PDF

Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies
Dependency and
Slavery Studies
Edited by
Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann
Volume 1
Slavery and Other
Forms of Strong
Asymmetrical
Dependencies
Semantics and Lexical Fields
Edited by
Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann
Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) im Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie
des Bundes und der Länder – Exzellenzcluster Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
(BCDSS) EXC 2036/1-2020, Projektnummer: 390683433
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under

Germany’s Excellence Strategy – Cluster of Excellence Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery
Studies (BCDSS) EXC 2036/1-2020, Project No.: 390683433
ISBN 978-3-11-078691-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-078698-9
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-078704-7
ISSN 2701-1127
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989
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Contents
Stephan Conermann
Introduction: The Semantics of Slavery and Other Forms of Strong
Asymmetrical Dependency in Comparison 1
Susanne Adamski
Indefinite Terms? Social Groups in Early Ancient China (ca. 1300–771 BC)
and “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency” 11
Ludwig D. Morenz
Tax Coercion as a Real and Metaphorical YOKE: On the Earliest State
Administrative Practices Reflected in Ancient Egyptian Writing and Images
Around 3000 BC 73
Winfried Schmitz
Dependent Rural Populations in Archaic and Classical Greece: Free, Slave,
or Between Free and Slave? 99
Martin Schermaier
Familia and Dependency in Roman Law Texts 127
Christian M. Prager
Visualizations and Expressions of Dependencies in Classic Maya Narratives:
A Semiotic Approach 151
Anna Kollatz
How to Approach Emic Semantics of Dependency in Islamic Legal Texts:
Reflections on the Ḥanafī Legal Commentary al-Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya
al-mubtadī and its British-Colonial Translation 179
Veruschka Wagner
Modes of Manumission: What Terms Used for Emancipation Tell Us about
Dependencies in Ottoman Society 205
Hans-Heinrich Nolte
Terms for Dependent People in Rural Russia in Early Modern Records 225
Contributors 253
Index 255
Stephan Conermann
Introduction: The Semantics of Slavery
and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical
Dependency in Comparison
The Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS)1 explores slavery and
other types of strong asymmetrical dependencies from five different thematic and
methodological vantage points. The first of these five research areas aims at estab-
lishing a new language of analysis.2 In other words, an important condition for our
ambitious undertaking is questioning our own analytical vocabulary. We need to
reconsider the key concepts, terminologies and categories that structure the way we
think and speak about asymmetrical dependencies. The goal of the first research
area is thus the exploration of the semantics, lexical fields and narratives used by
historical actors themselves in organizing their world and talking about asymmetri-
cal dependencies.
Part of the working program of the BCDSS are its “thematic years.” Apart from
the first and the last year of the funding period of the Cluster of Excellence, each of
the other five years highlights the central topic of one of the five research areas.
Thus, in addition to our on-going work in individual and collaborative projects, we
 www.dependency.uni-bonn.de.
 The second research area (Embodied Dependencies) examines primarily non-textual relics of
asymmetrical dependencies, which have been “inscribed” in bodies and artefacts. The aim of this
research area is to correct the widespread imbalance in academic evaluations of written and non-
written traditions by including the perspectives of pre-colonial cultures, and to establish archaeology,
art history, and object-based anthropology on an equal level with those disciplines of the humanities
that focus on textual sources. In this way, we give “voice” to actors operating in non-textual environ-
ments. The third research area (Institutions, Norms, and Practices) studies forms of asymmetrical
dependency produced at the crossroads of conflicting institutions, norms, and practices. Their
interaction must be conceived of as a two-way movement: top-down, i.e., from institutions to
practices (for example, when institutions create norms that are – or are not – implemented into
practices), and from below (for instance, when practices produce norms and these become “institu-
tionalized”). The fourth area (Labor and Spatiality) focuses on labor-related asymmetrical dependen-
cies and mobility. Instead of starting with the Industrial Revolution, and thus adopting European free
wage labor as the standard labor relation of modernity, all forms of labor have to be taken into ac-
count in equal measure. Against this backdrop, the dialectics between spatial mobilization and im-
mobilization of the dependents have also to be studied. The fifth research area (Gender [and
Intersectionality]) addresses asymmetrical dependencies specifically at the intersections of gender,
status, class, ethnicity, religion, and age. Originally developed by scholars from the field of gender
studies, intersectionality has since been productively applied to various forms of social hierarchiza-
tion, discrimination, discreditation and stigmatization. Intersectionality does not merely necessitate a
rethinking of personal identities, but rather allows for an overarching analysis of the asymmetrical
dependencies present within identities.
Open Access. © 2022 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-001
2 Stephan Conermann
seek to share our research with the global scientific community with a special focus
on the research area at the center of the current thematic year. We organize themed
international workshops and an annual international conference. By focusing on
the topic of one research area per year, we create an intellectually intense and in-
spiring environment that boosts research. We invite eminent scholars in the field of
Slavery and Dependency Studies from around the world so that they can discuss,
debate and collaborate with each other, with us and with our Fellows. The Fellows
who join us for the thematic years in our Institute of Advanced Study, the Heinz
Heinen-Kolleg, are consequently chosen with matching thematic foci. In this way,
we make sure to pick Fellows who complement our research by filling our thematic
gaps.
The first thematic year of the BCDSS started in October 2019. The first workshop,
“Semantics and Lexical Fields of Slavery and Other Forms of Asymmetrical Dependen-
cies,” whose results are published in the present volume, took place from March 5–6,
2020, ten days before the first Covid lockdown in Germany started. Due to the pan-
demic, that year’s annual conference, “Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetri-
cal Dependencies: Semantics, Lexical Fields and Narratives” (October 1–2, 2020) had
to take place virtually. The thematic year was wrapped up with the workshop on “Nar-
ratives of Dependency” (July 15–16, 2021), organized by Elke Brüggen and Marion
Gymnich, which had been postponed due to the pandemic.3
The humanities in Germany can look back on a long tradition as far as the study
of semantics and lexical fields are concerned. This tradition is associated first and
foremost with the (linked) fields of the history of concepts (“Begriffsgeschichte”) and
historical semantics (“Historische Semantik”) as well as with a number of excellent
long-term projects. The Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, which was initiated by Erich
Rothacker in 1955, developed over the course of time into an internationally re-
nowned journal for research on the history of concepts.4 It complements in many re-
spects the multi-volume Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (HWPh, Historical
Dictionary of Philosophy), which was completed in 2007.5 The eight-volume Ge-
schichtliche Grundbegriffe edited by the historians Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and
Reinhart Koselleck from 1972 to 1997 constitute the most important handbook on the
history of concepts.6 This work is a historical lexicon of political and social language
used in Germany since 1700. The Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie
(HmT, Dictionary of Musical Terminology), which was published as a loose-leaf col-
lection between 1971 and 2006, provides an important overview of the origin, history
 The proceedings of the other two workshops will also be published in 2022.
 https://meiner.de/zeitschriften-ejournals/afb.html [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabrie, eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philos-
ophie, 13 vols., 1971–2007 (Basel: Schwabe, 2007) (CD-ROM).
 Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Histori-
sches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004).
Introduction 3
and meaning of musical terms.7 Probably the most important German-language ency-
clopedia on scientific rhetoric is the twelve-volume Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhet-
orik (Historical Dictionary of Rhetoric, editor: Gert Ueding), completed in 2015.8 The
Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (HKWM, Historical-Critical Dictionary
of Marxism), planned to be published in fifteen volumes, is a major international Ger-
man-language encyclopedia covering over 1,500 historical terms connected with
Marxism.9 Intense collaborative work resulted in a seven-volume historical dictionary
of the key concepts of aesthetics, Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, published between 2000
and 2005.10 It is against this background that Ernst Müller and Falko Schmieder,
both of Humboldt University in Berlin, produced a comprehensive overview of the
major currents and developments of the field of conceptual history and historical se-
mantics.11 At first glance, their chronological overview of various disciplines looks
like a very simple approach. They trace the development of conceptual history and
historical semantics in philosophy from Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Ludwig
Feuerbach and Karl Marx by way of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger to
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. For historiography, they discuss Max
Weber and Karl Mannheim, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and of course Reinhart Ko-
selleck. Their description of discourse in linguistics and communication studies
touches not only on classical onomasiology and structuralism, but also Dietrich Bus-
se’s prototype semantics and theory of linguistic structure. In the history of science
and knowledge, the survey ranges from Max Horkheimer and Thomas Kuhn to Hans-
Jörg Rheinberger, and in cultural studies from psychoanalytic signification studies
(Sigmund Freud, Hans Sperber, Adolf Josef Storfer), via Edgar Wind’s concept of em-
bodiment and discourse analysis to the semantics of unavailability (Heinz Dieter Kitt-
steiner) and metaphorology. While such an approach makes it impossible to eschew
overlaps and duplications, Müller and Schmieder succeed very well in showing the
numerous interconnections between individual theoretical approaches, and in writ-
ing a coherent history of this (very German) field of scholarship. The exploration of
conceptual histories and semantic analyses of historical texts reveals the linguistic
configuration of the world, and, as a result, the world views of actors in social orders.
Understanding culture as a comprehensive practice of articulating and of updating
 Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht and Albrecht Riethmüller, eds., Handwörterbuch der musikalischen
Terminologie (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971–2006) (CD-ROM).
 Gregor Kalivoda, Franz-Hubert Robling, and Gerd Ueding, eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der
Rhetorik, vols. 1–9 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992–2009), vol. 10: Nachträge A–Z (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2012), vol. 11: Register (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), vol. 12: Bibliographie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).
 http://inkrit.de/neuinkrit/index.php/de/hkwm [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Karlheinz Barck, ed., Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000).
 Ernst Müller and Falko Schmieder, Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik: Ein kritisches
Kompendium (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016).
4 Stephan Conermann
significations can, according to Müller and Schmieder, lead to the equation of con-
ceptual history and historical semantics with cultural sciences. The authors go on to
argue that both represent the self-reflection inscribed in modernity and could, as
such, function as alternatives to common meta-narratives. In their introduction, the
authors provide some useful definitions. “Historical semantics” could be understood
as “the umbrella term for methodological approaches that, like the history of ideas,
or conceptual history in its broadest sense, address diachronic linguistic changes,
whether from an onomasiological or a semasiological perspective.”12 As such, they
argue that historical semantics equates to the linguistic component of cultural se-
mantics and is thus always in and of itself already an abstraction, because language
was always inseparably integrated into social relationships and practices, figurative
ideas, and media. Following Willibald Steinmetz, they hold that “conceptual history”
should be understood as “the investigation of ‘nodal points in the diachronic change
of the meaning of individual words’, of socially highly effective, often controversial
crystallizations of linguistic meanings.”13 Accordingly, historical semantics is, in a
manner of speaking, the context of conceptual history, while conceptual history
stands for only one of many ways in which historical semantics may be pursued.
The compendium by Müller and Schmieder offers an excellent starting point for
our research in Research Area A of the BCDSS, and specifically for grasping the con-
cepts “semantics” and “lexical fields.” A productive process of discussing different
approaches has led to the following definitions:
(1) Semantics. Our approach to the semantics of the many different (predominantly
pre-modern) languages we are interested in focuses on the word, i.e., the lexical
dimension, as well as on pragmatics, in so far as meaning often turns out to be de-
pendent on the contexts in which a word is used. In addition to the linguistic con-
text, the genre/text type and wider cultural contexts may turn out to be relevant as
well. We aim at identifying inventories of linguistic items (and their usage) that are
pertinent to our topic at a particular time and in a specific historical (con)text. Most
of us will first adopt a synchronic approach and focus on a single text or a small set
of texts. These case studies will of course not be able to provide a comprehensive
account of the semantics of slavery and asymmetrical dependencies, but they will
allow us to compare different ways of conceptualizing asymmetrical dependencies
linguistically, which may or may not turn out to be specific to particular regions or
points in time. An analysis of diachronic semantic changes, which amounts to a
 Müller and Schmieder, Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik: 18: “[D]er Oberbegriff für
methodische Ansätze, die sich wie Problem-, Ideen- oder Begriffsgeschichte im weitesten Sinne mit
diachronen sprachlichen Veränderungen, sei es in onomasiologischer oder semasiologischer Per-
spektive, beschäftigen.”
 Müller and Schmieder, Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik: 18: “[D]ie Untersuchung
von ‘Knotenpunkte(n) im diachronen Bedeutungswandel einzelner Worte’, von gesellschaftlich
hochwirksamen, nicht selten umstrittenen Kristallisationen sprachlicher Bedeutungen.”
Introduction 5
history of the terms pertinent to our topic, would of course be very interesting, but
for most of the subjects in our Cluster of Excellence a diachronic perspective can
hardly be a short- or medium-term goal, since the prerequisites for such an ap-
proach are simply not there. For instance, there simply is not a sufficient number of
edited texts that are relevant to our topic for many regions and/or periods. Our ap-
proach is based on the assumption that the meaning of a word can only be identi-
fied by taking its usage into consideration. Detailed analyses of key terms that are
associated with the conceptualization of strong asymmetrical dependencies prom-
ise to provide new insights into the self-concept and knowledge of pre-modern soci-
eties. The majority of these key terms have not been studied from a semantic or
terminological perspective so far.
(2) Lexical Fields. Our understanding of lexical fields is based on an onomasiologi-

