Slavery in Ancient Egypt: Types and How It Differed from Slavery in the Americas | Middle East And North Africa

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SLAVERY IN ANCIENT EGYPT

figure from Egypt of a Semitic slave

The ancient Egyptians kept slaves. Many of them were captives of wars. There was even a “House of Female Slaves” that produced them. However, slavery practiced in Egypt was very different from the slavery practiced in the Americas. Ella Karev, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, told Live Science: "The way that we define slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude, debt bondage — all of these are modern classifications and categorizations. The ancient Egyptians did not have these classifications, and so it is up to historians to figure out what, in context, is actually going on." [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, November 12, 2022]

Tom Metcalfe wrote in Live Science: While ancient writings state that people were sometimes bought and sold as property, and perhaps with the land they subsisted on — what are called "serfs" today — there's also evidence that the dowry for marriage of a slave might be paid by their owner and that many slaves were adopted into families. In addition, there is evidence that people were often manumitted, or freed from slavery, and became regular members of Egyptian society, she said.

Ben Haring of Universiteit Leiden wrote: “Although it is clear that chattel slavery was common, it is more difficult to assess how important slavery was to the Egyptian economy. Economic anthropology considers two criteria for establishing the importance of slavery to society: 1) great hierarchical differences among social strata, allowing for the delegation of work to lower ranks; and 2) the existence of “open” economic resources (i.e., freely accessible means of livelihood), without which there is no need for slaves as a separate social category. The extent of open economic resources in ancient Egypt is far from clear, but Egyptologists assume that compulsory labor was chiefly corvée, rather than slavery.” [Source: Ben Haring, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “The study of servitude and slavery in ancient Egypt is instructive from a threefold perspective. From the historical standpoint, Pharaonic Egypt shows the adaption of different forms of servitude to varying economic needs and political ideas, ranging from a widespread extent of coerced labor during the Old Kingdom, when the whole of Egyptian society was heavily dependent on state control, to politically motivated restrictions of freedom during the Middle Kingdom and to an abundance of foreign slaves in the New Kingdom, to end with different forms of voluntary servitude during the first millennium B.C.. From a social point of view, the important changes that took place in the Pharaonic world during the three thousand years of its written history display an evolution from the pyramidalmodel of the Memphite Period to the meritocracy of the Middle Kingdom, from Ramesside bureaucratic centralism to the emergence of closed social and religious groups during the Late Period. From the cultural point of view, the study of forms and patterns of Egyptian servitude allows us to outline a cultural history of Egypt, which reveals on the one hand the inner workings of an autocratic ancient Near Eastern society, on the other hand glimpses of extraordinary modernity such as the distrust in rigid legal codification of social status. [Source: Antonio Loprieno, University of Basel, Switzerland, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

What and What Is Not Slavery in Ancient Egypt

a scene from the Moses story in the Bible

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “While various forms of coercion to labor and restriction of individual freedom did exist throughout Egyptian history, slavery is rather defined by economic than by legal indicators. Some literary texts present figures of slaves, called Hm (“laborer”) or bAk (“servant”). The documentary evidence is multifaceted: during the Old Kingdom, very large segments of the population were drawn to corvée work, exemption for religious service and even upward mobility being possible, while foreign prisoners of war were clearly enslaved (sqr-anx). With the emergence of new social elites, Egyptian texts from the early Middle Kingdom onward display a more distinct consciousness of the difference between “free” people, even if at the lower level of the social ladder (nDs), and “servants” (Hm,bAk), conscripts (Hsb), and fugitives (tSj), true slavery being presumably confined to foreign prisoners. The New Kingdom, with its relentless military operations, is the epoch of large-scale foreign slavery, but also of local—owned or rented—servitude, both of which had become economically indispensable, adoption of a slave being a common practice leading to “free” status (nmHj). During the first millennium B.C., references to slavery become rare and are superseded by various forms of voluntary servitude caused by economic dearth or religious commitment. “Slavery”in the legal, inherited sense of the term unfolds in Egypt during the Hellenistic Period and is based on capture in war, on purchase in the slave market, and on the enslavement of debtors.[Source: Antonio Loprieno, University of Basel, Switzerland, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

