-Ia viaPN
Ba-zi dumu Ses-ses PN, the son ofPN 1 Geme-dSara PN
uUr-e-es andPN 1 Ses-kal-Ia dumu-ni PN her son
30. mu ur-bi-lum" ba-hul year: (Sulgi 48/Amar-Suen 2) 1 Ur-gi~gigir PN
dumu A-an-na-bi ba-ug, son of PN died
Summary of Gomi, Acta Sumerologica 3:166 5. za.ga-ni 2-a-kam fled the second time
fled dead 1 Geme-Lis-si, PN
8 8 za.g-a libir an old escapee
dumu A-an-na-bi tur (and) a daughter ofPN, the younger,
dumu sag Nin-e-zu-ka-ma (and the) principal daughter ofPN
Gomi, Selected Texts from the British Museum 125 Su-Sin 1 za.g-a ba-al-Ia escapee returned
10. ki Ur-Iugal ses from PN brother of
1 sag-genie 1 head of a slave woman saggana-ka-ta the military governor
2 2/3 gin ku-babbar 2 2/3 shekel silver igi Su-dSin dumu before PN son of
sam-ma-ni her price Geme-e-an-na-ka-se PN
Ur-~in-tu-ke4 Ur-Nintu igi En-um-sadad before PN
5. Ur-dSuen U from Ur Suen and dumu Da-ba-an-da-ra-ah-se son ofPN
Nin-dub-sar dam-ni-se Nin-dubsar, his wife igi ~anna-sigs before PN
in-ne-si-sa, bought rev. dumu Sa-da Mar-tu son ofPN the Amorite
rev. mu geme ba-za.g-se for the sake of a slave woman lu-kin-gi.-a lugal-se messenger of the king
(who) escaped nam-geme-ir., e-gal-se the service status for the palace
geme Duda dam dub-sar the slave women of Duda wife of ba-gi-ne-es they confirmed
the scribe iti pa.-u-e month (xi)
3. mu lugal-bi in-pa swore by the name of their king mu Ur-bi-i-lum ba-hul year (Amar-Suena 2)
iti ezen dSul- month: festival of Sulgi
gi-ta u4-15-am day: 15th
162 APPENDIX I ARCHIVAL TEXTS 163

Gomi, Selected Textsfrom the British Museum 519 Umma Su-Sin ki A-tu-ta fromPN
7 month iii 5. kisib Da-da-a sealofPN
iti pa.-u-e month: (xi)
1 dumu-munus Da-x-x-nu I female child PN mu Ur-bi-lum" ba-hul year: (Amar-Suena 2)
za-ha-am escaped.
ensi-ke, The governor
I7-pa-e en in-na-an-tar had Ipa'e look into it. King, Cuneiform Texts 10: 28 Amar-Suena 2 Fled and Dead
i-za-ha in-na-an-du., She has escaped, he told
him. zan 40 sila se lugal escaped 40 royal quarts of grain
5. ki-bi-ta nu-BULI mu-DU from their place she has Lu-dNinna for PN
not...1t is delivered: zan 50 sila Ku-li escaped 50 quarts for PN
ensi-ra For the governor 5. zan 30 sila Lugal-zi-sa-gal escaped 30 quarts for PN
du.j-ga-ni si his statement he se-bi 120 their grain: 120 quarts
nu-un-na-an-sa did not put in order. iti ezen dLi9-si4-ta from month (iii)
iti se-kar-ra gaI-la Month: (Umma iii) zan 60 Lu-Sirara, escaped 60 quarts for PN
mu Su-dSuen...ma-da Za-[ab-sa-li] Year: (Su-Sin 7) 10. zan 60 dNin-Kimar-ka escaped 60 quarts for PN
se-bi 120 their grain: 120 quarts
iti ezen dDumu-zi-ta from month (vi)
Hussey, Harvard Semitic Series 4:82 reverse 1 month vi us 30 sila Ka.-a su-gi, dead 30 quarts PN an old man
15. us 40 sila Ur-dSul-pa-e dead 40 quarts PN
us 50 sila En-hi-li-se dead 50 quarts PN
10. 5 sila kas 5 sila zi 1 a-gam i 5 quarts beer, 5 quarts ba-ns -me they are dead
flour, 1 measure oil se-bi 120 their grain: 120 quarts
A-bu-ma dumu nu-banda for Ahuma, son of the iti ezen dBa-u-ta from month (viii)
sergeant 20. zan 60 Ir ll dumu Ku-ga-da escaped 60 quarts for PN, son of
rev. su-ha zan Nin-ur.-urj- to go for the fled fisher- PN
de gin-na... man PN iti ezen dDumu-zi-ta from month (vi)
iti amar-a-a diri-se to month (xi)
se-bi 1 gur their grain: 300 quarts
Keiser, Yale Oriental Series 4: 190 Umma Amar-Suena 2 month 25. zan 60 Lu-Trumu-zi escaped 60 quarts for PN
xi iti mu-su-du- month (ix)
us 30 sila En-hi-li nar lugal dead 30 quarts PN singer of the
1 Ur-dSara Ur-Sara, king
nu-kiri, a gardener ii. iti mu-su-du, month (ix)
zan-ta ba-al-la returned from running sa Ninaki in Nina
away us 20 sila Lu-ba dumu dead 20 quarts for PN son of
 164 APPENDIX I ARCHlYAL TEXTS 165

Ur-dIstaran PN 10 sila Lu-dingir-ra dumu 10 quarts for PN son of

5. iti ezen 'Ba-u-ta
sa LagaSaki
su-nigfn 13 gur 40 sila
nu-kiri., gis-gal-gal-me
20 sila Lu-liNin-subur
10. dumu Ur-Dumu-zi
15 sila Lti-bar-ku-ga dumu
Lu-bala-sa.-ga
15 sila Lugal-Nina"
dumu Ka.-a
15. 15 sila Ezen-an-ne-zu
V
from month (viii) Ba-an-tuk i-du, e-gal PN, doorkeeper of the palace
in Lagas se-bi 180+40 their grain: 220 quarts
amar-ku, Nibruv-se castrated young animals for
Total: 3940 quarts Nippur
gardeners of the great trees 15. iti ezen-rBa-u-ta from the month (viii)
20 quarts for PN iti se-il-la-se to the month (xii)
sonofPN se-bi 3 gur 180+20 their grain: 1100 quarts
15 quarts for PN son of iti 5 Months: 5
PN us 60 sila Lu-bala-sa, dead 60 quarts for PN
15 quarts for PN 20. u-il the bearer
sonofPN us 60 sila A-lJu lu-KAS dead 60 quarts for PN, the run-
15 quarts for PN ner?