cal approach – which linguistic items are used to refer to a particular concept?
Which words are used to express a concept? This means that the concept is a se-
mantic unit which is not directly accessible but may be manifested in different
ways on a linguistic level. We are interested in single concepts such as “wisdom” or
“fear,” but also in more complex semantic units like “strong asymmetrical depen-
dencies.” We consider concepts to be abstract units that are manifested in a partic-
ular language. At the same time, we are aware that direct translations of concepts
and individual words or other linguistic structures are not necessarily possible. In
some cases, we can identify anthropological constants, which suggest that there
are at least some universal concepts, i.e. concepts that can be expressed in all of
the languages we examine. What provides deeper insights into the specific societies
we are interested in is an analysis of the concrete expressions of concepts, which
may look similar, but usually are not identical for people in different cultural con-
texts and language communities. A lexical field encompasses the set of linguistic
items in one language that can be linked to a particular concept (e.g., “wisdom”)
and the related conceptual network due to semantic relations. In comparative stud-
ies, which seek to examine different cultural contexts, the concept of lexical fields
promises to be enormously useful, since it is a tool that helps us to reveal differen-
ces in terms of usage associated with otherwise similar concepts. Thus, it seems rea-
sonable to compare specific conceptual networks and their lexical manifestations
in different languages as well as in different diachronic stages of the development
of a society and a language. Generally, in each language (or diachronic stage), key
terms emerge. The usage of these key terms should be analyzed in terms of its rela-
tions to linguistic items that can be shown to be syntagmatically and paradigmati-
cally linked to the key term (synonymy and opposition).
As was shown above, there is vibrant research on the history of concepts and on
questions of Historical Semantics by German academics (in German). It has, however,
barely been acknowledged internationally. An interesting initiative to institutionalize
at least the history of concepts beyond the specific German context emerged in
6 Stephan Conermann
Finland.14 Jointly with his American colleague Malvin Richter (City University, NY),
Kari Palonen from the University of Jyväskylä organized a workshop on “Conceptual
Changes in European Political Cultures” at the Finnish Institute in London in 1998. In
the wake of this conference the History of Political and Social Concepts Group was es-
tablished, which changed its name to History of Concept Group in 2012. This Group is
incorporated as a non-profit entity in Finland, and is affiliated with the Center for
Intellectual History at Helsinki University. At the moment, the board consist of four
persons: Martin J. Burke (City University of New York), Chair; Margrit Pernau (Max
Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin), Vice-Chair; Rosario López (Univer-
sity of Malaga), Secretary; Jani Marjanen (Helsinki University), Treasurer.15
Our conference can likewise be seen as an initiative that seeks to move termino-
logical issues and concepts from Historical Semantics beyond a limited focus on Eu-
ropean contexts. It is a first, exploratory attempt to broaden the discussion by
integrating sources in Chinese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Maya
into our research. An interdisciplinary dialogue across languages, cultures and times
promises to yield innovative methodological impulses for the field of Historical Se-
mantics. Semantic and sociolinguistic approaches that have thus far been designed
and discussed mainly for the investigation of European languages can be brought
into a productive dialogue with models predominantly used in disciplines with a
focus on non-European societies.
In her contribution, Susanne Adamski explores the question of whether the earli-
est societies of ancient China (the late Shāng, c. 1300–1045 BC, and the Western
Zhōu, c. 1045–771 BC) had social relations characterized by strong asymmetrical de-
pendency. Starting from the premise that these two societies differed significantly in
some respects from later societies of the Chinese empire, Adamski first addresses the
problem of calling these early societies “slave societies” in contemporary scholarship,
a term often used for ancient China. Through an analysis of ancient inscriptions,
Adamski then examines whether there were indeed forms of “strong asymmetrical
dependency” in the late Shāng and Western Zhou. In doing so, Adamski concludes
that the inscriptions do not provide sufficient semantic evidence to define relation-
ships of “strong asymmetric dependency.” She therefore suggests a shift of focus
from examining pure terminology to analyzing social phenomena in more detail in
order to approach the concept of “asymmetrical dependency.”
Ludwig D. Morenz analyzes the culture of Pharaonic Egypt in its formative
phase during the late fourth and early third millennia BC in his paper. He explores
the probably almost universal phenomenon of “subjugation,” of bringing someone
under the yoke, both as a metaphor and as a social practice. According to Morenz,
 https://www.historyofconcepts.net [accessed 17.05.2022].

 https://www.historyofconcepts.net/the-history-of-concepts-group/meet-the-board [accessed
17.05.2022].
Introduction 7
“subjugation” denotes radical subjection in connection with high levels of social