“Egyptologists gyptologists feel insecure when discussing slavery in Pharaonic Egypt, since the very hypothesis of the existence of such an institution is a subject of debate among social and economic historians. From biblical times, Western culture has maintained a view of Egypt as “house of slavery” (Ex 20,2), i.e., as a civilization whose wealth was founded on forced labor. On the other hand, the virtual absence of legally codified slavery in a society so keen on written documentation cannot be accidental. Evidence shows that the semantics of the Egyptian terms for slavery or servitude rather reflect socio- economic dependency than legal status, although a few documents (such as the so-called Adoption Papyrus, see below) do display legal concerns. Many social groups referred to in royal decrees and administrative texts were certainly subject to restrictions on individual freedom. In the Old Kingdom, “royal corvée workers” (nswtjw, mrjt), undertook coercive labor for a certain period of time, but not for life, while from Dynasty 6 on, “dependents” (mrjt) represent the body of servants and laborers of a private or public domain. From the First Intermediate Period on, “servants” (bAkw) appear employed in households, while “royal laborers” (Hmw-nsw) are state employees who can also be allocated to private individuals. In addition, throughout Egyptian history, and increasingly during the New Kingdom, “war prisoners” (sqrw-anx) and “conscripts” (Hsbw) also appear employed in large-scale forced labor, so that the interpretative issues are in fact, at least in part, determined by terminology.

“Anthropological analyses point to the generally complex semantics of slavery: in some African rural cultures, for example, one’s own children can be sold as property. The practice of selling children for work is also known, in different forms, in modern Europe. In this respect it is interesting to note that in an Egyptian household of the Middle Kingdom, servants are considered part of the family structure: “I was someone beloved by his community (hAw=f), forthcoming to his family (sdmy n abt=f), I did not neglect those who are in servitude (n Hbs=j Hr r ntj m bAkw).” Although historical, administrative, or legal texts are usually the most important source for our understanding of slavery, it should be kept in mind that Egyptian biographies and royal inscriptions are heavily influenced by the literary style, which limits their reliability as historical sources.”

captive slaves

Slaves Who Were Foreigners in Ancient Egypt

Some slaves were foreigners. The eleven mentioned as belonging to the court of Ramses III five bear foreign names: one is, such as the Libyan Ynene, whilst another rejoices in the good Phoenician name of Mahar-ba'al. Many also who bore Egyptian names were probably of foreign origin. Their foreign birth makes us suspect that slaves are here intended, and a passage in a poem, describing in long-winded measures the triumph of the king, leaves us in no doubt that such is the case. It is there stated that the older of the Cilician captives who are led in triumph before the King's balcony are to work in the brewery; the younger are either to be boatmen, or when they have been bathed, anointed, and clothed, to be slaves to his Majesty. "' [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

These became the favorites of the kings of the New Kingdom, who seem to have tried, in the same way as the Sultans of the Middle Ages, by the purchase of slaves, to create for themselves a trustworthy surrounding. The slaves here take the place of the Mamluks, and I need hardly say that the same motive — distrust of his own subjects, led the monarch in both cases to have recourse to this strange expedient, by which slaves rose to high positions in both states. As a matter of fact the slaves (like the Mamluks) were not always faithful to their masters — some of them, e. g., took part in the great conspiracy against Ramses 1 11.'

Amongst the court officials also we often meet with foreigners who may have been slaves. For instance, the office of ' first speaker of his Majesty," whose duty was to take charge of the intercourse between the king and his attendants, was, under King Mcrenptah, invested in the Canaanite Ben-Mat'ana, the son of Jupa'a, from D'arbarsana. At court he of course assumed an Egyptian name; he was called “Ramses in the temple of Ra”; and as this distinguished name might also belong to some of his colleagues, he bore the additional name of the "beloved of Heliopolis. " All barbarians were probably not so conscientious as Ben-Mat'ana in confessing their foreign origin, consequently we may suppose that many of the officials named after the reigning king may have been Phoenicians or Cilicians.