dumu Ur-d Sa-u-sa
15 sila Sa-gi-ba-dulO
dumu Nig-ii-rum
20 sila Lu-dNina
20. dumu Lugal-nigin, .
dumu u-il-me
15 sila E-kur-he-gaI
dumu Sa-ba-n;-gar a-ga-am
20 sila A-da-na gir
25. 15 sila Lu-Dumu-zi
dumu Lugal-dab, i-dug-me
iii. 15 sila Lugal-du.,
dumu Ur-bara-si-ga
lu-gu-ne-sag
120+40+5?
5. gir-se-ga e liNanse-me
20 sila Ab-ta-ma-sa-ga
dumuAma-mu
15 sila U-da dumu
Ur-dNin-su
10. e-amar-ra-me
sonofPN se-bi 120
15 quarts for PN iti mu-su-du.-ta
son ofPN iti se-ll-la-se
20 quarts for PN 25. se-bi 1 gur 180
sonofPN iti 4-kam
they are children of menials sa Nina"
15 quarts for PN 20 sila Ur-mes dumu
son ofPN, the ... Gir-ni-i-sa, amar-ku.-se
20 quarts for PN, the ... 30. zellJ 30 sila Igi-nin-se
15 quarts for PN us 30 sila Nin-he-du,
son of PN; they are doorkeepers iv. [n]ig-sag-me
15 quarts for PN , ,
gir-se-ga a-LUm-dtug-me
dG'''''.
sonofPN
people collecting harvest? se-bi 60+20 sila
= 165 quarts 5. iti ezen dBa-u-ta
they are menials of the house of iti se-ll-la-se
Nanse se-bi 1 gur 60+40
20 quarts for PN iti-5-kam
sonofPN sa Lagasa"
15 quarts for PN son of 10. su-nigin 17 gur 60+40
PN se-ba gur-e uri-a
they are of the house of young
animals sa Lagasa"
their grain: 120 quarts
from the month (ix)
to the month (xii)
their grain 480 quarts
four months
within Nina
20 quarts for PN son of
PN for castrated young animals
escaped 30 quarts for PN
dead 30 quarts for PN
they are the heads?
they are the menials of the divine
Gatumdug
their grain: 80 quarts
from the month (viii)
to the month (xii)
their grain: 400 quarts
5 months
within Lagas
total: 5200 quarts
grain ration collected at the
granary
within Lagas
166 APPENDIX I ARCHIVAL TEXTS 167

u sa Ninaki and within Nina aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments, edited by Diethelm Conrad
gir Lu-bi-mu viaPN et aI., 1:201 Nippur Su-Sin 5 xii
15. dumu Ur-vlg-alim sonofPN
iti ezen dLi9-si4-ta from the month (iii) 1 Pu-ka Puka
iti se-ll-la-se to the month (xii) ir!!
,
A-Ia-Ia-kam being the slave of Alala
iti 10-kam 10 months A-Ia-Ia igi-ni i-pad before Alala he appeared
5. mu lugal U 4 ba-zah-de-na-ga and said, Oath of the king, on
mu Ur-bi-lum" ba-hul year: (Sulgi 45/Amar-Suena 2) the day I flee
nir-da ue-a let it be a sin
bi-in-du.,
Legrain, Ur Excavations, Texts 3:1018 Sulgi 38 months xii-v Za-am-me-li ama-ni PN, his mother
u
10. Geme-iSuen nins-na-ni and PN, his sister,
[ ] geme 30 sila-ta ...female workers at 30 su-tu nu-zah-da were guarantors
quarts each ma-an-gub-se that he would notflee
a geme zaJ:! iti-I-se work allotment of female 1 Lugal-nigin PN
workers escaped for one 15. 1 Nam-ha-ni PN
month 1 Ur-ga-gis-a PN
a-bi 3600 7-kam their allotment is 3600, 7 1 Ses-kal-la PN
times? 1 Ur-e-ba-du- PN
se-bi 13 gur 120 sila their grain is 13 gur, 120 1 Ur-da-ni PN
quarts (4020 quarts) 1 Kur-ni-mu PN
se-ba zaJ:!-ba ka, grain allotment of escapees lu inim-ma-bi-me are witnesses
g14- a returned to the granary iti se-gurw-kus Month: (xii) .
sig-bi 33 ma-na their wool is 33 pounds mu-us-sa bad Mar-tu ba-du Year: (Su-Sin 5)
rev. sig-ba geme zaJ:!-Ua wool allotment of female workers
escaped
e-gal-la gi 4-a returned to the palace Nikol'skii, Dokumenty khoziaistvennoi otchotnosti...Likhacheva
En-sa-ga-ria ugula us-bar-ra to PN, overseer of weavers 436n.d.
ba-na-zi it was issued
iti se-gurw-kus-ta from month (xii) zaJ:! dSara-a-mu fledPN
iti diri ki-sig-e-us-sa-se to month (v) dumu Ur-dNin-tu sonofPN
mu-us-sa bad ma-da-a ba-du-a year: (Sulgi 38) zaJ:! Ur-dMa-mi ses fled PN brother of
Lugal-e-ba-an-s~ PN
5. ki Ur-igi-sig, fund ofPN
Myhrman, Babylonian Expedition 3: 1 Nippur Su-Sin 5 month xii. zaJ:! lja-ba-Ius-e dumu fled PN son of
See the translation and bibliography by W.H.Ph. Romer in Texte Lugal-a-zi-da PN
168 APPENDIX I ARCHIVAL TEXTS 169

z3.b Kaj-a kit-dim fled PN the silversmith

z3.b Lii-dingir-ra ir ll fled PN slave of iti su-numun month: (iv)
10. dumu Lugal-inim engar the son ofPN, the plowman
z3.b Lugal-ba?-zu? gudu sanga Inanna" fled PN, anointing
priest, administrator of (a place) Sigrist, Syracuse 36 Amar-Suena 4
z3.b Nam-lugal-i-du., fled PN
dumu son of (blank) 1 un Lu-dSuen 1 menial ofPN
rev. z3.b E-gissu dumu fled PN son of dumu Igi-dSara z3.b gu-la-ta son ofPN from the big escape
iju-un-bu PN 1 un Ur-dlskur 1 menial ofPN
z3.b Lu-dSuen dumu fled PN son of dumu Ba-zi-ge z3.b-ta son ofPN from an escape
Lugal-gii-en-e Ur-gal PNs 5. iti dirig-ta u415-am since month (xiii) day 15
5. z3.b Lugal-edin dumu Geme-dNanna fled PN son ofPN ba-ra-zal-ta having passed
z3.b Da-ga-bi? fled PN rev. Ba-sa, i-dab, PN took in charge
z3.b Ba-sig, dumu Hu-zi-ru fled PN son ofPN mu En-mah-gal-an-na ba-hun year: (Amar-Suena 4)
z3.b Ur-dSara dumu E-tur fled PN son ofPN side: Ba-sClt;, dub sar, dumu PN, scribe, son of
z3.b Nig-sa-ge ses Ur-zu fled PN brother of PN· Lugal-sag-ga PN
10. z3.b Ses-an-ni su-i fled PN the barber
z3.b Ur-dA-dulO dumu fled PN son of
Ur-gu-la ab-dab, PN the cowherd Sigrist, Syracuse 259 Amar-Suena 2 months xiii, i
z3.b Pu-zur, dumu Za-a-na fled PN son ofPN
z3.b Ses-kal-Ia fled PN broken
15. dumu Ur-nigin-gar su-.ga son ofPN the fisherman iti? se-gur-ra month? of harvest
side: 1 Lugal-la dumu Lu-dSara PN son ofPN 1 gurus un-il 1 worker, porter, for 7 days
Ur-Nun-gal e Ir-mu-ke, PN, house ofPN U4- 7-se
z3.b-ta en-nun-ga ti-la from escaping, completed? by the
guard
Sigrist, Messenger 41:2 month iv; similar: Gregoire, Archives 5. 20 gurus u4-1-se 20 workers for 1 day
176: 10 Lagas no date zi? gurus rna-a bi-Ib-si flour the workmen filled a ship
gir Da-da-ga viaPN
3 sila kas 2 sila ninda (rations) rev. iti diri uiti se-gurlO-kus month: (xiii and i)
A-bi-Ia-nlim hi-kas, For Apilanum the runner mu Ur-bi-lum" ba-hul Year: (Amar-Suena 2)
25 ...25 ...8 gin I-gis sa-dull u4-5-kam, (rations) regular
offering of the 5th day,
Da-da-ni sukkal hi-zah dabs-de gin-na Dadani the Szlechter, Tablettesjuridiques et administratives, IDS 40 no date
messenger to go to seize the
person who fled z3.b 0-se-.ge-gin EscapedPN
170 APPENDIX I

