A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

 585

figure that actually corresponds to the bodies of adolescents. In most

cases, boys were employed as junior workers, and girls were des-

tined to become the wives of whomever their master would decide.

“Able-bodied” and “full-grown” (e†lu) males are also recorded;^58 “good-

looking” (damiqtu) girls often occur.

4.4.1 Creation

4.4.1.1 We do not have definite evidence for foreigners being reduced

to slavery as war booty. An isolated and dubious case is HSS 15

58, a list of people that has been tentatively interpreted as a record

of Assyrians (prisoners of war?) taken into Arraphean territory.^59

Note, however, the lengthy report of an Assyrian razzia in Arraphean

territory ( JEN 525//670), as a result of which a number of people

were captured and taken away as prisoners.

4.4.1.2 Chattel slaves, women in particular, were the object of a

flourishing foreign trade carried out by private merchants. One of

the main sources was the country of N/Lullu, still of uncertain

location.^60

4.4.1.3 Sales of wives, children, relatives, or oneself, due to financial

duress, are a recurrent feature of the Nuzi socio-economic scene,

which is characterized by an overall process of impoverishment of

the peasant family groups, mainly as a result of the fiscal burden

exerted by the central state apparatus.^61

4.4.1.4 A somewhat different case is that of male and female for-

eigners (including persons from Assur and Babylonia), called ¢apiru

(“immigrants, refugees”), who gave themselves in slavery (ardùtu) to

private individuals or the palace administration.^62 Poverty was the

(^58) See e.g. JEN 458: 9; 555: 7.
(^59) Fincke, RGTC 10, 59.
(^60) Cf. ibid., 190–93. See, however, Klengel, “Lullu(bum),” 166.
(^61) Comparison with other Late Bronze Age Syro-Mesopotamian documentation
(especially the Emar archives) is particularly revealing; cf. Zaccagnini, “Feet of
Clay.. .,” and “War and Famine...”
(^62) Cf. Bottéro, Le problème des Habiru.. ., 43–70; Greenberg, The Hab/piru, 23–32,
65–70; Cassin, “Nouveaux documents...”
WESTBROOK_f14–564-617 8/27/03 12:28 PM Page 585