War Captive Slaves in Ancient Egypt

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “In the Old Kingdom, Egypt’s population also included foreign prisoners of war, called sqrw-anx, “bound for life”. From the time of Sneferu, there is evidence of important expeditions to abduct Nubians or Libyans to work as laborers or to serve in specialized military units. The ideological aspect of this phenomenon is represented by the so- called “execration texts”—spells inscribed on terracotta figurines of the foreign princes to be suppressed—as well as by the ritual of “smiting the enemy” and the reliefs of prisoners of war with their arms tied behind their backs, documented throughout Egyptian history on the walls of temples. Prisoners captured during wartime and raids on occupied territories (initially in Nubia, then in Libya and Asia as well) formed a large segment of the population in a state of servitude.” [Source: Ben Haring, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

In the New Kingdom, “Miscellanies as well as historical and biographical texts converge in presenting slaves either as a war booty or as chosen from the elite of the occupied territories. In the historical section of Papyrus Harris I, an important Ramesside administrative text that lists the property of the most important Egyptian temples, the king speaks of a manpower consisting of foreign warriors and prisoners of war captured during his military campaigns and how these were received in Egypt: “I brought back in great numbers those that my sword has spared, with their hands tied behind their backs before my horses, and their wives and children in tens of thousands, and their livestock in hundreds of thousands. I imprisoned their leaders in fortresses bearing my name, and I added to them chief archers and tribal chiefs, branded and enslaved, tattooed with my name, their wives and children being treated in the same way.”

Some prisoners of war were handed over from the booty, and sent wherever they were wanted. They were passed on from one department to another, just as if they had been oxen or donkeys, and occasionally the same fate befell them as sometimes befalls oxen or donkeys as they pass through the hands of different officials; they disappeared and left no trace. There lived, for instance, a prophet of the temple of Thoth named Ramses, to whom the crown had given a Syrian slave to use as a laborer, yet the latter never came into his possession; he was lost on the way. Ramses then besought his son to take up the matter, and to find out where the slave was. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Bekenamun, his son, the libation scribe, exerted himself so energetically that he was able at any rate to send his father the following rather unsatisfactory answer: “I have made inquiries about the Syrian, who belonged to the temple of Thoth, and about whom thou didst write to me. I have ascertained that he was appointed field-laborer to the temple of Thoth, and placed under thee in the third year on the 10th of Payni. He belonged to the galley slaves brought over by the commandant of the fortress. His Syrian name is Naqatey, he is the son of Sarurat'a, and his mother's name is Qede; he comes from the country of Artu and was galley slave on the ship of Kenra, the captain of the galley. His guard told me that Cha'em'epet, officer of the royal peasantry, took charge of him, in order to send him on. I hastened to Cha'em'epet, the officer of the royal serfs, but he pretended to be deaf, and said to me: The governor Meryti-Sechemt took charge of him to send him on. I therefore hastened to the governor Meryti-Sechemt, and he with his scribes pretended to be deaf, and said: We have not seen him! I then went to the officer at Chmunu and said to him: I pray thee to order that the Syrian field-laborer, whom thou didst receive for the temple of Thoth, should be sent to the prophet. I shall sue him before the high court of law. "

Houses of Female Slaves

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “To modern eyes, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the New Kingdom’s slavery is the presence of “houses of female slaves,” apparently devoted to the production of slave labor. In Papyrus Harris I, the prayer to Ptah at the beginning of the section devoted to the temple of Memphis contains a reference to a settlement, which seems to have been intended for the production of slave labor: “I have issued for you great decrees with secret words, recorded in the archives of Egypt, built out of masses of scalpel-worked stone, and I have organized the service at your noble temple in eternity and the reorganization of your women’s pure foundation. I have gathered their children that had been scattered in the service of others, and I have destined them for You, in the service of the temple of Ptah, as an order established for them in eternity.” [Source: Ben Haring, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

The biblical text of Gen 47:13 ff. tells us that Egyptians could opt to become slaves when forced to do so by famine, selling their possessions and also their own persons. In this vein, a priest of Medinet Habu named Amenkhau discusses in his second marriage contract the fate of 13 servants. Nine servants are passed on to the children of his first wife, and the other four are given to his second wife to become her property if her husband dies or in the event of divorce. This document is interesting because it presents, alongside the local servants, a foreign female slave (Hmt) and, above all, because Amenkhau’s two wives are described as citizeness (anxt nt nwt): they enjoy the same status that we found in the document from Elephantine in which its citizens accept a request for emancipation of a female slave who was half owned by the city.

The generic term appears in sources from the middle Dynasty 18 onward, when women took a more active part in private legal procedures. In Amenkhau’s contract, the formula chosen by the vizier is revealing: “Even if it had not been his wife but a Syrian or a Nubian whom he loved and to whom he gave a property of his, [who] should make void what he did? Let the four slaves which [fall to his lot] with the citizeness Anoksenedjem be given [to her?] together with [all that he may acquire] with her, which he has said he would give her: ‘my two thirds [in addition to] her one eighth, and no son or daughter of mine (i.e., Amenkhau) shall question this arrangement which [I] have made for her this day.’”

