Nicholas Reid

This article traces corporal and collective punishment in relation to the labour control of slaves and other dependent persons during the Ur III period (c.2100–2000 BCE). Slaves and other dependent persons often worked in related contexts with some overlap in treatment. Persons of different statuses could be detained and forced to work. Persons of various statuses also received rations and other benefits, but the evidence suggests that the most extreme forms of corporal punishment were reserved for slaves. This article, however, contextualizes these threats of mutilation and the death penalty, demonstrating that such punishments should be considered the exception and not the norm.

Two tablets from the the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University contain excerpts of literary texts celebrating Šulgi: an excerpt of the praise poem Šulgi A, with two previously unknown lines, and a manuscript from a new hymn to Šulgi, paralleling Ni 13227.

This article traces corporal and collective punishment in relation to the labour control of slaves and other dependent persons during the Ur III period (c.2100–2000 BCE). Slaves and other dependent persons often worked in related contexts with some overlap in treatment. Persons of different statuses could be detained and forced to work. Persons of various statuses also received rations and other benefits, but the evidence suggests that the most extreme forms of corporal punishment were reserved for slaves. This article, however, contextualizes these threats of mutilation and the death penalty, demonstrating that such punishments should be considered the exception and not the norm.

Reid, J. (2023). Punishment for the Coercion of Labour during the Ur III Period. International Review of Social History, First View, 1-18.

Chapter in Punitive Perspectives on Labour Management, IRSH Special Edition.

In recent years, the study of slavery has taken greater interest in the status of children. This article attempts to understand how the social status of the children of slaves was considered in early Mesopotamia by primarily considering laws and inscriptions. Like most slavery studies, much of the information we possess about slaves and slavery in the ancient Near East comes to us through the elites. This study seeks to utilize the textual material to gain insight into life at the bottom. The perspectives offered highlight potential ways in which people could experience downward social movement as well as the more restricted means of upward mobility, exposing not only the vulnerability of the children of slaves but also the vulnerability of the women who bore them.

Ces dernières années, les recherches sur l’esclavage se sont de plus en plus intéressées au statut des enfants. Cet article tente de comprendre ce qui constituait le statut social des enfants d’esclaves dans l’ancienne Mésopotamie, essentiellement grâce aux lois et inscriptions. Comme pour la plupart des études sur l’esclavage, la majorité des informations dont nous disposons sur les esclaves dans l’Orient Ancien nous vient des élites. Cette étude cherche à tirer parti du matériel textuel pour percevoir ce qu’était la vie des plus basses classes de la société. Les perspectives ainsi offertes soulignent les risques pour le peuple de connaître une mobilité sociale descendante, de même que les possibilités ascendantes plus limitées, mettant au jour non seulement la vulnérabilité sociale des enfants d’esclaves, mais aussi celle des femmes qui les mettaient au monde.

While the terms prison and prisoner are frequently used in translations and studies based on the texts from early Mesopotamia (ca. 3200–1595 B.C., according to Middle Chronology), 1 the contextual evidence relating to these terms has not been assembled and organized to determine the nature of the so-called prisons of the period, together with any points of continuity and discontinuity with the modern terminology. When done, it may be concluded that prisons in early Mesopotamia do not share a one-to-one correspondence with the various manifestations of prisons in the modern Western world. Although prisons in early Mesopotamia functioned in broader ways than modern examples, I argue that significant functional overlap also exists. These similarities directly relate to theoretical and definitional criteria employed in historical discussions about prisons, demonstrating that the Mesopotamian evidence belongs in a world history of prisons.

The damgar accounts of the Third Dynasty of Ur have been the subject of much debate, resulting in very different reconstructions of social and economic realities. One important aspect of these discussions involves the basic meaning of native terminology with such divergence of opinion that it is even debated whether these accounts show that the merchants, also translated trade-agents, typically operated with a deficit or a surplus. In this article, I edit one such account dealing with Pada, among the best-known merchants from the period, together with the rest of the cuneiform collection housed at the University of Mississippi Museum.

The study of flight provides insight into life at the bottom of society during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100-2000 BCE). Examples of individual rebellion and its consequences display the perspectives of members of non-elite and elite, advancing Adams’s conclusion (2010, §6.1) that the boundaries between slaves and other lower stratum individuals were fluid and poorly defined. This study also references the earliest known attestation of the concept of reform through detainment.

In 2008, Joseph C. Miller published the chapter, “Slaving as historical process: examples from the ancient Mediterranean and the modern Atlantic.”  Miller desired to understand the historical process of slaving and “how and why certain people recurrently resorted to this strategy from time to time and in place after place throughout human history.”  For Miller, the so-called historical problem of slaving entailed understanding the enslavers and those who were enslaved, as well as the related contexts and goals in which slaving occurred. In the process, Miller criticized the famous definitional approach of Orlando Patterson, who described slavery as “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.”  For Miller, this approach reduced slaves to making an historical difference only “in rebellion, preferably violent, mass revolt, that is no longer as ‘slaves’ but rather in asserting themselves outside their would-be masters’ assumed control.”  Miller states, “Historians instead might better identify and appropriate for their analytical purposes the vitality that slaves, ineluctably human beings, possessed.”  By so doing, Miller was considering not only the identity of slaves as defined strictly by their relationship to their masters but also the humanity of enslaved persons who formed social relationships and possessed identities as human beings. 
Drawing inspiration from Miller’s approach and more recently Kostas Vlassopolous, who cited this same quote as inspiration for considering the identities of slaves for the classical world, this lecture will argue for the validity of studying imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia as an historical process. Questions such as who imprisoned, who was imprisoned, to what end, and in what contexts will be discussed to understand the historical process of imprisoning. Like slaving, imprisonment took a variety of forms and has been something that has recurred throughout human history. This lecture will seek to demonstrate how the earliest historical records relating to imprisoning can be elucidated by considering the forms and functions of early imprisonment and will seek to show the importance of considering personhood in the study of imprisonment. Since time is limited, I will focus primarily on the identities of prisoners and offer some thoughts on how the reasons behind imprisonment can provide basic, albeit imperfect, predictor of treatment. The more specific and narrow application of this methodological tool for the study of imprisonment in particular contexts is for future study.

Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia explores the earliest historical evidence related to imprisonment in the history of the world. While many historical investigations into prisons have revolved around the important question of punishment, this work moves beyond that more narrow approach to consider the multifunctional practices of detaining the body in ancient Iraq. It is the contention of this book that imprisonment arose out of the desire to control and detain the body in relation to labor. The practice of detainment for coercion became adaptable to a variety of circumstances and goals, which shaped the contexts and practices of imprisonment. With time, religious ideology was attached to imprisonment. In one literary text, a prisoner was refined like silver and given new birth in the prison. The misery of imprisonment gave rise to lament through which a criminal could be ritually purified and restored to a right relationship with their personal god. Beyond this literary perspective, this work reconstructs how imprisonment and religious ideology intersected with the judicial process and explores the evidence related to the reasons behind imprisonment, the treatment of prisoners, and the evidence related to the lengths of their stays.