Babylonian Slaves: 20 (2024-06-05)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

Slave accounts of the Late Uruk period (ca. 3350-3000 BC)

Another text from the Schøyen collection may point to an accounting mechanism for incoming groups of slaves. Inscribed with a beautifully clear Uruk III period hand (ca. 3200-3000 BC), the account lists in three columns of the tablet’s obverse surface, and a further two of the reverse, numbers of persons who might be male slaves associated with the name or profession of a leader of some sort, and each group of potential males is associated with a count of SAL, “female slaves.” The sign combinations in the first of these double sub-cases bear similarities with several other Schøyen texts and one from Jemdet Nasr, some of which deal with agricultural tasks. The total found at the top of the tablet’s third reverse column, however, does not record the number of persons tallied in the account; rather the number “62” corresponds with the actual line count of the text, implying that these lines might represent groups of males and females, in four cases just one or the other, who were related to one another, perhaps as family members, and the whole lot qualified as SAG, “head” groups of slaves. CDLI entry: P006054

credit: Englund, Robert K.