Slavery and Servants in Ancient Egypt

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “Egyptian laborers made up what would now be called a lower class whose status appears to oscillate between that of unpaid foreign slaves and that of paid local workers. “Biographical texts from the end of the Old Kingdom document a meritocratic evolution leading to the emergence of a new provincial upper class, who would eventually become the leading elite during the First Intermediate Period and the early Middle Kingdom. The new social fabric, however, also fostered new forms of servitude. Widespread impoverishment and subsequent slavery in the private sector were caused by an insecure economy and temporary food shortage. The poorer would borrow grain from the richer and lend on security women or other members of the family for the period in which interests were due. During Dynasty 6, the architect Nekhebu says: “I also kept for him (i.e., the king) the accounts of his personal possessions for a period of twenty years. I never struck anyone to let him fall beneath my hand. I never forced anyone to servitude. [Source: Antonio Loprieno, University of Basel, Switzerland, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

“The term “servant” (bAk), therefore, denotes a wide range of conditions, from the rhetorical use by high officials to indicate their loyalty to the king (“more than any other among his servants”) to real servitude, as in the inscription of Henqu from Deir el-Gebrawi, in which the verb bAk appears accompanied by the determinative of a seated man with a yoke around his neck: “I have never forced one of your daughters to servitude.” That Henqu explicitly refers to daughters may point to the fact that women were the preferred form of deposit in the case of food lending, the ethical expectation being that interests should not be levied too heavily on the borrower. Also, officials who would abuse their power could be punished with enslavement.

“An even more decisive sign of social change is the contemporary emergence of the term that Egyptologists most frequently translate with “slave,” i.e., Hm, “laborer.” In one of its first appearances, this word is accompanied by the determinative of a seated man or woman holding a club, which is nothing else than the phonogram of the word Hm. This determinative is similar to the one sometimes used with the words “servant” (bAk) and “dependent” (mrjt) or with ethnonyms such as “Nubians” or “Asiatics,” who according to the royal decrees were granted a different status from Egyptians. A proof of the social evolution described here is given by the Pyramid Texts, the first corpus of Egyptian theology. In Spell 346, the late Dynasty 6 versions of Merenra and Pepy II replace the original “butchers” of the earlier text of Tety with the word “laborers” (Hmw): “To be recited: The souls are in Buto, yes, the souls are in Buto! The souls will be in Buto, the soul of the dead king is in Buto! How red is the flame, how alive is Khepri! Rejoice, rejoice! Butchers, give me a meal!”.

“Before occurring as a single word, the term Hm was used in compound terms from the religious and funerary sphere: Hm-nTr, “god’s servant,” Hm-kA, “funerary priest.” Between Dynasty 5 and 6, Hm appears in biographical texts (“I have never said anything bad about anyone, neither the king nor his laborers”), and in the compound Hm-nsw, “king’s laborer,” it is possible to recognize the semantics of slavery: “Sifting grain by king’s laborers.”

Slaves and Servants in Noble Households in Ancient Egypt

The pictures representing the court life of the nomarch Khnumhotep show us the chiefs of the kitchen and of the garden, and besides them several household servants. They assist in the slaying of animals and bring roast meat, jars of wine, and food, to their master. We learn, however, from a Berlin stele, that a distinguished family of that period had four such servants, who presided over the “bakery “and the “fruit-house." We meet with them also forming the lowest rank of service in other households of this time, as for instance in the house of one master who possessed no office at all under government. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Under the 19th dynasty these slaves rise to importance in the state and attain high honours. One is a clerk of the treasury,'' another gives orders to the officers as to how the monuments should be erected,' and under Ramses IX. we even meet with two prince slaves, who rank immediately after the high priests. They are the “royal slave Nesamun, scribe to Pharaoh, and director of the property of the high priestess of Amun-Ra," and the “royal slave Nefer-ke-Ra-em-per-Amun, speaker to Pharaoh. " ' We shall meet with both in the next chajjter in the discharge of their official duties, and shall have occasion to consider their abnormal position in the kingdom.