zan La-ni escapedPN

ses Ur-sa.-ga brother of Ursaga
ensi en-na-ni governor of...
APPENDIX II
5. gin-na-as for going
2-a-bi en-nun-ga a second time let the guard TRANSLITERATIONS OF SELECTED LEGAL, TREATY,
\}e-ti take them AND CANONICAL TEXTS ON FREEDOM AND ESCAPE
rev. inim-ensi-ka In the word of the governor
A-kal-la ses Ukkin-ni PN, brother ofPN The legal and treaty texts here are in chronological order, the order
Ur-sukka[l se]s Lu-kala-ga PN, brother ofPN in which they are discussed in Chapters Three and Four, but the
dMu PN canonical texts are at the end ofthis Appendix. The transliterations
dumu Ur-nigin su-ha, son of PN the fisherman of legal texts rely on Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from
urn? \}e-mi-ni-dab s in the city let them take. Mesopotamia andAsia Minor; Godfrey Rolles Driver and John C.
Miles, The Assyrian Laws, and The Babylonian Laws, 2; Albrecht
Goetze, The Laws ofEsnunna; and Harry Hoffner, Jr., The Laws
Yoshikawa, Acta Sumerologica 9 (1987):307:4 Amar Suena 4 ofthe Hittites.
Umma

dv , 'v Ur-Nammu A iii 114-124, C 11-10 nam-ga-es, ma-lah, gal utul-e

1 Sara-i-sag, PN,
gud dabs udu dabs anse dabs uri Iu gi[rs-ra] Ki-en-g[i Ki-uri-a] su
dumu Te-me-a-ni gim-ar son ofPN, the mill-worker
ba-a[n-bar]
ki Ur-e.j-e gala-ta from PN, the priest,
, d"', l'
Lu- Sara gu-za- a PN, the chair-bearer,
u
ud-ba Aksak" Mara-da" Gir-kal" Ka-zal-lu" mas-gan-bi U-sa-
ru-um" nig An-sa-anv-a nam-arad he-eb-ak-e a dNanna lugal-ga-
en-nun-ta ba-an-da-zah from the guard he fled.
ta ama-ar-gi.-bi hu-rnu-gar
mu-bi-se for their sake
The translation foreigner relies on the equation of lug i r, with
Lu-dSara gu-za-la a un-il-se PN, the chair-bearer, for the work
Akkadian ubdrum, "protected foreigner."
of carrying
Lu-kiri.-zal i-dab, PN took in charge.
iti su-numun-ta since the month (vi), Lipit-Istar ii 1-15 (A iii 9-23) [ud-b ]i-a [dumu-ni]ta dumu-munus
mu En-mah-gal-an-na en dNanna ba-hun Year: (Amar-Suena 4) [Nib[ru" [dumu--ni]ta dumu-munus [U]ri ki_[ rna] [du]mu-nita
dumu-munus l-si-inv-na [dumu]-nita dumu-munus [Ki-en]-gi Ki-
uri [lu gu-bji-a [suduli'] nam-arad [hu-mju-ni-ib-ak [amja-ar-gi.-bi
[huj-mu-gar ki-bi-se he-bi-dab,

