the framework of social and economic dependency relation-
ships and whose conditions share characteristics with slavery.
Some servile conditions could be temporary; for instance,
debt bondsmen labored for their creditors as long as the debt
was unsettled, or famine refugees voluntarily accepted a ser-
vile status in exchange for food and shelter. Other forms of
servitude were permanent, such as those of oblates and serfs.
Oblates and serfs are modern terms for categories of depen-
dent people who were attached to the temples of the gods and
the soil they tilled, respectively. Th eir status of property was
immutable (oblates were actually branded with the god’s sym-
bol) and heritable, but their standing also gave them rights
that were denied to chattel slaves, such as protection against
separation from their families through sale. Th e distinctive
characteristic of slaves is hence their legal status of chattel,
which included the owner’s right to sell, donate, or devolve
them to his heirs but also to liberate them at will.
Slavery was typically a permanent condition; only few
people experienced a transition into or out of slavery. Th e
status of slave was heritable, and most slaves were born to un-
free mothers whose off spring belonged to their master unless
special provisions had been made. Sources for slaves other
than biological reproduction were threefold. Th e fi rst was the
capture of foreigners and the purchase of foreign slaves. Sec-
ond, fel low countr y men cou ld be obtained as slaves as a resu lt
of economic failure, with people being sold into slavery by
the head of their household or by themselves. Finally, people
could be enslaved for their crimes, a punishment that could
be imposed by the head of the household (for example, by fa-
thers punishing disobedient adoptive sons) or by the public
authorities.
Foreigners were an important component of the slave
population since early times: the cuneiform signs for male
and female slave, fi rst recorded around 3000 b.c.e., are pic-
tographs combining the sign “foreign land” with the signs
“man” and “woman,” respectively. Severed from their remote
homelands, foreign slaves were considered loyal and more de-
voted to their masters than domestically created slaves. Many
of them had been captured during foreign military campaigns
and were brought into the country as the soldiers’ share in the
booty, where they could, if not redeemed by their families, be
sold profi tably on the slave market. Supply for these markets
was also in the hands of traders, some of whom are known to
have specialized in long-distance trade in people. Not every
foreigner, however, was prey to slave agents, as subjects of al-
lied sovereigns partook in the state’s protection of its citizens
against kidnap for the purpose of enslavement.
Th e state’s care at safeguarding its subjects against in-
voluntary enslavement did not mitigate the fall of insolvent
people into slavery. Nonpayment of debts brought the human
pledge or the defaulting debtor into a servile condition in
the household of the creditor. Th eir condition was, at least in
theory, temporal and would be remedied once the debt had
been settled; in practice, however, this was oft en impossible.
Th e transition of debt servitude into slavery can be repre-sented in legal texts as a voluntary act of sale, with debtors
selling their children or themselves to their creditor with the
original debt functioning as their purchase price. Th is way
into slavery was oft en considered a social abuse, and diff er-
ent solutions were proposed to repair this disorder; for ex-
ample, there existed the biblical rule of releasing debt slaves
in the seventh year and the Mesopotamian “clean-slate acts”
that canceled consumptive debts and stipulated the repair
of their negative consequences, including the release of debt
slaves. Th ese measures were largely ideologically motivated
and their implementation usually failed to halt a trend of the
rural underprivileged toward economic dependency on the
rich and powerful.
Although slaves were owned by temples and the palace,
most of them were found in urban residences, where many
of them, females in particular, were occupied in household
tasks. Some slaves had received training in specialist skills
and practiced their trade within the master’s household or
as hired hands for others, but workshops that employed large
numbers of slaves seem to have been uncommon, as was the
use of slaves in agriculture. Slaves who were particularly
trustworthy could be employed as their owners’ agents, take
up managerial tasks, and have documents drawn up in their
own name on behalf of the family business.
Slaves were sometimes distinguished from free citizens
by certain marks, such as a distinct hairstyle or a brand with
their owner’s name or symbol. Th e risk of slaves absconding
was real; their freedom of movement was oft en controlled
with chains and shackles, and they were mostly not allowed
to leave the city unattended. Masters could punish their slaves
physically, but they usually did not have the legal power to
take a slave’s life.
As lifelong members of a household, slaves oft en devel-
oped close ties with their owners, although they were never
regarded as part of the family. Slaves could be married, even
to freeborn persons, and female slaves could become concu-
bines of the master of the house. Th is relationship could be
legally recognized in a polygamous marriage, where the sec-
ond wife was regarded as a slave of the main wife but a spouse
of the man, and her children were considered the free, legiti-
mate issue of their father. Slaves could also be adopted, most
oft en in combination with their emancipation, with a duty to
support their former owner in old age. Termination of slav-
ery was an uncommon phenomenon; however, when freedom
was granted, it was most frequently bestowed by the owner.ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
When slavery began or whether the practice always existed in
Asia is not known. Many anthropologists assume there were
slaves of one sort or another throughout Asia and the Pacifi c,
mostly in the form of people belonging to a particular person
or to a particular family. So little is known, however, of the
ancient cultures south of China and east of India, as well as988 slaves and slavery: Asia and the Pacific0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i988 988 10/10/07 2:30:40 PM