control. Certain social patterns, stronger asymmetrical dependencies and the ori-
gins of the imagery they reflect in spatially and temporally distant linguistic and
written worlds seem to emerge frequently from lexical fields that have certain as-
pects in common, even in the absence of concrete historical connections.
Winfried Schmitz discusses the semantics of various asymmetrical forms of de-
pendency regarding the rural population in archaic and classical Greece. For this
purpose, he examines the twelfth book of the Geographica by the ancient geogra-
pher Strabo (circa 64 BC–19 AD), which reports on the kingdom of Pontus on the
Black Sea and contains an account of the Mariandyni, who were forced into bond-
age by the Milesians, who had founded the city of Heracleia in the territory of the
Mariandyni. The status of the Mariandyni is described by Strabo with the term heilō-
teúein, a form of dependency similar to that of the helots in Sparta: The Mariandyni
could be sold, but only within the limits of their former territory, so that many
would remain in their villages as tribute payers and serfs. The analysis of the termi-
nology used by Strabo to describe these dependency relationships reveals a differ-
entiated understanding of different forms of strong asymmetrical dependency,
which move between the poles of “slave” and “free.”
Martin Schermaier’s contribution focuses on the historical origins and develop-
ment of the semantics of Latin terms describing dependency relationships in an-
cient Roman society. Schermaier analyzes the term familia, whose meanings he
examines on the basis of Roman legal texts. Through a contextual analysis, Scher-
maier shows the semantic developments undergone by the term, developments that
also point to a conceptual change of slavery during the Roman republican period.
According to Schermaier, the variations of public attention paid to dependency re-
lationships in the private sphere also point to a close connection between the legal
status of slaves and social and political changes of the time.
Christian M. Prager’s paper discusses the representation of asymmetrical depen-
dency relations in Classic Maya narratives. The many small hegemonic Maya states
spanning the territory of the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, and Honduras in the Classic period (AD 240–950) were characterized by
strictly hierarchized social orders. At the top of these societies stood the rulers and
their families, courtiers and priests who inhabited the monumental palaces in the
political centers of the city states. The rural population that inhabited the surround-
ing areas under their rule had to pay tributes to the ruling families in the form of
agricultural yields or of labor in the elites’ building projects. Using various inscrip-
tions that emerged in the course of the court culture, Prager analyzes expressions
and visualizations of these forms of dependency in Maya hieroglyphs.
In her contribution, Anna Kollatz explores the historical semantics of strong
asymmetrical dependencies in Islamicate societies on the Indian subcontinent. In
doing so, she elaborates on problematic areas that, on the one hand, complicate
the study of these societies living in the period between the decline of the Mughal
8 Stephan Conermann
Empire and Indian independence, and, on the other hand, affect the evaluation of
Islamic legal semantics in relation to strong asymmetric forms of dependency. To
this end, Kollatz examines the Book on Manumission from the Ḥanafī legal commen-
tary al-Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī, which is still considered one of the most
influential works of the Hanafite legal school. The focus of the analysis is the trans-
lation process that this text underwent: The Arabic original was first translated into
Persian and then into English under colonial occupation. By contrasting the Arabic
original and the English translation, the effects of translation on semantic attribu-
tions are examined.
Veruschka Wagner examines in her paper manumission documents from the Ot-
toman Empire. Since slavery relations under the Ottomans were always limited in
time, numerous copies of such manumission papers from the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries lie in the archives of Istanbul courts. By analyzing the terminology
used in them in connection with slavery and emancipation, Wagner shows different
stages and layers in the dependency relationships between (freed) slaves and own-
ers. She notes that, on the one hand, slaves were only ever dependent to a certain
degree and at a certain time, but on the other, they could never completely rid
themselves of their constantly changing status as dependents, since certain depen-
dencies remained even after manumission.
Hans-Heinrich Nolte’s article uses early modern records to examine terms used
for dependent people among the Russian rural population and their historical devel-
opment. In doing so, he finds that terms for dependent people, which in the fifteenth
century could describe quite different dependency relationships, were systematized
and standardized in the sixteenth century, when Russia was ruled by Moscow, and
later underwent yet another semantic change in the St. Petersburg Empire (from
1721). According to Nolte, these changes of terminology and their meanings are also
accompanied by a gradual systematization and degradation of dependent people in
the rural population.
Bibliography
Barck, Karlheinz, ed. Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000).
Brunner, Otto, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds. Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe:
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 2004).
Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich and Albrecht Riethmüller, eds. Handwörterbuch der musikalischen
Terminologie (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971–2006) [CD-ROM].
Introduction 9
Kalivoda, Gregor, Franz-Hubert Robling, and Gerd Ueding, eds. Historisches Wörterbuch der
Rhetorik, vols. 1–9 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992–2009), vol. 10, Nachträge A–Z (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2012), vol. 11, Register (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), vol. 12, Bibliographie (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2015).
Müller, Ernst and Falko Schmieder. Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik: Ein kritisches
Kompendium (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016).
Ritter, Joachim, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabrie, eds. Historisches Wörterbuch der
Philosophie, 13 vols. (Basel: Schwabe 1971–2007) [CD-ROM].
Susanne Adamski
Indefinite Terms? Social Groups in Early
Ancient China (ca. 1300–771 BC) and “Strong
Asymmetrical Dependency”
In this paper,1 I am going to explore the question whether social relations of “strong
asymmetrical dependency” can be identified during the earliest historical periods of
ancient China: the late Shāng 商 (ca. 1300–ca. 1045 BC) and Western Zhōu 西周 (ca.
1045–771 BC). Although many cultural, social, paleographic, and linguistic features
of later “China” originate in them, and important social and political processes begin-
ning under the Western Zhōu eventually led to the formation of the Chinese empire
in 221 BC, society in these periods differs to some extent from that of later periods. I
will therefore look for examples of “strong asymmetrical dependency” in epigraphic
sources, paying particular attention to designations of social groups. This entails, in
a first step, a re-evaluation of previous scholarship regarding the presumed existence
of “slaves” in early Chinese antiquity, because ancient China often has been regarded
as a so-called “slave society” in certain historical stages, thus problematizing the
usage of later social terminology for far earlier social phenomena.2 In a second step, I
am going to look at possible cases of “strong asymmetrical dependency” in ancient
inscribed texts: How can they be identified? And finally, I shall consider alternative
 I am very grateful to Maxim Korolkov for valuable comments on this paper that helped to im-
prove it, and to Chai Jianhong, John Gillingham, Matthias Richter, Anne Sapich, Christian Schwer-
mann, and Alain Thote for their helpfulness; I also express my thanks to Zhonghua Book Company
for permission to reproduce inscription rubbings. An earlier and narrower version of this paper was
presented under the title “On the Problem of Identifying ‘Slavery’ in Early Bronze Age China (ca.
1300‒771 BC)” at the international workshop “Cumulative Chinese Culture and the Study of Early
China,” July 6‒7, 2019, at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. I would like to thank all
the participants of that workshop for a stimulating discussion and helpful comments, and Armin
Selbitschka and Yitzchak Jaffe for their kind invitation. My further thanks go to the editors of this
volume for inviting me to the workshop “Semantics and Lexical Fields of Slavery and Other Forms
of Asymmetrical Dependency” at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS),
and to the workshop’s participants for their fruitful remarks. Any shortcomings are my own.
 In doing so, this paper follows the methods of conceptual history in a wider sense. This seems
justified by the words of Reinhart Koselleck, who underscores the intimate link between conceptual
and social history: “[W]elche Geschichte gäbe es, die nicht als solche begriffen werden müßte,
bevor sie zur Geschichte gerinnt? Die Begriffe und deren sprachliche Geschichte zu untersuchen
gehört so sehr zur Minimalbedingung, um Geschichte zu erkennen, wie deren Definition, es mit
menschlicher Gesellschaft zu tun zu haben.” Reinhart Koselleck, “Sozialgeschichte und Begriffsge-
schichte,” in Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politisch-sozialen Sprache,
auth. Reinhart Koselleck, Ulrike Spree, and Willibald Steinmetz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2006): 9.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-002
12 Susanne Adamski
approaches to the study of the relevant epigraphic sources with regard to social rela-
tions of dependency.
Indigenous sources, in particular from the late Shāng, are unearthed divination
inscriptions on oracle bones or turtle shells, as well as commemorative inscriptions
cast in or on bronze vessels, especially from the Western Zhōu.3 I will look at other
finds of manuscripts written on bamboo, wood or silk, with administrative, legal,
philosophical, religious or other content from the Eastern Zhōu 東周 (770–221 BC)
and early imperial periods (beginning 221 BC), with regard to extant analyses and
research. I argue that “strong asymmetrical dependency” cannot be proved within
the early Chinese epigraphic record that has been discovered and published so far.
My aim is not criticism, but fruitful discussion.
1 “Slavery” in Scholarship on Early Chinese

Epigraphy
1.1 State of Research
Both transmitted and excavated texts of late pre- and early imperial China reveal in-
formation on the lowest social strata. For example, some legal statutes from the first
imperial dynasty Qín 秦 (221–206 BC) relate to “convicts” and “slaves.”4 However,
epigraphic texts of the earlier Shāng and Western Zhōu dynasties (ca. 1300–771 BC)
are largely non-descriptive of these social groups. In fact, we need to question the
degree to which they are mentioned at all.
During the twentieth century, modern historians influenced by Marxist-Leninist
stage theory tried to prove that ancient Chinese society was slave-based.5 Most
 Although transmitted textual sources in some instances date back to the Western Zhōu period,
such as parts of the classic “Book of Songs” (Shī jīng 詩經), a collection of early poetry, or of the
collected royal speeches, dialogues and announcements in the “Book of Documents” (Shū jīng 書經
or Shàng shū 尚書), about half of which are considered forgeries (cf. Edward Shaughnessy, “Shang
shu 尚書 (Shu ching 書經),” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe [Ber-
keley: The Society for the Study of Early China, 1993]: 376–89), these works were edited during the
far later Hàn 漢 dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). Since changes may have been made to the structure and
wording of these texts, their information should not be unthinkingly mixed with that of the indige-
nous Shāng and Western Zhōu textual sources.
 See, for instance, Robin D.S. Yates, “Slavery in Early China: A Socio-Cultural Approach,” Journal
of East Asian Archaeology 3, no. 1‒2 (2001): 283–331.
 Adherents to historical materialism as developed by Karl Marx identify an initial stage of “primi-
tive society” also in ancient China, followed by a “slave society,” “feudal society,” and further
stages in social development. Endymion Wilkinson remarks that there is, however, no consensus
on the timing of the transitional phases: “[T]he transition to slave society [. . .] varies according to
Indefinite Terms? Social Groups in Early Ancient China 13
influential in this respect was Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (1892–1978), who in his Study of
Ancient Chinese Society (Zhōngguó gǔdài shèhuì yánjiū 中國古代社會研究) from
1930 cited several Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions mentioning people given as a
“gift” and people being “sold” or put under the authority of others. Without much
further analysis, he concluded that these people were “slaves.”6 In the late West-
ern Zhōu Bù Qí guǐ 不其簋 inscription (Jíchéng #4328)7 for instance, chén 臣 are
given to the official Bù Qí, along with other items, for his merits in battle: “(I) be-
stow on you a bow, a bundle of arrows, five families of chén, (and) ten fields.” 賜
汝弓一矢束臣五家田十田.8 Epigraphic terms designating apparently “unfree” peo-
ple mainly are: chén 臣, pú 僕, yù 馭, rénlì 人鬲, qiè 妾, shùrén 庶人, or zhòng 眾,
most of which already occur in late Shāng oracle-bone inscriptions. Some of these
have also been lexicalized as denoting “slaves.” During the past decades, scholars
with a focus on Shāng and Western Zhōu social stratification have either con-
firmed this view, understanding some or all of these terms as referring to “slaves,”
for instance Yīn Wéirén 殷伟仁 1983 and Yīn Jìmíng 殷寄明 1990;9 some generally
argued for the existence of an ancient slave society (such as Dǒng Lìzhāng 董立章
the historian from different periods of the Longshan culture (third millennium BC), the Xia, or the
Shang dynasties. The end of slave and the beginning of feudal society [. . .] are variously placed in
the Western Zhou, the Spring and Autumn, the Warring States, the Qin unification, the Later Han,
or the Wei-Jin periods.” Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual. Revised and Enlarged,
Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 52 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,
2000): 8. For a summary and discussion of different related theories in China since the 1980s, see
Guō Shànbīng 郭善兵, “Èrshí shìjì bāshí niándài yǐlái dàlù xuéjiè xiān Qín shèhuì xìngzhì wèntí
yánjiū shùpíng 二十世紀八十年代以來大陸學界先秦社會性質問題研究述評,” Zhōngguó shǐ yánjiū
中國史硏究 73 (2011): 283–302.
 “Zhōu period slaves really were an important kind of property!” 周代的奴隸, 正是一種主要的財
產! Guō Mòruò 郭沫若, Zhōngguó gǔdài shèhuì yánjiū 中國古代社會研究 (n.p.: n.p., 1930; Reprint,
n.p.: Rénmín Chūbǎnshè 人民出版社, 1954): 229.
 Bronze inscriptions within the text are cited, unless otherwise indicated, with their number in
the standard reference work Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng 殷周金文集成, abbreviated Jíchéng (Shànghǎi
上海: Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中华书局, 1984–1994).
 Example taken from line nine of the inscription. Punctuated transcription from the concordance
Jīnwén yǐndé 金文引得: Yīn Shāng Xī Zhōu juàn 殷商西周卷 (Nánníng 南宁: Guǎngxī Jiàoyù Chū-
bǎnshè 广西教育出版社, 2001): no. 5054, 326; cf. transcription and rubbing in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jí-
chéng shìwén 殷周金文集成释文, vol. 3 (Hong Kong: Xiānggǎng Zhōngwén Dàxué Zhōngguó
Shèhuì Kēxuéyuàn Kǎogǔ Yánjiūsuǒ 香港中文大學中國社會科學院考古研究所, 2001): no. 4328,
463. Compare the citation in Guō Mòruò, Zhōngguó gǔdài shèhuì yánjiū: 227.
 Yīn Jìmíng 殷寄明, “Jiǎ, jīnwén zhōng de núlì míngchéng kǎolüè 甲、金文中的奴隶名称考略,”
Jiāngxī jiàoyù xuéyuàn xuébào 江西教育学院学报 1990, no. 2: 25–27, argues for a great variety of
“slave” designations in oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions, due to building principles of ancient
Chinese characters, sex differentiation etc., relying on both inscriptions and traditional texts; Yīn
Wěirén 殷伟仁, “‘Cì . . . rénlì, zì yù zhìyú shùrén’ jiě ‘锡 . . . . . . 人鬲, 自驭至于庶人’解,” Rénwén
zázhì 人文杂志 (The Journal of Humanities) 1983, no. 6: 70–71, discusses the terms rénlì 人鬲 (in his
view a coordination of rén 人 and lì 鬲), yù 馭 and shùrén 庶人 in line fifteen of the Dà Yú dǐng 大盂
14 Susanne Adamski
2000);10 or found evidence to refute the identification of one or more specific

