Slavery during the third dynasty of Ur / [Bernard Joseph Siegel].

  • Bernard J. Siegel
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Slavery during the third dynasty of Ur / [Bernard Joseph Siegel]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was dependent upon the produce and trade of the temple, palace, and a body of army officials possessing inalienable lands from the king, such as we know from the First Dynasty of Babylon. The masses probably formed a class of “Halbfreier” in a state of semi-attachment to the land.1 Archeological remains attest to a very considerable degree of artistic excellence in sculpture, architecture, metallurgy, and other crafts, indicating extensive specialization of labor. The size of cities and the degree to which they had been planned revealed a very complex urban life which is further cor¬ roborated by countless trade objects and private cylinder seals used to estab¬ lish ownership. It is the written documents, however, that unmistakably illustrate the enormous extent of temple, state, and private participation in economic, legal, social, and religious activities. To regulate these intricate series of rela¬ tionships there was a legal “code” of which we possess at best but fragments. The bulk of the legal prescription and procedure comes from the many court documents recovered principally at Tello. They also indicate the rather elabo¬ rate structure of the court, its composition and jurisdiction. To date, little or nothing has been written about the selection of judges, the manner in which cases were brought to court, and other related problems of equal importance. Withal, one can justifiably assert that despite the influence of religious ideas and motivations, the everyday life of the people—even of the temple—was regulated by a large number of impersonal rules and a contract economy. Autocratic state rule was paralleled in the family by what seems to have been an equally marked, if limited, patria potestas. The father not only had the right to pledge and to sell his children, as we have seen, but also contracted for their marriage. Documentary evidence definitely points to the fact that even cases of contested marriage contracts were carried on by the parents as principals.2 It would, of course, be unwise to beg a strong correspondence be¬ tween the family structure in Ur III and that of Rome during the republic and early empire. There is no evidence at this time that the father had the power of life or death over his children, much less that his control extended beyond the marriage of the latter. Besides members of the royal house and high-ranking officials of the temple and palace, there were other social classes of freemen, citizens, and slaves. What the proportion of each to the total population was we do not know. At present it can only be surmised that the large accumulation of wealth and property in the hands of the palace and temple tended to create a relatively 1 For a discussion of the temple, palace, and town economic organizations, their growth and formal structure from earlier times to the Third Dynasty of Ur, see Anna Schneider, Die sum- merische Templestadt (“Staatswissenschaftliche Beitrage,” IV [Essen, 1920]), especially pp. 17-39. 2 For documents relating to marriage contracts and litigation, see de Genouillac, 1910-21, II, 960 and 1948; ITT III, 6432; and Babyloniaca III, pi. XXI, p. 114.
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