Some Notes on Sumerian Slavery

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Robert Englund (1995, 2009) has written about both pigs and slaves in Sumer during the late Uruk period (3350-3000 BCE). Among other points, he notes that accounting records list slaves together with pigs, but separately from sheep and goats. He notes that slaves are listed in the format that is used for “herded animals” as opposed to other accounting categories. Slaves are separated into male (KURa) and female (SAL) categories. (The letters and numbers do not stand for pronunciation, but for the coding used for cuneiform symbols, the pronunciation of which is uncertain.) They are further separated into age categories: child in first year (1N57xU4), child in second year (2N57xU4), child in third year (3N57xU4), four years of age until working age (ENaTUR), and of working age (AL).

Englund then writes that full working age was probably somewhere between four and six, pointing out that bonded labor (modern-day slaves) in India are put to manual labor making bricks by five or six. It would be expected that slaves in Sumer would be put to physical labor by the same age. In the Sumerian cities built of mud brick, they may well have been put to the same brick-making task when they were young as are the contemporary Indian children.

Kazuya Maekawa, in his study of animal husbandry and animal castration in Sumer during the Ur 3 period (2030-1980 BCE) wrote that slave weaving women had many children (probably with their free overseers). Girls were put to work with their mothers and also became slave weaving women. The boys were castrated and put to physical labor. Maekawa noted that the same word was used for castrated donkey and castrated boy. He thought that barge hauling on the many canals of Sumer would have been one of their tasks once they were strong enough.

This asks the probably unanswerable question, were domestically born slave boys castrated between the ages of four and six? In addition to domestically born slaves, other slaves were captured during the many small wars of Sumer. Additional eunuchs might have been castrated at older ages when they were captured.

In later ages, castrated boys were often required as part of regular taxation/tribute. The Assyrian state required 1000 talents of silver and 500 castrated boys as annual taxation from the conquered state of Babylon. Other conquered states paid fewer castrated boys. As late as the 18th century, some districts in modern India and Bangladesh paid taxes in castrated boys. The British eventually put a stop to the practice. (Hinchy 2015)

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Englund, Robert K.

1995. Late Uruk Pigs and other Herded Animals. U. Kinkbeiner, R. Dittmann & H. Hauptmann, eds., Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Vorderasiens. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, pp. 121-133.

2009. The Smell of the Cage. Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, 2009:4; 1-27.

Hinchy, Jessica

2015. Enslaved childhoods in eighteen-century Awadh. South Asian History and Culture 6(3):380-400.

Maekawa, Kazuya (前川和也)

1979. Animal and human castration in Sumer, Part I. Zinbun (The Research Institute for Humanistic Studies, Kyoto University) 15: 95-140.

1980a. Animal and human castration in Sumer, Part II: Human castration in the Ur III period. Zinbun (The Research Institute for Humanistic Studies, Kyoto University) 16: 1-56.

1980b. Female Weavers and Their Children in Lagash - Presargonic and Ur III. Acta Sumerologica 2: 81-125.