12. tukum-bi geme arad hi-u sa-uru-ka ba-zah e hi-ka 1 iti-am i-

tus-a ba-an-gen-en sag sag-gin? ba-ab-sum-mu
13. tukum-bi sag nu-tuku 15 gin ku-babbar i-la-e
172 APPENDIX II
Esnunna 50 sum-ma sakkanakkum sa-pir6 niirim be-el te-er-tim
ma-la i-ba-as-su-u wardam ha-al-qa-am amtam ha-li-iq-tam
u
alpam ha-al-qa-am imeram ha-al-qa-am sa ekallim'" musken-
im is-ba-at-ma a-na Es-nun-na KI la ir-di-am-ma i-na biti-su-ma ik-
ta-la u 4-mi se-be <eli> warham istin u-se-te-eq-ma ekallumr" su-
ur-qd-am it-ti-su i-ta-wi
51 wardum uamtum sa Es-nun-na sa ka-an-nam mas-ka-nam
KI
uab-bu-ut-tam sa-ak-nu abul Es-nun-naKI ba-lumbe-li-su u-ul us-
si
u
52 wardum amtum sa it-ti miir si-ip-ri-im na-as-ru-ma abul is-
u
nun-na'' i-te-er-ba-am ka-an-nam ma-as-ka-nam ab-bu-tam is-
sa-ak-ka-an-ma a-na be-li-su na-se-er
Hammurapi 15 sum-ma a-wi-lum lu warad ekallim lu amat ekallim
lu warad muskenim lu amat muskenim abullam us-te-st id-da-ak
16 sum-ma a-wi-lum lu wardam lu amtam hal-qa-am sa ekallim
ulu muskenim i-na bi-ti-su ir-ta-qi-ma a-na si-si-it na-ga-ri-im la
us-te-si-am be-el bitim su-u id-da-ak
17 sum-ma a-wi-lum lu wardam lu amtam hal-qa-am i-na si-ri-im
is-ba-at-ma a-na be-li-su ir-te-di-a-as-su 2 siqil kaspam be-el
wardim i-na-ad-di-is-sum
18 sum-ma wardum su-u be-el-su la iz-za-kar a-na ekallim i';'ri-id-
di-su wa-ar-ka-su ip-pa-ar-ra-ds-ma a-na be-li-su u-ta-ar-ru-su
19 sum-ma wardam su-a-ti i-na bi-ti-su ik-ta-la-su wa-ar-ka
wardum i-na qa-ti-su it-ta-as-ba-at a-wi-lum su-u id-da-ak
20 sum-ma wardum i-na qa-at sa-bi-ta-ni-su ih-ta-li-iq a-wi-lum
su-u a-na be-el wardim ni-ts i-lim i-za-kar-ma u-ta-as-sar
LAW, TREATY, AND CANONICAL TEXTS 173
226 sum-ma galliibum ba-lum be-el wardim ab-bu-ti wardim la se-
e-im u-gal-li-ib ritti galliibim su-a-ti i-na-ak-ki-su
227 sum-ma a-wi-lum galliibam i-da-as-ma ab-bu-ti wardim la se-
e-im ug-da-al-li-ib a-wi-lam su-a-ti i-du-uk-ku-su-ma i-na babi-su
i-lJa-al-la-lu-su galliibum i-na i-du-u la u-gal-Ii-bu i-tam-ma-ma
u-ta-as-sar
Middle Assyrian 24 sum-ma assafl t a 'ile ina pa-ni mu-tt-sa ra-
ma-an-sa tal-ta-da-ad lu-u i-na libbi iile am-mi-e-im-ma lu-u i-na
iiliini qur-bu-u-te a-sar beta ud-du-si-i-ni a-na bet As-su-ra-ia-e
te-te-rab is-tu belet bite u-us-bat 3-su 4-su be-da-at bil bite ki-i
assat" a 'ile i-na beti-su us-bu-tu-u-ni la-a i-di i-na ur-ki-it-te
siniltu si-i<t> ta-at-ta-as-bat bil bite sa assas-su [i-na] pa-ni-su
ra-mo-an-sa [tal-d]u-du-u-ni assas-su [u-na-ka-as-ma la] i-laq-qe
[assa ]flt a 'ile sa assas-su il-te-sa us-bu-tu-ni uz-ni-sa u-na-ku-su
ha-di-ma mu-us-sa 3 bilat 30 ma-na annaka sim-sa i-id-dan ha- u
u
di-ma assas-su i-laq-qe-u sum-ma bil bite ki-i assat a 'ile i-na
biti-su istu assi[ti-su] us-bu-tu-u-ni i-[de] salsiitea-te i-id-da-anu
sum-ma it-ti-ki-e-ir la-a i-di-e-ma i-qa-ab-bi a-na Ndrim il-lu-u-ku
u sum-ma a'ilu sa assat" a'ile i-na beti-su us-bu-tu-u-ni i-na
Niirim it-tu-u-ra salsiitea-te i-id-da-an sum-ma a 'ilu sa assas-su i-
na pa-ni-su ra-ma-an-sa tal-du-du-ts-ni i-na Niirim it-tu-ra za-a-ku
u
gi-im-ri sa Niirim u-mal-la sum-ma a 'ilu sa assas-su i-na pa-ni-
su ra-mo-an-sa ta-al-du-du-u-ni assas-su la-a u-na-ak-ki-es assas-
su-ma i-laq-qe e-mi-it-tu mi-im-ma la-as-su
Hittite 22 tdk-ku ARAD-as hu-u-wa-i na-an EGIR-pa ku-is-ki u-
wa-te-iz-zi t[dk-ku ma-an-ni-in-ku-ani e-ip-zi nu-us-si kuSE. SIR-us
pa-a-i tak-ku ke-e-ez ID-az 2 [GiN KU-BABBARpa-a-i] tak-ku
e-di ID-az nu-us-si 3 GiN KU-BABBAR [pa-a-i]
174 APPENDIX II LAW, TREATY, AND CANONICAL TEXTS 175

23 tdk-ku ARAD-is hu-u-wa-i na[-as A.NA K]UR uru L[u-u-i-ia Treaty ofKing ofHatti with Nipmepa ofUgarit. J. Nougayrol, Le
pa-iz-zi ku-i-sa-an EGIR-pa] u-wa-te-ez-zi nu-us-se 6 Gi[N K]U- palais royal d'Ugarit 4,98, 17,79+374.
BABBAR pa-a-i tak[-ku ARAD-as hu-wa-a-i] na-as ku-ru-ri-i
KUR-e pa-iz-z[i ku- ]i-sa-an EGIR[ -pa-ma u-wa-te-ez-zi] na-an- 37.' sum-ma is-tu mal allja-at-ti amilu mu-nab-tu, in-n[a-bi-it] 1
za-an a-pe-a-as-pat [da-]a-[i] lq-me-pa I"l-l~-ba t-su-ma
AT'
IV r
a-na sar ~ a-a [ t-tl'I'l-l'd- diIn sum-ma
v, matalll v
la-a]
24 tdk-ku ARAD-is na-as-ma GEME-as [bu-wa-a-i] is-ba-as-si- 40.' is-tu ma-mi-ti [te-ti-iq] sum-ma
S[a-an ku-e-el ba-as-si-i] u-e-mi-ia-zi LV-na-as [ku-u]s-s[a-a]n SA 'v tU matalU'- [ga-rt-it
amt-Iu mu-nab- tU4 lS- '" tn-na- bii-tt" t-na matll ~ a-at-ti']

MU 1.[KAM 2 Yz MA.NA KU-BABBAR pa-a-i] MUN[US-S]a- il-Ia-[a-ka-a?] sar matallja_at_ti u-ul [i-ka-al-Ia-a-su?]
ma ku-us-sa-an SA (MU.l.KAM)] 50 GIN [KU.BABBARpa-a-i]

173b tdk-ku ARAD-as is-bi-is-si a-ra-<u>-ez-zi A.NA DUGUTUL Idrimi Sidney Smith, The Statue ofIdri-mi.
pa-iz-zi
'
3· t-na alva-
U Ia-a b KI biIt a- bii-ta
4. ma-si-ik-tu it-tab-si ubal-ka-nu pan
Suppililiuma's Treaty with Ugarit. Jean Nougayrol, Le palais 5. amelutt'": alE-marKI a-ba-teJjl·A
royal d'Ugarit 4,52, text 17.369 A. u
6. sa um-mi-ia as-ba-nu a-na alE-marKI
7 · ah ill.A ,v I" b ~JjI.A
v -h~ e: -ta sa e i-ta ra u
7.' um-ma-a sum-ma-mi i-na arki" iimi" u
8. it-ti-ia-ma as-bu-ts ma-an-nu-um-ma
aml-I-MES
u mu-un-na-bil-t'u-u t-tu 4 9 · a-wa-te MESsa V a hV v , l ih-s. v
v -su-su u-u lv -su-us
sa matNu_has U lu-u sa matMu-kis 10. um-ma a-na-ku-ma ma-an-nu-um bit a-bi-su
10.' lu-~u sa mdtdti MES sa-na-ti-ma
u u
11. lu-u mar sakkanaki rabii ma-an-nu-um
sa is-tu libbi" matati MES u~-~u-u-ni(!) 12. a-na miireJjl.A al E-marKI lu-u ARAD (ardu)
u i-na libbi mat "Usga-ri-it u
13. sisi-ia narkabti-ia kizi-ia
i-na ardutiMESUI-li sa sar maIU-ga-ri-it 14. eI-t e-qe-su-nu
'v u, l-'Iam ma-at hu-ri
~ u-rt-t'b-te KI