terms as “slaves,” often rejecting the idea of an early “slave society” as seen
mainly from the Shāng or Western Zhōu epigraphic texts, for example David
Keightley 1969 and 2012,11 Shī Wěiqīng 施伟青 1987, 12 Raimund Kolb 1991, 13
Huáng Wǔqiáng 黃武強 1994,14 Huáng Xiànfán 黄现璠 2015,15 Susanne Adamski
鼎 inscription (Jíchéng #2837, see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2837, 410–11), arguing
rather unconvincingly for their inverted sequence in the sentence, and identifies yù as “slaves”
(núlì 奴隶).
 Dǒng Lìzhāng 董立章, “Xī Zhōu bìng fēi shíxíng zhǒngzú núlì zhì 西周并非实行种族奴隶制,”
Journal of South China Normal University 华南师范大学学报 2000, no. 6: 61–66 argues against the
“traditional doctrine” of “ethnic” slavery in particular during the Western Zhōu (for instance by
way of “enslaving” the overthrown Shāng), mostly using transmitted texts. According to Dǒng, the
dynasties prior to the Eastern Zhōu only had “slaves” who were prisoners of war – these, however,
he reckons to have been quite numerous. He thereby distinguishes “ethnic” from “common” slav-
ery, the former still prevailing wrongly “in both university and school textbooks.”
 David N. Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China: A Study of Forced Labor in the Shang and
Western Chou” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1969), analyzes oracle-bone and bronze inscrip-
tions of the Shāng and Western Zhōu, and David N. Keightley, Working for His Majesty: Research
Notes on Labor Mobilization in Late Shang China (ca. 1200‒1045 B.C.), as Seen in the Oracle-Bone
Inscriptions, with Particular Attention to Handicraft Industries, Agriculture, Warfare, Hunting, Con-
struction, and the Shang’s Legacies, China Research Monograph 67 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian
Studies, University of California, 2012), in particular the oracle-bone evidence from the late Shāng.
 Shī Wěiqīng 施伟青, “ʻLì’ fēi núlì biàn ʻ鬲’非奴隶辩,” Xiàmén dàxué xuébào 厦门大学学报 1987,
no. 3: 72–76, argues against identifying bronze inscriptional lì 鬲 as “slaves.”
 In his study of the early Chinese infantry, Raimund Kolb argues against the identification of all
of the above-mentioned epigraphic terms as “slaves” – following the definition by Moses I. Finley,
in his book Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980) –, in Shāng ora-
cle-bone corpora and Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions published until the end of the 1980s. See
Raimund Theodor Kolb, Die Infanterie im alten China: Ein Beitrag zur Militärgeschichte der Vor-Zhan
-Guo-Zeit, AVA Materialien 43 (Mainz: Philip von Zabern, 1991); compare also his review article “Be-
merkungen zu Ulrich Lau: Quellenstudien zur Landvergabe und Bodenübertragung in der westlichen
Zhou-Zeit,” Oriens Extremus 42 (2000/2001): 191–206.
 Huáng Wǔqiáng 黃武強, “Xī Zhōu Chūnqiū shèhuì xíngtài xīntàn 西周春秋社会形态新探,”
Guǎngxī shèhuì kēxué 广西社会科学 1994, no. 1: 51–60. Huáng refutes Guō Mòruò’s interpretation of
bronze inscriptional evidence regarding “slaves” by contextual analysis of the terms chén 臣, zhòng
眾, yù 馭, lì 鬲 and rénlì 人鬲, concluding that none of these were “slaves.” However, in moving the
phase of slave society to the previous Xià 夏 (according to traditional Chinese historiography) and
Shāng dynasty instead, he sees even stronger support for the Marxist-Leninist stage theory and for
the existence of “slaves” in Chinese antiquity.
 Huáng Xiànfán 黄现璠 (1899–1982, birth name Gān Jǐnyīng 甘锦英) had long finished and revised
his book “There was no Slave Society in Chinese History: Combined Discussion of the World’s An-
cient ‘Serfs’ and Social Formations” (Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì ‒ jiānlùn shì-
jiè gǔdài nú jíqí shèhuì xíngtài 中国历史没有奴隶社会‒‒兼论世界古代奴及其社会形态 [Guìlín 桂林:
Guǎngxī Shīfān Dàxué Chūbǎnshè 广西师范大学出版社, 2015]) in 1981, shortly after the reform, but it
was only recently published in full length. Huáng makes a thorough study of the ancient Chinese
2017b,16 or Chén Mínzhèn 陈民镇 2017.17 Leaving aside the different aims and scopes of
these works, they found that the “giving” (fù < ✶p(r)o-s 付)18 or “providing” (cì < ✶s-lek-s
terms identified by Guō Mòruò as “slaves” (núlì 奴隶), as well as of relevant Sumerian, Babylonian,
ancient Indian, and ancient Greek and Latin terms regarding their semantic ranges. Based on his
findings, he argues against the equation of ancient Chinese terminology with the modern concept
“slave,” rejecting the highly persistent idea of an ancient Chinese “slave society.” Terminologically,
Huáng differentiates between historically documented nú 奴, who are found in a great variety
throughout Chinese history in transmitted pre-imperial and imperial texts (perhaps best understood
as “servant, menial, serf”), in different areas of obligations and of various origins, and núlì 奴隶,
“slave,” a foreign concept having only been adopted during the process of China’s modernisation,
and which he defines as “a living, speaking tool, without an independent human personality, any
freedom or rights, having lost all means of production and subsistence. Slaves are one of the most
important producers within a slave society [. . .]” 奴隶是一种活着的没有独立人格、没有任何自由和
权力, 又丧失了一切生产资料和生活资料的会说话工具. 奴隶属于奴隶社会的主要生产者 [. . .] Huáng
Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 195–96. Huáng emphasizes the difference in Marxist ter-
minology between “serfs”/“serfdom” (nóngnú 农奴/núyìzhì 奴役制) and “slaves” (núlì), the latter hav-
ing been used in “domestic slavery” (jiātíng núlìzhì 家庭奴隶制) since ancient times, while “slaves”
in a “slave society” are a peculiarity that only appeared in later ancient Greek and Roman societies
(termed “classical ancient labor slavery” [gǔdiǎn gǔdài láodòng núlìzhì 古典古代劳动奴隶制] by Marx
and Engels) (Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 197). He thinks that “slaves” (núlì) in
human history were mostly prisoners of war, acquired via slave trade, or coastal settlers captured by
pirates (the Barbary corsairs), or could also be born into slavery; but “as far as those nú [‘servants,
menials’] in ancient society are concerned who had sold themselves or had been convicted etc., those
belonged to [the category of] núbì 奴婢 [‘male and female servants/serfs/menials’], and were not núlì
[‘slaves’].” 之余古代社会的卖身为奴、罚罪为奴等一类奴, 当属奴婢, 而非奴隶. Huáng Xiànfán,
Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 208 (my insertions). Dealing primarily with Guō’s argumentation
and focusing on the Marxist concept of a “slave society,” Huáng almost naturally follows a structural-
ist conception of society too, and concludes that “most ancient societies did not go through a stage of
slave society, but from primitive society directly entered into feudal society” 世界各国古代历史绝大
多数都没有经过奴隶社会, 而是从原始社会直接进入封建社会 (Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi
yǒu núlì shèhuì: 583). Huáng could not include archaeological evidence found and subsequently pub-
lished since the 1970s, such as Warring States and early imperial bamboo manuscripts, and newly
excavated oracle-bone corpora or bronze inscriptions.
 See Susanne Adamski, “Sklave oder Dienstmann? Einige Überlegungen zum Status von chén 臣
in der West-Zhōu-Zeit (1045–771 v.Chr.),” in Rechtsdenken und Gerechtigkeitssinn in China, Jahrbuch
der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien 11, ed. Kerstin Storm and Jonas Polfuß (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2017).
 Chén Mínzhèn 陈民镇, “Núlì shèhuì zhī biàn – chóngshěn Zhōngguó núlì shèhuì jiēduàn lùnz-
hēng 奴隶社会之辩 – 重审中国奴隶社会阶段论争,” Lìshǐ yánjiū 历史研究 2017, no. 1: 159–78. Chén
approaches the structuralist view of Chinese history that has been so influential in scholarship, re-
examining the classification of the Shāng period as a “slave-holding society” as well as the identifica-
tion of zhòng and mín as “slaves” in excavated and transmitted sources, including the newly published
Qīnghuá 清华 bamboo manuscript “Shāng shū” 商書 dating from the Zhànguó 戰國 (481–221 BC) pe-
riod. All in all, he argues for studying Chinese history primarily from the indigenous sources instead
of using an overarching theoretical framework.
 In the present paper, Old Chinese reconstructions (marked by an asterisk) follow, if not other-
wise mentioned, William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstruction,
16 Susanne Adamski
賜) of people, usually from the king or sometimes the head of a lineage to another élite
member, which we often find in Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions, cannot be tied to
a “slave” status, because they clearly included members of the nobility. The famous
Dà Yú dǐng 大盂鼎 inscription (Jíchéng #2837) dated to the early Western Zhōu period
states that “four Firstborns (bó 伯) who govern the bāng 邦-territories” 邦 (司)四伯,
along with over six hundred and fifty charioteers and other personnel, were given to
the official Yú 盂 of the Nángōng 南宫 lineage.19 These “Firstborns” or “Elders” often
were or became the leaders of their lineages, and in this case already were in an ad-
ministrative capacity.
Further, an example of the “redemption” (yù < ✶luk 賣 or ✶[l][iw]k 儥) or “employ-
ement” (yòng < ✶loŋ-s 用) of individual fū 夫 (“men, individuals”), rén 人 (“men”20) or
chén 臣 in the well-known Hū dǐng 曶鼎 inscription, dated to the middle Western
Zhōu period, cannot be securely identified as referring to “slaves” or “bondservants,”
due to the lack of certain information.21 We will come back to this specific case in part
two of this paper. Therefore, because a) no specific term can be securely identified as
“slave” according to recent definitions of the term, and b) there is still no real consen-
sus on the social status of the people denoted by these particular terms, we must con-
clude that “slaves” cannot be found within the Shāng and Western Zhōu epigraphic
texts that have been published so far.
Nonetheless, both Chinese and Western scholars in general believe in the exis-
tence of such a “class” or social status in earliest China. For instance, Zhāng Yàchū 張
亞初 and Liú Yǔ 劉雨 1986 conclude that those Western Zhōu pú 僕 and yípú 夷僕
who served in a military capacity “seem to differ from those pú who are slaves” (以上
诸器铭文中的僕、夷僕与奴隶之僕似有所不同).22 David N. Keightley in 2012 stated
that “[t]he Shang certainly had some slaves – mainly prisoners of war – but were not a
slave economy.”23 He does not provide an inscriptional example of a “slave,” nor does
he explain how we can identify prisoners of war as such. His statement that the Shang
“certainly had some slaves” seems to be based on assumptions. As a third example,
version 1.1 (September 20, 2014), http://ocbaxtersagart.lsait.lsa.umich.edu/BaxterSagartOCbyMan

