Prisoners of War in Ancient Mesopotamia
Select exerts from the book 'From Sumer to Rome: The Military Capabilities of Ancient Armies'
By I. J. Gelb
In this article one must keep in mind the important difference between the act
of taking prisoners and their ultimate disposition, enslavement of freedom, full
or relative.
This [in some cases] was accomplished by settling POWs on land, placing them in temple households, utilizing them as king’s bodyguard, mercenaries, and a movable soldier/worker force, and. Above all, by freeing them and changing their status from unfree to semifree. With the ensuing alleviation of conditions, the POWs, while still remaining under the control of the state or temple, were given the opportunity at least partially to work for themselves and their families and guide their own destinies.
The new situation reflected in the terminology for POWs, as in the old term sag “slave” and arád “slave,’ used for the POWs immediately after their capture, being largely replaced by new terms, such as erin “worker/soldier” and guruš “man,” used for them after their final disposition. Also the fact that the term LÚ + KÁR, used in the royal inscriptions for roped POWs immediately after their capture, is never attested in administrative texts indicates not only a change in terminology, but also a change in treatment.
Full slavery based on POW labor was unfeasible and unpractical in the productive effort of early Mesopotamia.
It is interesting to note that even in New Assyrian period, at the height of Assyrian military power, captured populations were not enslaved, but deported and resettled throughout the empire. Also the fact that slave rebellions are not attested for ancient Mesopotamia speaks against the widespread application of slavery in that country, or for that matter anywhere else in the ancient Near East, as well as India and China, by contrast, e.g., with classical Greece and Rome, where the existence of masses of slave labor led to frequent rebellions, sometimes on a catastrophic scale.
Source: I. J. Gelb,
Prisoners of War in Early Mesopotamia,
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Apr., 1973), pp.
70-98 . Published by:
The University of Chicago Press.