Bondservants belonging temples and necropoliss and the peasant-serfs on the estates were organised in a military manner. They had their officers of different grades, some of whom were chosen from their own ranks; they were led by standardbearers, who were certainly chosen out of the soldiers. We cannot doubt that these men were slaves in our sense of the word, and that they formed part of the property of the crown or of the temple as much as the land or the cattle. Their names were entered in a register by the officials of the house of silver, who traveled about for this purpose accompanied by an officer and his soldiers, who branded them with the seal of the department. These slaves were despised by the scribes, who said they were without Jieart, such as without understanding, and that therefore they had to be driven with a stick like cattle. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

The following verses refer to the slaves: “The poor child is only brought up That he may be torn from his mother's arms; As soon as he comes to man's estate His bones are beaten like those of a donkey; He is driven, he has indeed no heart in his body. " The scribe has to provide for these slaves: “He takes the lists of them in his hand, He makes the oldest amongst them the officer, The youngest of them he makes the bugler. "

Importance of Slaves in Ancient Egyptian Households

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: ““Servants” (bAkw) guilty of disservice were sent away from home. Proof thereof can be found in the correspondence of Hekanakht, a landowner from the early Middle Kingdom who, while traveling for work, continued to look after the management of his land by sending written instructions to his family: “Now have the servant (bAkt) Senen turned out of my house—pay attention!—on the very day when Sihathor reaches you. See, if she spends a single night more in my house, watch out! It is you who let her do evil to my concubine.”We do not really know what the ejection from a household would imply—at a minimum a loss of economic security. [Source: Antonio Loprieno, University of Basel, Switzerland, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

“The above mentioned letter to the dead, the so- called Cairo Bowl, witnesses how much a servant could become an indispensable part of family structure. That servants were emotionally close to their household is also shown by a letter to the dead inscribed on a pottery stand from the First Intermediate Period, in which the sender asks his dead father and his grandmother on his father’s side to help his wife Seni bear him a son. Seni had been upset by two housemaids, whose malevolent influence is taken to be responsible for the couple’s problems: “See, this vessel is brought to you in respect to which your mother is to make litigation. It is agreeable that you should support her. Cause now that a healthy male child be borne to me, for you are an excellent spirit. And behold, as for those two serving-maids who have caused Seni to be afflicted, namely Nefertjentet and Itjai, confound them and banish from me every affliction which is directed against my wife; for you know that I need her. Banish them utterly!”

“The ability to harm a child’s health by using magical power could be imputed on women of foreign origin, regardless of their social status, whether “servant” (Hmt) or “noblewoman” (Spst), as shown by Papyrus Berlin 3027. Although slavery was inherited, as we infer from the fact that Dedisobek, son of the slave woman Ided, was himself a laborer, this did not prevent a slave from attaining a higher educational level: “This communication is to inform my lord, who is occupying himself with your royal servant Uadjhau, teaching him to write without allowing him to flee”.”

Ancient Egyptians Appear to Have Branded Slaves

In a study published October 15, 2022 in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, scientists said that small branding irons from ancient Egypt were likely used to mark the skin of human slaves. The findings were based on careful examination of ancient texts and illustrations, as well as 10 branding irons dating to 3,000 years ago. These bronze branding “irons”, are now in the collections of the British Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London and are believed to date roughly from 1292 B.C. to 656 B.C., according to [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, November 12, 2022]

Tom Metcalfe wrote in Live Science: Until now, most Egyptologists had assumed that they were used to brand cattle — a practice seen in ancient Egyptian paintings — or perhaps horses. But the brands in the museums are too small for that purpose, said Ella Karev, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago and the study's author. "They are so small that it precludes them from being used on cattle or horses," she told Live Science. "I'm not excluding the possibility, but we have no evidence of small animals like goats being branded, and there is so much other evidence of humans being branded."

Modern cattle-branding guidelines call for a brand that's larger than at least 4 inches (10.6 centimeters) long so the scar it leaves won't become illegible as a calf grows — an issue that the ancient Egyptians likely knew about, too. But the brands in the British Museum and the Petrie Museum are typically a third of that size — far too small for cattle, Karev wrote. The cattle brands in ancient Egyptian paintings are also square or rectangular, and look larger than the brands in the museums.

Some of the ancient Egyptian branding irons are almost exactly the same size as branding irons used by Europeans on African enslaved people during the trans-Atlantic slave trade many centuries later, Karev said. "Human branding-irons from the mid- and late 19th century parallel the size and shape of the smaller branding irons discussed here," she wrote in the study.