rev. i-te-er-bu-ni " u'I'l- bil sa-b e-MES Su-tu-u

15. e- t e-ti-iq C" KI

u
15.' sarru sa-nu-um-ma sa mati sa-ni-tim-ma
ma-am-ma-am-an la-a i-la-qi-su-ma
is-tu qati 1 Ni-iq-ma-an-da sar matU-ga-ri-it
U is-tu qiiti marl MES_SU marl MES marl MES_SU
a-di sa-a-ti dSamsisi sarru rabii ri-ki-il-ta
20.' kdn-na-a ir-ku-us
16. e-te-ru-ub it-ti-su a-na li-bi
17. ku-zi "Zak-kar bi-ta-ku i-na sa-ni umi"
u
18. an-mu-us-ma a-na ma-at Ki-tn-a-nimr'
19. al-li-ik i-na ma-at Ki-in-a-nim':
20. aIAm-mi-iaKI as-bu i-na "Am-mi-ioi'
21. mare MES allja_la_apKI mare MES ma-at Mu-ki-is-be KI
22. mare MES ma-at Ni-ib KI U [mare]MES ma-at
23. A-ma-eK1 as-bu
24. i-mu-ru-un-ni-ma
176 APPENDIX II LAW, TREATY, AND CANONICAL TEXTS 177

25. i-nu-ma mar be-li-su-nu a-na-ku a-na mubbi-ia u Materialen zum sumerischen Lexikon 1, by Benno Landsberger,
26. ip-hu-ru-nim-ma a-ka-a-na-ka ur-tab-bi-a-ku 28-29, tablet 2 iv 7'-15'.
u
27. u-ra-ak a-na li-bi ~abeMES biibire
28. a-na MU-7-KAMMES as-ba-ku issure u-za-ki 7'. [e] lugal-a-ni-ta ba-da-zah
29. pubade ijI.A ab-ri-ma use-eb-i sa-na-ti dIM is-tu bit beli-[su ib-li-iq]
u
30. a-na qaqqadi-ia it-tu-ru e-te-pu-us elippate 8'. [b[a-da-zah-ta im-ma-an-gur-es
31. ~abeMEs Nu-ul-la a-na elippate u-sar-ki-ib-su-nu ii-tu ih-li-qu u[-te-ru-nis-sui
u
32. tiimta a-na ma-at Mu-ki-is-biKl 9'. ba-da-zah-ta im-ma-an-gu-es-a-ta
u
33. et-be-e-ka al-ku pa-an bursani lja-zi is-tu (ditto) u-te-ru-nis-S[u]
34. a-na td-ba-lim ak-su-ud e-li-ia-ku 10'. gis-gir-gir-na in-gar
u
35. ma-ti-ia is-mu-un-ni-ma alpu immeri u kur-sa-a a-na se-pi-su is-k[un]
36. a-na pa-ni-ia ub-lu-u-nim ui-na U4-1-KAM II '. urudu-slr-sir mi-ni-in-sum
37. ki-ma isten en amelu ma-at Ni-bi KI ma-at A-ma-eKI str-str-a-ta i-pa-s[u]
38 ma-at Mu-ki-is-hi KI UaIA-la-la-ahKI aliKI-ia 12'. gis-gan-na Ib-ta-bal
39 ·. a-na za-sz-zm t°t- t u-ru-nzm
0 Vo 0 v .
a hh
v
v e
-MES .
-za bu-ka-na u-se-ti-iq
u
40. is-mu-u-ma a-na mah-ri-ia il-li-ku-u 13'. lu-zu-zah gis e-dab
41. ab-biijI·A-ia it-ti-ia-ma in-na-hu-u ha-taq sa-bat
v
-v
. 1u as-sur-su-nu
42 . ah he,ijI·A-ta v
14'. igi-ni {-na-ni} in-bal
i-na pa-ni-su iq-qur

Treaty from Sefire. H. Donner and W. Rollig, Kanaaniiische und 15'. nam-arad-a-ni mi-ni-in-zu
Aramiiische Inschriften, 1:224. ardus-su u-ra-ad-di

1h "IN ')hN 1n 1N ')1p£l 1h p1P '))b mt» )il1(4b)

Oil[? 1]011? :1?n ):Jil')1 ')1'):1 ')~ NbY 1n 1N ')010 (5) Sayings ofAhiqar James M. Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs
) 01ill1?1 O:J1\'JN?Y 1?'lJ Oil? 1bNl1?"I Oh? ofAhiqar, 55-56, Saying 6.
)[J.'lJP? )il1 ')? OilJ.'lJil111 OilP111 ilP1 '))b Oil'lJJ.(6)
OilP1N1 il)N 1ilN 1Y O'lJ 1P11p1NJ. ilbN<1> [ P1£l 1J.Y mp
on? Oil? 10111 '))b O(7)il'lJJ.) tnnn jm ....] [1]il [1n]£l ilJ.)[:\]
il1'lJNJ. ))£l11 ?N"I [O]:Jl1nl1? 1J.'lJ Oil? 1bN111 ilY1~1 ')il1J.N O'lJ I [?J.n'))]
)?N N')1YJ. 0111P'lJ [il]111n1\'J O\'JJ.
178 APPENDlXII
Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Legends ofthe Kings ofAkkade, 234-
235.
5. [i-nu-m]i-su-ma LUGAL-ki-in a-bi a-lam U-ru-ufCG i-ne-er-ma
6. [an-du-r]a-ar ki-is-si-i-im KI is-ku-un
7. [u? ap-pa-ti-S]u-nu u-sa-ag-li-ib u [k]ur-~e-e-su-nu
8. [u-ba-a~]-#-ib ...
Erica Reiner, Surpu, 13, tablet ii 28-32.
28. KI ru-u '-a ru-u '-a-su ip-ru-su
sab-ta la u-mas-si-ru ka-sa-a la u-ram-mu-u
30. so, E si-bit-ti la u-kal-lt-mu nu-u-ru
a-na sa-ab-ti sa-bat-su-ma a-na ka-si-i ku-us-si-su-ma iq-bu-u
ul i-di ser-ti riINGIR ul i-di en-nit dES4-DAR .
Ibid., 25-26, tablet iv 2 and 31-36.
2. bul-lu-tu sul-lu-mu dAMAR.un it-ti-ka-ma
31. sa E si-bit-ti su-su-u ZALAG kul-lu-mu bu
sa ina KU SI [x] KI? sab-tu x y z e-te-ru bu
sa URU-su ru-u-qu KASKAL-su ni-sa-[a]t bu
sal-mes a-na [URU-S]u a-la-ku bu
35. sal-la u ka-ma-a a-na UN.MES-su tur-ru bu
i-na IGI UN.MES-su a-ma-ru bu
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 INDEX

