Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

104 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
The number of persons engaged in work for private parties is extremely
difficult to estimate, because so few private documents from this period have
survived. 80
Waetzoldt gives us a vision of what it meant to live in a society dominated by a
powerful and prosperous state; Israel/Judah rarely achieved what would be a
“prosperous” state, even though at times they imitated the great institutions of
their neighbors. So, perhaps one can apply these words at a smaller scale.
STATE LABORERS
By “state laborers” is meant personnel ascribed to the palace or to enterprises
under the king’s control, such as mining, agricultural endeavors, either for the
crown or leasing crown lands, building projects which were too large to be
privately undertaken (such as the Nineveh palace, roads, perhaps even temples
or canal digging), and in general in the everyday tasks of the palace household. 81
Main modes of incorporation of state slaves are conquest (intrusive mode in
Patterson’s terms, see above), and indebtedness to the state through tax evasion
or theft, and perhaps loans for agricultural emergencies (extrusive mode), while
biological reproduction kept the number of slaves more or less constant. This
seems to have applied to the whole area, regardless of who were the winners or
losers. Moshe Elat affirms it was so in Assyria throughout the empires, even if
the king did not go himself to battle. 82
Bakir finds in Egypt “a fundamental rule that the captured become in the
first place human chattels of the king,” 83 who assigns them to temples, private
individuals, or palace activities, according to needs.
No distinction seems to have been made between those who had been slaves
and those who had been freemen in their own countries. This is clear from:
(1) “[List of booty brought from this place] as an entire army: princes, 3; their
wives, 30; men seized, 80; male and female slaves ... and their children, 606”
80
Cf. Hartmut Waetzoldt, “Compensation of Craft Workers and Officials in the Ur III Period,” in
Labor in the Ancient Near East (ed. Marvin Powell; AOS 68; New Haven: American Oriental
Society, 1987), 117.
81
Mendelsohn, Slavery in the ANE, 92 starts his section on state slavery speaking about the fate of
prisoners at Akkad: “It was these enslaved war prisoners who, with the assistance of corvee gangs
and hired free laborers, constructed roads, dug canals, erected fortresses, built temples, tilled the
crown lands, and worked in the royal factories connected with the palace. They labored under the
supervision of overseers and were housed in special barracks; and their names, ages, and land of
origin were duly recorded in slave registers. Among the tasks assigned to these inmates were
activities in the weaving, brewing, and general work departments of the palace…”; 93–95 (Assyrian,
Babylonian and Egyptian slavery), 95–99 (Israelite).
82
Elat, “Impact of Tribute and Booty,” 244, 249 n.6.
83
Bakir, Slavery in Pharaonic Egypt, 109.