darinMC2014-09-20.pdf [accessed 17.05.2022].
 For this example, compare Adamski, “Sklave oder Dienstmann”: 28. For rubbing and transcrip-
tion see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2837, 410–11, as well as the transcription in Jīn-
wén yǐndé, no. 4024, 253–54. A partial translation of the Dà Yú dǐng inscription can be found in Li
Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou 1045–771 BC
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 127.
 The Chinese term is gender neutral, already in early inscriptions referring to men and women
alike.
 Issues in identifying the individual’s status as “slave” have been problematized in Adamski,
“Sklave oder Dienstmann”: 21–24. See also 2.1.1 below.
 Zhāng Yàchū 張亞初 and Liú Yǔ 劉雨, Xī Zhōu jīnwén guānzhì yánjiū 西周金文官制研究 (Běijīng:
Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1986): 55.
 Keightley, Working for His Majesty: 65.
an inscribed Western Zhōu bronze vessel excavated in 2005, the so-called “Sù yǒu” 肅
卣, has been interpreted as evidence for a class of “bondservants” or “slaves” by Dǒng
Shān 董珊 in 2014: “The inscription recorded a rare case of degrading the social class
of shuren (common people). This case hinted that in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the
common people had personal freedom.”24 The “Sù yǒu” inscription, dated early mid-
Western Zhōu, contains two terms we know from later textual sources, pú 僕 and shù-
rén 庶人, and was interpreted by Dǒng Shān as recording the social degradation of six
families of “free men,” shùrén, to pú, which according to his reading of certain graphs
were recorded in a special “register” (jí < ✶[dz]Ak 籍), from which they were “erased”
after successful “remonstration” (jiàn < ✶kˤranʔ(-s) 諫).25 From the article it transpires
that Dǒng understands pú 僕 to mean “bondservants” or “slaves,” in Chinese núpú 奴
僕 (simplified: 奴仆). This chain first occurs in Hàn 漢 dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) texts
such as the “History of the Hàn” (Hàn shū 漢書), completed around 110 AD, or the
argumentative socio-critical text “Comments of a Recluse” (Qiánfū lùn 潛夫論) by the
Later Hàn scholar Wáng Fú 王符 (82–167 AD),26 and is commonly used in the modern
Chinese lexicon.27
In modern Chinese, nú 奴 or núlì 奴隶 is defined as “a person suppressed, ex-
ploited, and being used, without personal freedom or other political rights” (旧社会
中受压迫、剥削、役使而没有人身自由等政治权利的人),28 in English: “a slave,”29
and pú 僕, being short for púrén 僕人, means “servant” or “attendant.”30 The com-
posite núpú is also lexicalized as “people formerly carrying out various tasks in a
master’s home (generic term)” (旧时在主人家里从事杂役的人(总称)), as in the mod-
ern Chinese dictionary Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn 现代汉语词典 of 2002.31 The term nú
does not yet occur in the epigraphic sources of the Shāng and Western Zhōu pub-
lished so far, and neither does the composite núpú.32
 See Dǒng Shān 董珊, “Shānxī Jiàng xiàn Héngshuǐ M2 chūtǔ Sù yǒu míngwén chūtàn 山西绛县
横水M2出土肃卣铭文初探,” Wénwù 文物 2014, no. 1: 50–55 (quote from the English abstract).
 See Susanne Adamski, “The ‘Sù yǒu 肅卣’ Inscription and the Debate on Western Zhōu Social
Dependence (1045–771 B.C.),” in n.n., ed. Enno Giele, Christian Schwerman and Kerstin Storm (Mu-
nich: Iudicium, forthcoming).
 The search was performed using the Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT) database Pre-Han and Han
先秦两汉, of the Research Centre for Chinese Ancient Texts, Chinese University of Hong Kong (http://
www.chant.org, accessed August 30, 2020 via CrossAsia [https://crossasia.org/]).
 See Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn 现代汉语词典 (Běijīng: Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn 商务印书馆, 2002):
937.
 Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn, 937.
 Cf. for example Xīn Hàn Dé Cídiǎn 新汉德词典 (Běijīng: Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn, 1996): 597:
“Sklave; Knecht.”
 “People employed to fulfill various tasks and services in a household” 指被雇到家庭中做杂事、供
役使的人 (Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn, 987).
 Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn, 937.
32 As stated by David N. Keightley for the Shāng period, “[a]ttempts to assign a slave status to par-
ticular groups recorded in the inscriptions, or to read a particular oracle-bone graph as nu 奴,
18 Susanne Adamski
As presented elsewhere in more detail, Dǒng Shān’s interpretation of the “Sù

yǒu” inscription has influenced several other interpretations that followed shortly
after Dǒng’s article, none of them doubting that the term shùrén 庶人 denotes “free
men,” most of them following the interpretation of pú as núpú – “bondservants” or
“slaves,” except for Lǐ Kǎi 2018, who also scrutinizes the inscriptional term pú, but
relies completely on Dǒng Shān’s transcription.33 The “Sù yǒu” inscription poses sev-
eral paleographic and epigraphic issues, in particular, a) interpreting the bronze
graph xī 昔 as a loan for jí 籍, “register,” is an assumption; b) other crucial graphs
‘slave’, have generally involved more theoretical assertion than paleographic demonstration”
(Keightley, Working for His Majesty: 57). For instance, an interpretation of the incomplete graph
on bone fragment Héjí #22462 (see Jiǎgǔwén héjí 甲骨文合集, vol. 7 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú,
1999): no. 22462, 2925) as nú 奴, so given in the Ancient Chinese Texts (CHANT) Jiaguwen 甲骨文
database, is not seen in the reference work Jiǎgǔwén héjí shìwén 甲骨文合集释文, ed. Hú Hòuxuān
胡厚宣, vol. 2 (Běijīng: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué Chūbǎnshè 中国社会科学出版社, 1999): no. 22462.
Before the 1980s, having discussed the earliest graphic forms and usages of nú and núpú as well as
different scholarly interpretations of them, Huáng Xiànfán already noted that neither they nor the
early imperial núbì 奴婢 (traditionally interpreted as “slaves”) fall under the category of being
completely “owned” by another person, as was the case in classical Greece and Rome, and that ora-
cle-bone inscriptions and transmitted sources provide no evidence as to whether there existed any
Shāng dynasty “slaves” in the Marxist definition (Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shè-
huì: 444; see also: 10–15 for nú, 24–31 for núpú). The absence of nú 奴 from oracle-bone inscriptions
has not changed since publication of the more recent corpora excavated from the Yīnxū 殷墟 site at
Huāyuánzhuāng Locus East (Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ 殷墟花園莊東地甲骨) as well as
from the center and south of Xiǎotún Village (Yīnxū Xiǎotún cūnzhōng cūnnán jiǎgǔ 殷墟小屯村中村
南甲骨), cf. the concordances Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn 殷墟花園莊東地甲骨
刻辞類纂 (Běijīng: Xiànzhuāng Shūjú 綫裝書局, 2011); Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔwén lèi-
zuǎn 殷墟花園莊東地甲骨文類纂 (Fúzhōu 福州: Fújiàn Rénmín Chūbǎnshè 福建人民出版社, 2016);
and Yīnxū Xiǎotún cūnzhōng cūnnán jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn 殷墟小屯村中村南甲骨刻辞類纂 (Běijīng:
Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中華書局, 2017). However, the graph 奴 in itself clearly has a history. So far it ap-
pears on several bronze weapons and vessels of the early Chūnqiū 春秋 (771‒481 BC) and Zhànguó
periods (481‒221 BC), as part of a personal name. For example, on the Fú Nú Fù dǐng 弗奴父鼎 ves-
sel (Jíchéng #2589), excavated in 1972 in Zōu 鄒 county, Shāndōng 山东 Province (see Yīn Zhōu jīn-
wén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2589, 278). Here the graph clearly consists of the two components
女, “woman,” and 又, “hand,” as in the seal script character given in the second century AD char-
acter dictionary Shuōwén jiězì 說文解字; it is also already seen in the donor’s name of the Western
Zhōu bronze vessel Sī Nú bǎo yǎn 奴寶甗 (Jíchéng #851): , the only Western Zhōu epigraphic
occurrence so far, of which, however, only the transmitted rubbing exists (see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jí-
chéng shìwén, vol. 1, no. 0851, 576). Compare the seal character form and epigraphic evidence given
in Zāng Kèhé 臧克和 and Wáng Píng 王平, eds., Shuōwén jiězì xīndìng 說文解字新訂 (Běijīng:
Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 2002): 819. The etymology of the word nú < ✶nˤa, according to Axel Schuessler, is
uncertain: while possibly “cognate to TB-Mru nar ‘servant’,” the word has been related “to nǚ1
‘woman’; this has semantic parallels, especially among foreign loans,” or to a word form “with the
basic meaning ‘tense’ (incl. nǔ1 弩, nǔ2 努), hence ‘press into service’” (Axel Schuessler, ABC Ety-
mological Dictionary of Old Chinese (Honululu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007): 404).
 Cf. Adamski, “‘Sù yǒu 肅卣’ Inscription,” providing an alternative transcription and translation,
leaving unclear graphs unidentified, and taking into consideration several possibilities of translation.
are as yet unidentifiable (such as ), having been transcribed and interpreted quite
differently, making their normalization even more precarious (e.g. the reading of the
graph as and its normalization to lì 隸, “subordinate, slave,” or the interpreta-
tion of /芟 as “erase”); c) the bronze inscriptional term pú 僕 quite clearly is no sta-
tus term, since several bronze inscriptions strongly indicate a military function of the
people it denotes; d) while shùrén is either a status term or generic designation of a
broader social category during the early imperial period, there is so far no clear ear-
lier Western Zhōu epigraphic evidence to read shùrén as a status term either, and
thus the inscription cannot be said to record the degradation of status.34
These examples show that the question of the existence of “slavery” is either
not an issue in contemporary scholarship on early China, or not within the author’s
focus. With regard to the extant epigraphic material, we thus find two assumptions
in early China scholarship, a) “slavery” was an institution of high social and/or eco-
nomic significance that can be identified in the contemporary sources;35 or b) if not
identifiable in contemporary terminology, “slavery” was a social phenomenon of
no obvious social and/or economic importance, but existed all the same.36 But if
there is no real evidence for “slaves” in the indigenous texts, did the Shāng and
Western Zhōu have “slaves” at all? Obviously, this leads to the question of defining
“slavery,” which is often circumvented.
 See Adamski, “‘Sù yǒu 肅卣’ Inscription.”

