The Institution of Slavery in Ancient Anatolia in the Light of New Documents

Abstract

The oldest written documents of Anatolia, the so-called Kültepe tablets, which at present number more than 20.000, mostly deal with commercial subjects. Neverthless these documents also give information on political, social, legal and geographical facts of that area and period (ca. 19th century B.C.), a few of them directly but most indirectly. Some documents provide us with at times detailed information on slavery and slave sales during that age. After earlier studies of single documents, recently these texts were studied and evaluated as a group and analysed statistically by Hecker and in particular by Kienast. Still later Sever studied 8 new documents dealing with slaves. In this contribution we publish 13 new documents in copy, transliteration, translation and with commentary. In addition we draw on 10 more documents as far as they relate to our subject. Evaluating the information of the previous publications, we pay special attention to new or interesting data contained in our texts.