Ancient Egyptian writings also talk about "marking" slaves, which was assumed to be a reference to the practice of tattooing, Karev told Live Science. For instance, branding is seen in a depiction of prisoners of war in a carving at Medinet Habu near Luxor in Upper (southern) Egypt dated to the 20th dynasty, perhaps around 1185 B.C. But research shows that tattooing in ancient Egypt was almost exclusively performed on women and for religious purposes, she said, and the marking of prisoners of war in the Medinet Habu carving is unlikely to be tattooing. "Practically speaking, 'hand-poking' a tattoo [without a tattoo machine] takes quite a lot of time and skill — and if you're doing that on a large scale, it's not easily replicable," Karev said. "It would make much more sense for this to be branding."

Moreover, the tools used to mark the prisoners in the Medinet Habu carving look different from the cattle brands used in ancient Egyptian paintings. It's been suggested that's because they were needles for tattooing, and that the carving shows them placed in a bowl of pigment. But Karev argues that the depiction instead shows small brands being heated to red hot in a portable heater known as a brazier. In such cases, the brand of a slave might be a "permanent marker of an impermanent status," Karev said. "They clearly had no issue with an ex-slave adopting a new name, becoming fully Egyptian, marrying an Egyptian free person and moving up the ranks."

Antonio Loprieno, an Egyptologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland who wasn't involved in the study, said the paper was a "fantastic piece of scholarship."Only foreigners, rather than native Egyptians, seem to have been marked in this way, so "assuming that the branding-bronzes were used for humans … is empirically more probable at this time, where the number of foreign workers and soldiers in Egypt was at its peak," he told Live Science.Loprieno, too, noted that modern ideas of slavery did not apply in Egypt at this time and that further evidence is needed of the "moral connotations" of slavery in ancient Egypt.

Renting Slaves and Laws Protecting Them in Ancient Egypt

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “Slaves could be rented for a certain period by people of relatively humble social condition, and the motive for hiring out a female slave could be as mundane as the need for new clothes, although the actual price appears high:“Year 27, third month of the summer season, day 20, under the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Nebmaatra, son of Ra Amenhotep III, granted eternal life like his father Ra each day. The day in which Nebmehi, a shepherd in the temple of Amenhotep, presented himself to the shepherd Mesi saying: ‘I am without clothes: let me be given the value of two days’ work of my slave girl Harit.’ So the shepherd Mesi gave him a dAjw-garment worth 3 1/2 shati and a sDw-garment worth 1/2 shati. Then he came back to me once more and said: ‘Give me the value of four days’ work of the slave girl Henut.’ So the shepherd Mesi gave him grain […] worth 4 shati, six goats worth 3 shati, and silver worth 1 shati, for a total value of 12 shati. But two of the working days of the slave girl Henut were particularly hot; for this reason he gave me two more days’ work of Meriremetjuef and two days’ work of the slave Nehsethi in the presence of several witnesses.” [Source: Antonio Loprieno, University of Basel, Switzerland, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

“The same practice is documented in the community of Deir el-Medina, where each family could benefit from a servant’s (Hm, Hmt) “days of service” (hrww nj bAkj). This service was granted by the administration of the Royal Tomb as a payment for goods or other services with other village inhabitants. These servants appear on the same salary lists as workmen and others paid by the administration, but they range clearly at the bottom of the social spectrum at Deir el-Medina . Some of the workmen possessed private servants, male, female, and children, or had a share in them. How they were compensated by their owners for their work is not documented.

“People in servitude also had the right to be treated equally when they broke the law. A female slave found guilty of theft was sentenced to give back twice the value of what she had stolen . A number of administrative texts from the New Kingdom present different legal opportunities for slaves to be freed, often linked to a form of quid pro quo between slave and master, as in the case of a slave who agreed to marry an invalid niece:“Year 27 under His Majesty the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Menkheperra, son of Ra Thutmose, given life eternity like Ra. The barber of the king Sabastet entered into the presence of the young princes of the royal palace, saying: My slave, one of my own people (Hsb) named Ameniu, whom I had taken prisoner with my own arm when I accompanied the king […] He has never been struck nor imprisoned behind a door of the royal palace. I gave him as wife Ta-Kemnet (“the blind one”), daughter of my sister Nebet-Ta, who had previously lived with my wife and my sister. He now leaves the house, being deprived of nothing […] and if he decides to agree to a legal compromise with my sister, no one will ever do anything against him.”