 As prominently argued by Guō Mòruò, Zhōngguó gǔdài shèhuì yánjiū.
 Cf., for instance, Li Feng, “The Western Zhou State,” in Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese
History, ed. Paul R. Goldin (London: Routledge, 2018): 101: “[. . .] Renli 人鬲[. . .] probably meant
‘slaves.’ We still do not know their exact status, but it is likely they were war prisoners brought into
Zhou society during the great early Western Zhou expansion.” Raimund Kolb also considers the
possibility that slaves existed in ancient China: “Da die zhong-ren keine Sklaven waren und die
Wirtschaft des Shang-Yin-Staates auf ihren Schultern ruhte, kann nicht von einer Sklavenhalterge-
sellschaft gesprochen werden, womit jedoch nicht behauptet werden soll, es hätte keine Sklaven
gegeben” (Kolb, Die Infanterie im Alten China: 48); “Bei den li könnte es sich mithin sowohl um
Sklaven als auch um Kriegsgefangene gehandelt haben” (61); “Die Qualität der Produkte der Manu-
fakturen der WZ [= Western Zhōu] spricht für herausgehobene Handwerker; Sklaven könnten für
Hilfsarbeiter beschäftigt gewesen sein” (114). Huáng Xiànfán, who also worked with a clear defini-
tion of “slaves” (núlì), did not reject the possibility of their existence particularly in Shāng China,
but reasonably pointed out that aside from the lack of clear evidence, it would be crucial to know
their exact numbers in order to be able to decide whether they may have constituted a social class
in the Marxist sense (compare Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 446); further, as
to “slaves” bought via the slave trade, he states that these “are almost not seen” in Chinese pre-
imperial history (for his discussion of slave trade in general, see 203–7).
20 Susanne Adamski
1.2 Definition of “Slavery”
As we are aware, there is no scholarly consensus on a precise meaning of the terms

“slave” and “slavery.” Lexicalizations, such as for example in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, commonly state that
[t]he slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else. In some societies slaves
were considered movable property, in others immovable property, like real estate. They were
objects of the law, not its subjects. [. . .] The slave usually had few rights and always fewer than
his owner, but there were not many societies in which he had absolutely none. [. . .] The slave
was removed from lines of natal descent. Legally, and often socially, he had no kin.37
But to define the boundaries of the term is no easy matter. As the historian Michael
Zeuske points out in his 2013 global history of slavery Handbuch Geschichte der
Sklaverei, it is hard to define and differentiate “slavery” and other terms such as
“serfdom,” because there seem to be several gradations of these phenomena at dif-
ferent times in different societies all over the world.38 He therefore speaks of “slav-
eries” in the plural.39 Due to such difficulties, it seems to be a good idea to go
beyond traditional terms, as the Cluster of Excellence 2036 “Beyond Slavery and
Freedom” does, taking “‘strong asymmetrical dependency’ as a new key concept”
in the study of pre-modern societies, in which “slavery” seems to be understood as
 Richard Hellie, “Slavery,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, last updated August 17, 2020,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/548305/slavery [accessed 17.05.2022].
 For the terminological diversity of the concept “servitude, serfdom,” German Leibeigenschaft,
see also the concise summary by Anne-Marie Dubler, “Leibeigenschaft,” Historisches Lexikon der
Schweiz (HLS), June 13, 2012, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/008967/2012-06-13/ [accessed
17.05.2022]: “Die Bezeichnungen für leibherrl. Abhängigkeit sind vielfältig bei z.T. umstrittener Be-
deutung. Die Sklaven der Antike (Sklaverei) wurden als Sache behandelt und waren rechtlos. Dage-
gen genossen die servi (mancipii, ancillae) des Früh- und HochMA und später die Leibeigenen als
Personen beschränkte Rechte. Der vom vieldeutigen mittelhochdt. eigen abgeleitete Begriff des ‘Ei-
genmanns’ bezeichnete den Unfreien schlechthin; dem dt. ‘Eigenleute’ entsprechen franz. hommes
propres und ital. uomini propri (lat. homines proprii). Mit der spätma. Aufspaltung der Herrschafts-
rechte in grund-, gerichts- und leibherrl. Rechte drängte sich zur Unterscheidung des leibherrl. An-
spruchs vom grundherrl. Eigen am Boden (Grundbesitz) eine Präzisierung auf: mit dem lib eigen
oder leibeigen. Der Begriff ‘Leibeigener’ wurde im dt. Sprachraum erst um 1500 gebräuchlich; bis
ins 16. Jh. wurden persönlich Abhängige in der Deutschschweiz noch häufiger als ‘Eigenleute’ denn
als ‘Leibeigene’ bezeichnet. Rechtssprachl. Schöpfungen, keine Quellentermini sind die Begriffe
‘Unfreie’ für unterschiedl. Formen der Unfreiheit, ‘Hörige’ (‘Grundhörige’) für schollengebundene
Bauern der Grundherrschaft und ‘Halbfreie’ für Leute unterschiedlichen minderen Rechts, z.B.
Freigelassene.”
 See Michael Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei. Eine Globalgeschichte von den Anfän-
gen bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2013): especially 108–15. A second, enlarged edi-
tion of this work was published in 2019.
the “most extreme” form of “human bondage and coercion.”40 However, if we want
to know how to find out if “extreme forms of dependency” such as “slavery” existed
particularly in late Shāng and Western Zhōu China, we should be clear about what
we mean by these forms in this specific historical context. In short, we need to de-
fine what we are looking for.
While “slavery” has traditionally been defined within concepts of “ownership” or
the “means of production,” as in extant lexicalizations, such attempts were rejected by
Orlando Patterson in 1982 in his comparative study Slavery and Social Death, because,
a) “Proprietary claims and powers are made with respect to many persons who are
clearly not slaves.”41 This fact had already been shown by Max Weber, who wrote on
the concept of Herrschaft (“authority”) that, for example, a family head according to
ancient Roman law could even legally kill or sell his wife or children, or rent them
out.42 b) The terms “free” or “unfree” equally cannot be applied to define “slavery,”
 Cf. the cluster’s website (Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies [BCDSS], “Research,”
https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/research [accessed 17.05.2022]): “Despite the many dif-
ferent forms that human bondage and coercion have taken over time, academic debates in the mod-
ern West primarily focused on the most extreme one: slavery [. . .] This is why we decided to
employ a more neutral terminology, and so move beyond the binary opposition of ‘slavery versus
freedom’. Instead, we suggest ‘asymmetrical dependency’ – or, more precisely, ‘strong asymmetri-
cal dependency’ as a new key concept, which includes debt bondage, convict labor, tributary labor,
servitude, serfdom, and domestic work as well as forms of wage labor and various types of client-
age and patronage.” The difficulty of avoiding established concepts such as “slavery” is shown in
their continued use in the description of research areas, which “approach the phenomenon of slav-
ery and other types of strong asymmetrical dependencies,” or “enslavement and other forms of
asymmetrical dependencies” (see Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, “Semantics –
Lexical Fields – Narratives,” https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/images/pdf-files/research-
areas/semantics_lexical-fields_narratives.pdf, and “Embodied Dependencies,” https://www.depen
dency.uni-bonn.de/images/pdf-files/research-areas/embodied-dependencies.pdf [both accessed
17.05.2022]).
 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2018): 21. He regards “all attempts to define slavery in modern
legalistic terms” as erroneous, because “this does not really specify any distinct category of per-
sons” (21).
 “Gerade die primitiv patriarchale Auffassung behandelt vielmehr [. . .] die Hausgewalt durch-
aus eigentumsartig: die Kinder aller in der Hausgewalt eines Mannes, es sei als Weib oder als Skla-
vin, stehenden Frauen gelten ohne Rücksicht auf physische Vaterschaft, sobald er es so will, als
ʻseineʼ Kinder, wie die Früchte seines Viehs als sein Vieh. Neben Vermietung (in das mancipium)
und Verpfändung von Kindern und auch Weibern ist der Kauf fremder und Verkauf eigener Kinder
noch entwickelten Kulturen eine geläufige Erscheinung. Er ist geradezu die ursprüngliche Form
des Ausgleichs von Arbeitskräften und Arbeitsbedarf zwischen den verschiedenen Hausgemein-
schaften. [. . .] Daneben dient der Kindeskauf anderen speziell religiösen Zwecken (Sicherung der
Totenopfer), als Vorläufer der ʻAdoptionʼ.” Max Weber, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, vol. 3, Abtei-
lung: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922): 680 (on “Patrimonialismus”). Com-
pare the English paraphrase in Richard Swedberg, Principles of Economic Sociology (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003): 267: “The power of the house father extends with only
22 Susanne Adamski
because “[i]n almost all non-Western slaveholding societies there was no such status
in law as a ‘free’ person.”43 Instead, Patterson defines slavery within the framework
of power and powerlessness, “on the level of personal relations: slavery is the perma-
nent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.”44
According to Patterson, “slaves,” although physically alive, are socially dead: “Alien-
ated from all ‘rights’ or claims of birth, [the slave] ceased to belong in his own right
to any legitimate social order.”45 While this definition of a “slave” is certainly useful
for the examination of “asymmetrical” social relations in historical sources, it has
been criticized as a sociological abstraction, for example by Joseph C. Miller 2012, be-
cause it “excludes historical context by definition,” resulting in a decontextualized,
static “master-slave dyad.”46 I shall return to this issue in part three of this paper.
1.3 “Slavery” in Ancient China
Patterson’s characterization of slaves as “socially dead” has however been applied to