Abbasids 45 Aramaean 128

abolition 15,41, 144 Aramaic 97, 101
Abraham 127 archival texts 3-4,33,59,99
absenteeism 37, 38 archives 48
Abydos 70 Aristotle 71, 147, 150
accounting 34 Asia 154 n. 29
Achaemenids 61 See also Persians. Asoka II
Achish 126, 127 assembly, city, rural 18
Acton, Lord II, 12, 149 Assur 99
Adad 109 Assyria 100
African-Americans 156 Assyrians 103, 151
Africans 41 Assyriologists 140
ag a - U s 49 atheists, village 149
agriculture 56 Athenians 14, 153
Ahhiyawa94 Athens 11,49,71,72,135
Ahiqar 10 I, 102, 177 Augustus 39
Akhnaton 16, 17
Akkad 75, 88, 102, 178 Babylon II, 70
Akkadians 75 Babylonians 151
Akkadian language 20,21,23,29, Bakenrenef71 n. 20
31,47,58,63,67,75,77,100, Baltimore 156
125 Barbados 41, 54
Alalakh 66,88,95,108, 109, 129 n. barber 81
20 bedouin 57, 148
Aleppo 1, 97, 109 Benjamin al-Nahawandi 143
Alexander 144,147 Boccharis 71 n. 20
amargi 26 Brazil 16,42,43,44
Amelekite 126 British, the 148, 155
Amenemhet I 106 Burckhardt, Jacob xi, 7, 8,151-152
Amenemope 139 n. 3 bureaucrats 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 48,
American South 41,55 50,54,60,99
American slaves 42,55 Burma 2
Ammisaduqa 22, 65, 66
Amorites 56 Cambyses 18,71
Amurru 91, 93 Canaan 109
Androtion 73 canonical literature 104, 117
anduraru 23,26,29,123,140,150 castes 152
n.21 Celebes Islands 16
Angola 16 Chicago voters 48
Arabic 8,16,21,28, 147 children 35, 50, 52-54
194 INDEX INDEX 195

China 2 Early Dynastic period 46 freedom 1-2,9, 75 Haiti 42

Christ 144-145 See also Jesus. Ebla 24, 47,68,69 aspects of 13 !}alqu 31
Christianity 144-146 Eccelsiasticus 140-141 as value 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, Hammurapi 46, 79,85, 138, 172-173
Christians 39, 145, 148, 154 edicts 12,21,22,23,57,59,63,64, 23,103, 104, 135, 142, 144, See also Texts Cited.
Chronicler 114 65,66,70,74 148, 150, 154, 156 Hana66
cities 19,25 Egypt 2, 16, 17 n. 13,39,60 n. 52, civic 13-14,17,19,25,137,144, Hapalla 93
city governor 49-50, 52 70,71 n. 20, 73-74, 90, 94,101- 48 hapiru 58, 60, 62
Civil War, American 156 102,106-108,119,121,127,128, definition of 148-152 harboring 39,61,76-77,79, 80,83,
civilizations as entities 152 129,131-132,148 gift from gods 104 85,89,94,96-98,115
client 16 Egyptian language 29 Greek 3, 25 Hattin,175
Clinton, William 155 Elam 88 history of 8, II, 12, 14,42 Hattusi Ii I 67
Code of Harnmurapi 104 Elamite 59 ideology of9, 63, 98, 115 Hattusili III 94
See also Texts Cited. eleuther 20, 150 n. 21 in Christ 145 Hebrew Bible 6-7, 19,46, 108, 117-
Columbian exchange 152-153 Elijah 106 n. 11 individual 13-14, 120-122 118,125,127, 138, 141, 145, 154
Communism 1-2 Elisha 106 n. 11, 143 lack of 12, 15 See also Texts Cited.
communities 18, 19 elites 15, 16,23,30,31,34,63, 137 love of 147 Hebrew 21,27-28, 125, 139
Constitution of Athens 71 Emar 109 of thought 149 n.20 Hegel 11, n. 1
contracts 66 English as official language 153, 154 personal 16, 19,29, 144, 148, Herodotus 5,18,71,144 n. 10
Corinthians 153 Enmetena64 149, 154 M(y)rilt 27 n. 32, 125 n. 13
corvee 3, 25, 57, 67, 70, 74 escape See flight. sovereignal13, 15-17, 144 n.IO Hittite laws 82, 85, 173-174
covenant 121, 133 Esnunna56, 77,85,172 words for 19-20 See also Texts Cited.
Crete 12 See also Texts Cited. French 149 n. 20 Hittites 24,67,68,69,82,89,90-91,
cultural contacts 138 Essenes 144 n. 10 93, 94-95, 138 n. 2
Euripides 12 gardener 54 /:lofti 29,122-123
dariiru 23 European influence 148 Gath 112, 126, 127 Holiness Code 131,134
Darius 18 excommunication 146 gender, of runaways 41, 42,53 Hong Kong 154 n. 29
David 106 n. II, 110, Ill, 112, 112, Exodus 120-122, 138, 143 generalization 4-6 /:lor 28, 125
113, 114, 115, 122, 126, 127, 138, See also Texts Cited. Gentile 143 horim 28, 134
151 exorcism priest 100 Ghana 155 n. 30 humanities funding 8
death penalty 79, 80, 83 Ezra, Book of 61 Girsu See Lagas-Girsu. !}upsu 29, 122
debt 21,139 Goliath 122 hurr 147
cancellation 72 family 54 goring ox 139 n. 3 Hurrian 24, 27, 28, 68, 69
release 24, 67, 69 first millennium 9, 17 gouging, of eyes 57, 101 hurriyak 28
slavery 23, 26, 46, 134 fled and dead texts 52, 55,158,163 governments, totalitarian 151 !}urru 27, 125
debtors 64 flight 9, 79,81,105 grain 48 hwr 27n. 32
dedicated ones 35, 52 direction of 43,47 Greece 2, 12, 13, 14, 18,38, 152,
definite article 5 family 51 154 Ibalpiel56
democracy 17-18 group 51, 54, 62, 137 Greek, language 20, 49, 144-145 Ibrahim Pasha 148
deportations 88 of free persons 104 literature 130 ideology 56, 63, 98,115, 137
bar 123, 134 n. 28, 140 narratives, 104 miracle 2, 9, 135, 148 idleness 141
desert 44,106, 127 periodicity of 52-53 Greeks4,5,8, 19,33,71,119,120, Idrimi 86,88-89,108-109, 110, 138,
Deuteronomy 28, 130 punishment of 57 139, 144, 147, 153 151,175-176
See also Texts Cited. rarity of mention 53 Guadaloupe 42 imperialism 13, 153
Diodorus Siculus 71 n. 20 escapee status 50 guarantors 51,56 incantations 100, 103, 104
diseases 153 escapees, young 49 India 11,153, 155
dissent 6,7, 121 See also refugees, runaway. Hadad 128 individual, the xi, 8, 151
Domenica42 flood stories 151 Hagar 127-128 interest rates 86 n. 43
free societies 12 Hahhu 67
196 INDEX INDEX 197