“While in earlier periods a dependent humbly addressed a socially higher person referring to himself as bAk, “servant,” during the New Kingdom the word Hm, “laborer,” came to be used in its place: “As a laborer serves his master, so I want to serve my lord”. The same practice applies to administrative and legal documents, in which servants are identified by social status and by name. The term bAk, however, was still in use to describe a community of servants.”

1878 depiction of using slave power to build Egyptian monuments

Freedom for Slaves in Ancient Egypt

Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel wrote: “A slave could become free through adoption by his or her owner. A sterile woman adopts the children whom her husband fathered with a female slave, which implicitly shows that in the absence of such a procedure, the legal state of slavery must have been hereditary. This seems to have been a common practice in the ancient Near East. In Gen 30:1-13, Jacob’s wives Rachel and Lea sent their husband to their maidservants to conceive the children they could not bear because of sterility or advanced age, and to take them as their own offspring. [Source: Ben Haring, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

“In the so-called Adoption Papyrus, the term “free citizen in the land of the pharaoh” is used in opposition to “servant” or “slave”: “We bought the slave girl Dienihatiri, and she gave birth to three children, a boy and two girls, three in all. And I adopted, fed, and raised them, and to this day they have never treated me badly. On the contrary, they have treated me well, and I have no sons or daughters other than them. And the overseer of the stables, Pendiu, connected to me by family ties, since he is my younger brother, came into my house and took the elder sister, Taimennut, as his wife. And I accepted this on her behalf and he is now with her. Now, I have freed her, and if she gives birth to a son or daughter, they too will be free citizens (rmT nmHj) in the land of the Pharaoh, since they will be with the overseer of the stables, Pendiu, my younger brother. And the other two children will live with their elder sister in the house of this overseer of the stables, Pendiu, my younger brother, whom I today adopt as my son, exactly as they are … I (hereby) make the people whom I have put on record free citizens of the land of Pharaoh, and if any son, daughter, brother, or sister of their mother and their father should contest their rights, except Padiu this son of mine, for they are indeed no longer with him as servants (bAk), but are with him as brothers and children, being free citizens of the land , may a donkey copulate with him and a donkey with his wife, whoever it be that shall call any of them a servant.”

“The use of the term “free citizen” (rmT nmHj) in opposition to “servant” (bAk) requires a historical comment. The basic meaning of nmHj refers to the condition of the orphan or of the poor. In Middle Kingdom texts, the expression “the poor woman of the city” acquired the semantic connotation of “free woman” and became the feminine equivalent to “citizen”. From the beginning of the New Kingdom, nmHj could also be used to describe people who received from the administration an allotment of land, often as recompense for military service, which in practice became their property. These landholders formed a new social group: “May he (the king) prompt the officials (srjw) to remain in possession of (their) properties and the citizens (nmHjw) to stay in their towns”. Their property, however, risked to be confiscated by state representatives; this kind of abuse is treated in the decree released by king Horemheb in the aftermath of the so-called Amarna Period.

“Another way in which a slave could become free was to be “purified” (swab), i.e., to enter temple service. The clearest formulation is found in the Restoration Stela of Tutankhamen: “His Majesty built the barks (of the gods) on the Nile in cedar wood of the best in Lebanon, of the most prized along the Asiatic coast, inlaid with gold from the finest of foreign lands, so that the Nile was illuminated. His Majesty purified slaves, men and women, singers and dancing girls who previously had been slave girls assigned to the work of grinding in the royal palace. They were rewarded for the work done for the royal palace and for the treasure of the lord of the Two Lands. I declared them freed from slavery and reserved for the service of the fathers, all the gods, wishing to satisfy them by doing that which their Ka desires, because they protect Egypt.” While the king maintained nominal property over slaves until Dynasty 18, Ramesside Egypt witnessed the development of private ownership of slaves, who could now be bought and sold. Papyrus Cairo 65739, for example, describes a long legal dispute between a soldier and a woman concerning the ownership of two Syrian slaves. Slaves were now provided some legal protection and owned property: Papyrus Wilbour, which dates to the time of Ramesses V, is the most important Pharaonic register of land assessment and refers more than once to slaves among the owners of the land being assessed.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024