Qín and Hàn China by Robin Yates, focusing on the “nature” of ancient Chinese slav-
ery.47 By analyzing Qín legal statutes excavated from a tomb at Shuìhǔdì 睡虎地,
Húběi 湖北 province, in 1975 as well as transmitted Hàn imperial sources, he shows
that at this period of time several terms clearly denote the lowest social strata and
also apply to the concept of “slaves” as defined by Patterson. These terms are: rénnú
人奴, as a general term,48 rénchén 人臣 or chén 臣 for male “slaves,” rénqiè 人妾 or
qiè 妾 for female “slaves,” as well as rénnúchén 人奴臣; and within Hàn 漢 law nú 奴
and bì 婢, denoting male and female “slaves.”49
ritualistic limitations to the execution, or sale of the wife, and to the sale of the children or to leas-
ing them out to labor.” Also compare Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: 24, n. 27.
 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: 27.
 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: 13; cf. Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 298.
 Patterson Slavery and Social Death: 5. He further states: “Because the slave had no socially or-
ganized existence outside of his master, he became a social nonperson. [. . .] Not only was the
slave denied all claims on, and obligations to, his parents and living blood relations but, by exten-
sion, all such claims and obligations on his more remote ancestors and on his descendants. He was
truly a genealogical isolate.”
 Cf. Joseph C. Miller, The Problem of Slavery as History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012): 20.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China.”
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 297.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 303–4. Yates explicitly focuses on these terms, leaving “several
other terms of lesser importance” aside (303–4). While stating that “the Han term for female slave
(bi 婢) does not occur” in the Qín legal sources (304), Yates adds in a more recent essay that, “how-
ever, it does appear in several documents published in volume one of the complete Liye docu-
ments, but not in the context of a statute or ordinance” (Robin D.S. Yates, “The Changing Status of
Slaves in the Qin-Han Transition,” in Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, ed. Yuri Pines,
The lowest social strata in Qín and Hàn law were “slaves” and “convicts” (tú 徒),
the latter term however only rarely used in this sense in Qín legal documents.50 Yates
provides evidence by analyzing excavated Qín law, as well as phrases from the trans-
mitted political “Discourses on Salt and Iron” (Yántiě lùn 鹽鐵論) and the Warring
States history Zuǒ zhuàn 左傳, that the people referred to were considered “not
human” (fēi rén yě 非人也)51 and socially dead because: “A slave and a criminal in
early traditional China lost his rights and obligations and relations to his family, both
his parents and his children. He was a socially dead person.”52 As illustrated in Fig. 1,
Gideon Shelach, Lothar von Falkenhausen, and Robin D.S. Yates (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2014): 211). With regard to terminological differences, he tentatively concludes “that the
early Han changed or refined the legal nomenclature of slaves, possibly in 202, when the ‘Statutes
on Male and Female Slaves’ might have been enacted, as suggested above” (Yates, “The Changing
Status of Slaves”: 211). There is also some terminological confusion as to the categorization of other
terms. Yates states that “the county government also bought and sold slaves known as tuli 徒隸 on
the open market” (212), while at the same time translating túlì 徒隸 as “bonded laborers” (223), also
drawing attention to the fact that “[i]t is to be noted that there were statuses between slaves and
free commoners, as indicated in the statute quoted above.” (212). Yates is certainly aware of these
issues: “Regardless of the identity of these workers, what is to be noted is that they were of such
low slavelike status that the government could buy them on the open market, on the one hand,
and, on the other, that Sima Qian uses this term tuli to identify many of the workers who con-
structed the First Emperor’s mausoleum,” and “there must have been a very large market for slave-
like workers in the Qin” (223).
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 303–4.
 Literally “to be something that is not human.” The expression fēi rén yě 非人也, albeit in quite a
different context, is also attested in Qín Shuìhǔdì bamboo slips (dated 217 BC), namely in the “day-
book” manuscript Rìshū A (Rìshū jiǎzhǒng 日書甲種), a compilation of hemerological manuals con-
cerned with spirits and demons, in the section “Spellbinding” (“Jié” 詰). Here, in a prescription for
how to act when the well of a household has become bloody, it is used in its literal sense: “Fill it
with sand and make another well; feed from it with steamed rice, drink hoarfrost and dew, and
after three days you will be human. If you fail to do so, (continue to) drink from it [i.e. the old well]
and depend on it for about three months, then you will no longer be human, but become a skele-
ton.” 以沙墊之, 更為井, 食之以噴, 飲以爽(霜)路(露), 三日乃能人矣. 若不, 三月食之若傅之, 而非人
也, 必枯骨也. Punctuated transcription from Shuìhǔdì Qín mù zhújiǎn 睡虎地秦墓竹简 (Běijīng:
Wénwù Chūbǎnshè 文物出版社, 1990): 216, slips no. 53 verso (3) – no. 55 verso (3). My translation
follows the editor’s notes given in Shuìhǔdì Qín mù zhújiǎn and thus also closely Hu Baozhu, Believ-
ing in Ghosts and Spirits: The Concept of Gui in Ancient China, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series
71 (London: Routledge; Monumenta Serica Institute, 2021): “Appendix 3 Investigation: Annotated
Translation of the ‘Jie 詰’ Section,” no. 70, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003110040 [accessed
17.05.2022]. The search was done using the Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT) Jianbo Database 竹简帛
書 1.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 299. In contrast to Orlando Patterson’s more global definition
of “slavery,” which has been criticized for apparently treating “slaves” ‒ socially interacting living
human beings ‒ as if in complete social isolation (see for example Miller, The Problem of Slavery as
History: 31–32), Yates sees “social death” in the specific context of ancient China: “Humans are hu-
mans because they are tied into a network of kin relationships which constitute the world of social
life and which define their social being, and in China humans are humans because of the direct
24 Susanne Adamski
Fig. 1: Social death in ancient China after Yates, “Slavery in Early China.”
a “human,” socially alive, has relations and obligations. He or she is certainly not
“free” to do as he or she likes; a slave or criminal, however, is cut off from any of his or
her natural human relations.
Yates sees evidence for this hypothesis, for example in the fact that under Qín law
“children who were considered ʻnot wholeʼ (buquan 不全) could be killed with impu-
nity” by their parents,53 and that, as is known from transmitted sources, a male child
with a disability “cannot serve at the ancestral altars” and therefore could not fulfil
his obligations as an heir.54 Within this lowest social stratum of socially dead persons,
slaves can further be distinguished from convicts according to Yates, because their
bondage was perpetual, while the bondage of convicts was limited to a set period of
years.55 However, differentiation of “slaves” and “convict” laborers in Qín and early
Western Hàn is far less clear-cut than implied by Yates in 2001: as Maxim Korolkov
recently summarizes the “decades-long” scholarly debate after the publication of
line and link between themselves and their ancestors or ascendants and their offspring or descend-
ants.” Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 299. Indeed, Patterson does not seem to deny that “slaves”
were interacting human beings or had any social relations at all, but rather argues that they were
deprived of something inherently human: “Slaves differed from other human beings in that they
were not allowed freely to integrate the experience of their ancestors into their lives, to inform their
understanding of social reality with the inherited meanings of their natural forbears, or to anchor
the living present in any conscious community of memory.” Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: 5.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 297.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 300. Yates refers to a case recorded in the Zuǒ zhuàn 左傳, chapter
“Lord Zhāo 昭公 seventh year (535 BC)” (“Zhāo Gōng qī nián 昭公七年”), “in which a lame elder brother
is barred from inheriting his father’s rank for precisely the same reason: he is not human (fei ren ye 非
人也), or considered a member of the clan [. . .] and so cannot serve at the ancestral altars [. . .]” For
the original as well as annotated translated passage see Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li and David Scha-
berg, trans. and introd., Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan 左傳: Commentary on the ‘Spring and Autumn Annals’
(Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2016): 1432‒1435.
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 301.
excavated Qín legal manuscripts, increasing evidence for life-long labor sentences,
the fact that “slaves” could actually be purchased by the government from private in-
dividuals as laborers and “conversely, [the government] leased convicts out to private
users, invite the question of whether or not convict laborers should be properly de-
scribed as state-owned slaves.”56 Thus, there remains the issue whether, and how, pri-
vately and state-owned “slaves” and/or other “bondservants” and unfree laborers are
actually distinguishable as to their “nature.”57
Nevertheless, Robin Yates’ analysis and understanding of “slavery” in late War-
ring States and early imperial China as encompassing social death is, in my view,
very insightful, and seems to be applicable to these periods, although constant (re-)
evaluation of the growing number of manuscript corpora is needed. However, just
like other scholars, Yates assumes the existence of “slaves” in Shāng and Western
Zhōu China without addressing the issue of how they are to be identified:
In China from the Neolithic to the late Western Zhou 西周 and early Eastern Zhou 東周 periods,
there was no strict separation in status between the lowest members of society and the high-
est. All members were to a certain extent unfree, and it was only in the middle of the Spring
and Autumn period that a market economy really developed. I am not claiming that there
were no slaves at all in early times. Rather, I wish to argue that there was a radical change in
the nature of slavery in the middle of the Eastern Zhou period [. . .], when slaves for the first
time came to be bought and sold.58
What, then, was their “nature” in early times? Is it possible to determine an early
social category of “slaves,” or any other low stratum, before the Eastern Zhōu period?
 Maxim Korolkov, “Empire-Building and Market-Making at the Qin Frontier: Imperial Expansion
and Economic Change, 221–207 BCE” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2020): 308. My insertion. For
a thorough discussion of the extensive Qín system of unfree labor and its importance within the
state economy and for the empire’s construction projects, see the fourth chapter “Between com-
mand and market: the economy of convict labor” (307–427). The relationship between institutional
and private dependency in Qín is further discussed in Maxim Korolkov, “Between Command and
Market: Credit, Labour, and Accounting in the Qin Empire (221–207 B.C.E.),” in Between Command
and Market: Economic Thought and Practice in Early China, ed. Elisa Sabattini and Christian
Schwermann (Leiden: Brill, 2021): 162–243.
 Yates also further revised his analysis in 2014, after examination of the newly published Qín
bamboo manuscripts excavated at Lǐyè 里耶, Húnán Province, as well as the early Hàn Zhāngjiā-
shān 張家山 bamboo manuscripts excavated from Tomb 247 (see Yates, “The Changing Status of
Slaves”). There, he states: “It is clear that we still have a long way to go to understand the exact
nature of the many statuses among the lower orders of the Qin and early Han and how they may
have changed over time and political and military circumstances.” (223.)
 Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 287–88.
26 Susanne Adamski
2 Looking for “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency”