inveigling 76 n. 33 liberalism 1 Neo-Babylonian period 60-62 Ptolemy(ies) 39

Ionia 14,94 liberation theology 122 New Testament 144-146 V Epiphanes 73
Iraq 3, 59, 70, 77 Lipit-Istar 57, 75, 76, 85, 171 Ninevites 128 VIII Euergetes II 73
Isaac 128 See alsoTexts Cited. Nippur45 Pythagorean theorum 4
Isaiah 118 See also Texts Cited. list-making 5 Niqmepa95
Islam 16, 146, 148,154 literary texts 99 nomads 44,56,59, 112 rabbis 142
Israel7, 12, 16,28, 110, 112-113, loans 22, 64, 65 Nubia 70 Rabbi Hisda 143
117-119,121,129,137,140,143 Luke 145 Nuhassi 93 Ramses II 90-91
Italy 151 Luwiya82 nutrition 36 rations 34-35, 48, 52, 54
Nuzi 59, 60, 70 redemption 119
Jacob 128 magic 99 reform texts 12
Jesus 145 See also Christ. manumission 26, 46, 75, 133, 147 oath 51, 54 refugees 58, 76, 88, 91,94-95
Jews 11,28,61,70,120, 123, 140, Mari 57 Old Akkadian period 46 release, remission 67, 124, 133
141, 143, 144, 154 maroons 44, 45, 52, 112 Old Babylonian period 21-23, 25, 51, of debt 21, 59, 66, 69-70, 123
Jewish Wars 141 Masoretic Text 145 n. 13 55-57,59,65-66,77,123,149 (of slaves) 68
Jezebel28, 125 Medes 18 Old Testament 6 Renaissance 151
Jonah 128 Mesopotamia 3-5, 6-8,12, 20, 25, 31- oligarchy 18 Rezon 128
Jonathan Ill, 112, 113 32,34,40,137 orallaw 141 rice 153
jubilee 131,134,142 messenger 47,49 oral traditions 7, 138 Rome 2, 34, 38-39, 55,152
Judah, Judaea 110, 112, 113, 118, Middle Assyrian laws 83-85 Oriental despotism 7, 146 Rosetta Stone 73
133, 141 Middle Babylonian period 58-60,70, rowdy groups 27
Judah the Patriarch 143 123 Palestine 58,106,140 royal inscriptions 4,59,64
Judaism 140 military 55 Palmares 44 runaway 6,32,35,42-43,48, 101,
Judges 121 mill-worker 54 pass systems 55, 149 102
jurists, Muslim 146-147 Mira-Kuwaliya 93 passing as free 40 family of 50; free 86
justice 22, 59, 66, 69, 139 missing persons 37 patrolling 43, 49 laws summary 85
Mittani 93 Paul 144, 145 punishment of 44
Karaite 143 monarchy 18 people of the land 142 returning 52
Khurasanians 147 money, grain as 34 Pericles 12 slaves 39, 40,86, 100, Ill, 142 n.
kidinnu 24, 25 monumental texts 99, 108 Persians 18,28,71, 144n.lO, 151 7
kings, critiques of 17 Moses 106 n. 11, 108, 119, 120 n. 3 pestle 101 status of 50, 51, 86
Kizzuwatna 89, 93 multiculturalism 153 Petition of Right 155 See also flight and refugees.
Mursili II 91 Pharisees 141 Russian style of argument 6
labor 32-34, 54 Muslims 146, 148 Philistines Ill, 112 Russo-Ottoman treaty 148
forced 48, 147 mutilation for escape 51, 84 Philo 144
See also corvee. See also gouging, of eyes. Pilliya 88, 110 SA.GAZ 58
Lagas-Girsu 45,52,64 Piyamaradu 94 Samson 106 n. 11
languages, Mesopotamian 8 Nabal III Plutarch 73 Samsuiluna 23 n. 23, 66
Latin 3, 20 Nabonidus 70 policemen 49 Samue119
law, and practice 65 Naboth 28, 125 Pope Gregory VI 146 Samuel-Kings 114
codes 5, 65, 74 naduriiru 29 porter 54 Sarah 127
See also Texts Cited. Napoleon Bonaparte 148 primitive democracy 17 Sargon 102
Jewish 145 Naram-Sin 88 prisoner 103 Saudi Arabia 2 n. 1
Lebanese 148 Nazareth 145 prisons 44, 154 n. 28, 147 Saul 110, Ill, 113, 114, 122,
Lebanon 106 n. 11 Nehemiah 28, 70 134, 135 privileges, city 24, 25 126,127
legal texts 129 Book of 61 propaganda 18 scribes 33, 35, 45
letters 57, 94,102 See also Texts Cited. prophets, Israelite 12, 118 Sefire 97, 176
lexical lists 31,100, 101 Neo-Assyrian period 25 See also Texts Cited. Seha River 93
198 INDEX INDEX 199

seisachtheia 72 Sumer75 West, the 1-2,9, 12, 14, 15, 19,

Senusret I 106 Sumerian 20, 21, 31, 47, 58, 63, 100, 20,152-155 work ethic 48
Septuagint 71 n, 19, 122, 145 n. 13 139 Western Asia 107 wstl.-tn 29
Seti I 70 Sumerian King List 45 wife, claims on 78
Shimei 126, 127 Sunassura 89 Wilusa 94 Xerxes 71
silversmith 54 Suppiluliuma 90, 174 wisdom collections 151
Simti 50 Surpu 103, 178 See also Texts Cited. women 12 n. 2,13,34-35,46,50,51, zab-ba 31
Sinuhe 106, 107,111 Suruppak46 53-54, 83 and n. 40, 84, 88, 89 n. Zanj 45
Sirach, Jesus son of 140-1 Susa25 48,132 Zedekiah 133
slave(s) 15,21,22 n. 22, 23, 26, 38- Swahili 28, 149 n. 20
39,45-47,51-52,54,66,75, Syria I, 2, 24, 47, 57-58, 62, 66-69,
89,95-96,104,140-141 86,88,90-91,95,106 n. 11,108,
branding of 61-62 148
by nature 147 ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS CITED
community 47 Talmud 142-143
Egyptian 126 Tatars 148 Atra-HaslsIII vi 25 151 n.23 Hittite Laws 24 82, 173
escape of79, 81 Tawagalawa 94 <;Ig, Kizilyay,Verwaltungsurkunden Hittite Laws 173b 83, 173
haircut 77, 81, 85 taxes 22, 64, 71, 73, 139 I I 51, 157 Hussey, Harvard Semitic Series 4:82
Hebrew 131, 133 Telepinu 67 Esnunna 30 78 49 n. 32, 162
held by rabbis 142 Tessub 68, 109 Esnunna 50 77, 96, 172 Keiser, Yale Oriental Series 4: 190
in army 147 texts, preserved 8 Esnunna Sl 77,172 52, 162
in polite speech 105 Thucydides 153 n. 27 Bsnunna 52 78, 172 King, Cuneiform Texts 10:28 52,
narratives 105 tobacco 153 Genouillac, Textes Cuneiformes 163
numbers of 87 toleration, religious II 2:5481 50, 157 Lager 115 48
percentage of 61 tomatoes 153 Gilgamesh xi 181-82 151 n. 23 Landsberger, Materialen zum
price of 52, 61, 77 n. 34 Toynbee, Arnold 152 Gomi, British Museum 125 52, 160 Sumerischen Lexikon I 101, 177
slave(s) rebellion 83, 87 tradition, steam of 33 Gomi,BritishMuseum333 51,161 Legrain, Ur Excavation Texts 3:1018
royal 61 See also canonical literature. Gomi, British Museum 519 52, 162 52, 166
temple 61-62 treaties 58,86-97 Gomi, Acta Sumerologica 3:166 52, Lipit-Istar 12 76, 171
slavery 12, 60 Tudhaliya II 89 158 Middle Assyrian laws 7 46
history of 31-32 Tudhaliya IV 67 Harnmurapi 15 79,172 Middle Assyrian laws 24 84, 173
in the Americas 40 Tunip 95 Hammurapi 16 79,172 Myhrman, Babylonian Expedition
or service 119, 121 Tuppi-Tessub 91 Harnmurapi 17 80, 172 3:1 51,166
seven-year 131, 134 Turkey 2 n. I, 24, 82, 88, 108 Hammurapi 18 80, 172 Nikol'skii, Dokumenty 436 50, 167
smiths 49, 54 Turkish 21 Harnmurapi 19 80, 172 Sigrist, Messenger 41:2 49 n. 31,
Solomon 126, 128 Two Brothers, Story of 106 nil Hammurapi 20 81, 172 168
Solon 11,71-73 Hammurapi 30, 31 56 Sigrist, Syracuse 36 52, 169
Spartacus 87 Ugarit 60, 90, 92-94, 174- 175 Harnmurapi 117 86 n. 43 Sigrist, Syracuse 259 49,169
Spartans 153 Umma48 Harnmurapi 136 78 n, 36 Surpu ii 28-32 103
Spengler, Oswald 152 United States 154-155 Harnmurapi 170-170 89 n. 48 Surpu iv 2, 31-36 104
St. Jerome 28 Ur III period 3, 32, 48, 64 Harnmurapi 226 81, 173 Szlechter, Tablettesjuridiques 40
Stalin 32 Ur70 Harnmurapi 227 81,173 50, 169
stealing men 130 Ur-Nammu code 75, 171 Harnmurapi 250-2 139 n. 3 Yoshikawa, Acta Sumerologica
Stoic 144-145 Uruinimgina 64, 66 Hittite Laws 22 82, 173 9:307 50, 170
subarn1 24, 25 Hittite Laws 23 82, 173
Subartu 57 village communities 36-37
suicide 43, 106 n. II
Sulgi-simti 50 weaving 35
200
BIBLICALTEXTS CITED
Genesis 16:1-16 128 n. 17
Genesis 21:8-21 128n. 17
Genesis 37:28 133 n. 26
Exodus 2:14b,15a 108 n. 15
Exodus 5:1 119
Exodus 10:26 119
Exodus21:2 131,133 n. 26
Exodus 21:2-11 86 n. 43
Exodus 21:7 132
Exodus21:16 130
Exodus 21:28-32 139n. 3
Exodus 23:2 142 n. 6
Exodus 32 120 n, 3
Leviticus 25:10 124, 131
Leviticus 25:39-42 131
Deuteronomy 15:12-18 132, 133 n,
26,86 n. 43
Deuteronomy23:16-17 129,143
Deuteronomy 24:7 130 n.22
Judges 8:23 122n. 7
Judges 14-16 106n. 11
Judges 17:10 133 n. 26
1 Samuel 111
1 Samue18 19
I Samue117:25 122
1 Samue118-21 111
1 Samue121:11 127
1 SamueI22:1-2 112
1 SamueI23:16-18 113
1 Samuel 24:20-22 113
1 Samue125:10 111
1 Samue126:25 113
1 SamueI27:1-4 113,127
1 SamueI27:5-7 113
1 Samuel30: 15 126 n. 14
1 Samuel 30:26 113
2 Samuel 16:5-13 126
1 Kings 2:39-40 126, 129
1 Kings 11:17,23,40 128
1 Kings 19:3 106 n. 11
INDEX
CULTURE AND HISTORY
OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
1 Kings 21:8,11 125,28
ISSN 1566-2055
2 Kings 4 143
2 Kings 9:3 106 n. 11 1. Grootkerk, S.E. Ancient Sites in Galilee. A Toponymic Gazetteer. 2000.
ISBN 90 04 11535 8
2 Chronicles 25:6 133 n. 26 2. Higginbotham, C.R. Egyptianization and Elite Emulation in Ramesside
Palestine. Governance and Accommodation on the Imperial Periph-
Nehemiah 2:16, 4:8, 13:17 125
ery. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11768 7
Nehemiah5:5-13 134, 135
Nehemiah5:7,6:17, 7:5 125 3. Yamada, S. The Construction ofthe As~rian Empire. A Historical Study of
Nehemiah5:15 133 n. 26 the Inscriptions of Shalmanesar III Relating to His Campaigns in the
West. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11772 5
Esther 2:18 71 4. Yener, K.A. The Domestication ofMetals. The Rise of Complex Metal
Industries in Anatolia. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11864 0
Job 3:19 123 5. Taracha, P. Ersetren und Entsiihnen. Das mittelhethitische Ersatzritual
Job 39:5 123 fur den Groffkonig Tuthalija (CTH *448.4) und verwandte Texte.
2000. ISBN 90 04 119108
Proverbs 22:17-24:34 139 n. 3
6. Littauer, M.A. & Crouwel, ].H.and P. Raulwing (ed.) Selected Writings
Ecclesiastes 10:17 125 on Chariots and other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness. 2001.
ISBN 90 04 11799 7
Isaiah 34:12 125 7. Malamat, A. History ofBiblical Israel. Major Problems and Minor
Isaiah 48:20 128 n. 18 Issues. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12009 2
Isaiah 58:6c 123 8. Snell, D.C. Flight and Freedom in the Ancient Near East. 2001.
Isaiah 61:1 124 n. 11 ISBN 90 04 12010 6
Isaiah 61:1-2 145
Jeremiah 27:20 125
Jeremiah34:8-17 133
Jeremiah 34:9-16 123
Jeremiah34:14, 22 134
Ezekiel 46:17 124, 134 n. 28
Hosea 3:2 133 n. 26
Hosea 8:4 122 n. 7
Jonah 4:2 128
Zechariah 11:12 133 n. 26
Ecclesiasticus33:24-31 140-141
Luke4:18 145
1 Timothy 1:19-20 146