in Epigraphic Sources: Social Groups
Let us consider the new concept “strong asymmetrical dependency.” According to
the webpage of the Cluster of Excellence “Beyond Slavery and Freedom,” this
means “human bondage and coercion,”59 including “debt bondage, convict labor,
tributary labor, servitude, serfdom, and domestic work as well as forms of wage labor
and various types of clientage and patronage,” and what is described as their “most
extreme” form: “slavery.” Thus, “strong asymmetrical dependency” is a generic term
for specific social phenomena of “human bondage and coercion,” known from partic-
ular societies at particular times. If looking for them within a given society such as
ancient China, we first need to define what “human bondage and coercion” are: ei-
ther we a) base our search on extant definitions of all these social phenomena just
quoted in different historical contexts, or b) look for forms of human “bondage” and
“coercion” which, however, need to qualify as being “strong,” based on extant defi-
nitions of these two words in English or another modern language. To simplify our
search, we shall therefore first look for “bondage,” which according to the Merriam-
Webster dictionary was first used during the fourteenth century in the sense of
“the tenure or service of a villein, serf, or slave,”60 and, in the same contexts, for
 In the late 1860s, Karl Marx translated “bondage” as “Hörigkeit” (see Karl Marx, Das Kapital:
Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, vol. 1, Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals, 2nd ed. (Hamburg:
Verlag von Otto Meissner, 1872): 602). In the modern English lexicon, “bondage” seems to be
treated as synonymous with other concepts such as “enslavement, servility, servitude, slavery,
thrall, thralldom, yoke” as given by the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “bondage,” https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bondage [accessed 17.05.2022], while German “Hörigkeit”
(bondage), with the synonyms “Abhängigkeit, Unmündigkeit, Unselbstständigkeit,” seems to be
treated as a hyperonym of different phenomena such as “Sklaverei” (slavery), which in turn consti-
tutes another synonym group: “Knechtschaft, Leibeigenschaft, Sklaverei, Unfreiheit.” See Digitales
Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, s.v. “Hörigkeit” and “Sklaverei,” https://www.dwds.de/wb/H%
C3%B6rigkeit and https://www.dwds.de/wb/Sklaverei [both accessed 17.05.2022]. The greatest vari-
ety of translations of “bondage” and seeming overlaps or synonymy of different concepts is to be
found in the online Linguee Wörterbuch: “Bondage, Knechtschaft, Gefangenschaft, Zwang, Skla-
verei, Leibeigenschaft, Unfreiheit, Hörigkeit, Zwänge, beengender Zwang”; “Knechtschaft” in turn
being translated as “slavery, servitude, bondage, subjugation, thraldom, serfdom” (see Linguee
Wörterbuch, s.v. “bondage,” https://www.linguee.de/deutsch-englisch/search?source=englisch&
query=bondage and s.v. “Knechtschaft,” https://www.linguee.de/deutsch-englisch/search?source=
auto&query=Knechtschaft [both accessed 17.05.2022]). Thus “bondage,” taken as an overarching
concept, nevertheless points to specific social phenomena.
 Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “bondage,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
bondage [accessed 17.05.2022].
identifiable forms of “coercion,” a word first used during the fifteenth century in
the sense “to restrain or dominate by force.”61
2.1 The Problem of Dependent Labor during the Late Shāng

and Western Zhōu Periods
Within a given society, severe forms of human bondage and coercion should be the
most asymmetrical of all social relations. When looking for them, it might be helpful
to scrutinize society’s lowest end. However, the Shāng and Western Zhōu inscriptions
are largely non-descriptive of the lowest social strata. They are no normative texts;
they do not explain social status. Nevertheless, we shall first consider social groups
involved in possible cases of forced or dependent labor.
This has already been done to some extent. In the West, David N. Keightley has
studied certain groups of people in oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions who were
“mobilized” to fulfil tasks in construction, agriculture, handicraft, warfare and
hunting – these groups were zhòng 衆 and rén 人, but also chén 臣 and others.62 In
his dissertation Public Work in Ancient China: A Study of Forced Labor in the Shang
and Western Chou of 1969, Keightley stated that “under both dynasties, ancient
China was a forced-labor society in which the king’s work was performed by forced
laborers of various status, permanently or intermittently attached to the ruling elite
in a hierarchy of servitude,”63 mainly focusing on the problem of their identification
as slave societies. After careful re-evaluation of the evidence, published in 2012
under the title Working for His Majesty: Research Notes on Labor Mobilization in
Late Shang China, he concluded more or less explicitly that labor mobilization dur-
ing the late Shāng dynasty cannot be understood as “forced”:
 Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “coercion,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co

ercion [accessed 17.05.2022]. While these terms certainly arose during the medieval period in Eng-
land and their semantic range is confined to these specific contexts, specificity applies to every sin-
gle term for social phenomena under scrutiny of the present volume, because a given society
naturally has temporal, geographical and other boundaries that make it identifiable and tangible.
Any study in social history is therefore comparative in the sense that historians, if I may borrow the
words of Joseph C. Miller “live in historical contexts of their own, and so they always add the per-
spective of the historian trying to make sense of them.” (Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 6.)
However, historians by necessity not only work with historical material, but also with terms and
concepts, including those of their own time, which they should be careful not to project onto other
or earlier societies. As Miller pointedly states, “Being in the present does not exclude constructive
engagement with the past; rather, the historian must merely avoid conflating the two.” It should be
added and pointed out that, while comparing phenomena in different societies at different times
and in different languages, “two” easily becomes “many.”
 See Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China”: as well as Working for His Majesty.
 Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China”: abstract.
28 Susanne Adamski
There was no phrase in ancient Chinese to express the idea of dependent labor or public work;
the unifying concept was the responsibility, shared generally by the king’s subjects and dif-
fused downward through the patrimonial and patriarchal political and social ranks, to serve
the king and lineage heads. Though there was certainly a fundamental social cleavage be-
tween those who benefited from the work and those who labored to provide it, there was also
an acknowledged continuum of obligation that required all, high and low alike, to serve their
superiors. [. . .] The concept of servitude, in fact, seems to have been generally accepted by
people at all positions on the social spectrum.64
Because of new finds and developments in Western Zhōu epigraphy since 1969,
Keightley left out the Western Zhōu evidence. He was a specialist for the late
Shāng. Indeed, epigraphic evidence from the Western Zhōu is not easy to interpret.
2.1.1 The Hū dǐng 曶鼎 Inscription: “Slavery,” “Bondage” or What?
The long and famous Hū dǐng 曶鼎 inscription (Jíchéng #2838), dated to the middle
Western Zhōu period (before around 957 BC), has been understood as an example
of “slavery” or some other kind of dependency.65 Some graphs in the rubbings are
unreadable or missing, which has led to different understandings. Unfortunately,
the vessel was irretrievably lost.66 The inscription consists of three parts (see
Fig. 2). Part one is a “typical” description of Hū’s 曶 investiture as hereditary offi-
cial. Parts two and three each document a court case.
 Keightley, Working for His Majesty: 240.

 For different translations and/or discussions of the Hū dǐng inscription see Chou Feng-wu (Zhōu
Fèngwǔ) 周鳳五, “Hū dǐng míngwén xīnshì 曶鼎銘文新釋,” Gùgōng xuéshù jìkān 故宮學術季刊 / The
National Palace Museum Research Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2015): 1–18; Ulrich Lau, Quellenstudien zur
Landvergabe und Bodenübertragung in der westlichen Zhou-Dynastie (1045?–771 v. Chr.), Monumenta
Serica Monograph Series 41 (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1999): 368–83; Lutz Schunk, “Dokumente zur
Rechtsgeschichte des alten China: Übersetzung und historisch-philologische Kommentierung juris-
tischer Bronzeinschriften der West-Zhou-Zeit (1045–771 v.Chr.)” (PhD diss., Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster, 1994): 139–65; Laura A. Skosey, “The Legal System and Legal Tradition of the
Western Zhou (ca. 1045–771 B.C.E.)” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1996): 98–101 and 346–59;
Laura A. Skosey, “Hu ding 曶鼎,” in A Source Book of Ancient Chinese Bronze Inscriptions, Early China
Special Monograph Series 7, ed. Constance A. Cook and Paul R. Goldin (Berkeley: The Society for the
Study of Early China, 2016): 129–35. For a discussion of epigraphic issues and doubts as to the in-
scription’s authenticity, see Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China”: 197–99, n. 1. For the discus-
sion below of parts 2 and 3 of the inscription regarding the identification of social status, compare
Adamski, “Sklave oder Dienstmann”: 21–24.
 For the circumstances and transmission of the rubbing, see Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient
China”: 197–99, n. 1; Skosey, “Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou”: 346, n. 90
and Skosey, “Hu ding”: 129.
The first centered around five men. They had been “redeemed” or “bought” by
Hū, at the “price” of a horse and a bolt of silk. But Hū had not received them, thus
taking legal action.
Fig. 2: Rubbing of the Hū dǐng 曶鼎 inscription. From Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng 殷周金文集成
(Shànghǎi 上海: Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中华书局, 1985), vol. 5, no. 2838A, 243. Reproduced with
permission. Due to two vertical columns partly left blank, the three parts of the inscription can be
made out rather clearly.
The verb used is ( , ), which should be transcribed as 賣, often normalized as later

shú 贖, “to redeem, to ransom,” but possibly an early epigraphic occurrence of yù 賣,
or variant of epigraphic yù 儥, in the sense “to buy” or “to redeem.”67 According to the
 For the paleographic issues and reasons for this identification, see Adamski, “Sklave oder Dien-
stmann”: 22, n. 37. Chou Feng-wu states that the graph should be understood in the sense of an
“exchange” (jiāoyì 交易, jiāohuàn 交换), rather than in the later sense “to buy” (Chou Feng-wu,
“Hū dǐng míngwén xīnshì 曶鼎銘文新釋”: 5). Kolb, Infanterie im alten China: 118, refers to this
transaction as “trade” (Handel).
30 Susanne Adamski
verdict, Hū received the five men, who are each mentioned by name. Following one
reading, they were to return to “their settlement(s)” (jué yì < ✶kot q(r)[ə]p 氒邑) and
“their fields” (jué tián < ✶kot lˤiŋ 氒田),68 probably meaning those they formerly used to
live in and work on, normally, and most likely, affiliated to a certain lineage. They may
even have returned to their family “property.” However, according to another reading,
the pronoun jué 氒 does not refer to the five men.69 It may thus be that either the
five individuals themselves had been “bought” or “redeemed,” or, as Laura Sko-
sey 1996 and 2016 suggests, only their labor. Further, the pronoun jué here can
not even be seen in the transmitted rubbing ‒ which apparently misses characters
at the end of several lines ‒70 but is merely an emendation, paralleling the preceding
chain jué yì 氒邑.71 In any case, the individuals in question were objects of the law,
not its subjects. They seem to have been “dependents” of either Hū or his lineage, or
the opposing party’s lineage. They are not referred to by a specific term designating
any social group: the text simply refers to “men” (rén < ✶ni[ŋ] 人), or “individuals” (fū
< ✶p(r)a 夫). Since we lack information on their working and living conditions, their
exact status – if there were such differentiations within the non-aristocratic popula-
tion – cannot be determined.
Part three of the inscription describes another lawsuit, involving, again, Hū.
Ten bushels of grain had been stolen from him during a year of famine. The thieves
were either the élite member Kuāng 匡 together with twenty of his chén 臣, or
twenty chén of Kuāng’s.72 These chén are translated variously as “slaves”,73 “serv-
ants”,74 or “chen-servants.”75 Hū sought compensation, in the form of grain, before
the judge Dōnggōng 東宫. But neither Kuāng nor his men were able to replace the
grain. Instead, he offered Hū altogether seven fields and five men, three of them
 Skosey, “Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou”: 356; Lau, Quellenstudien: 372
and 382. Compare Adamski, “Sklave oder Dienstmann”: 24, n. 39.
 This interpretation can be found in Schunk, Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte: 147.
 These are lines 1–4, 7–8, 10–15, and 19–23. Compare the emended transcription in Yīn Zhōu jīn-
wén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2838, 414.
 Cf. also Schunk, “Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”: 161, n. 91.
 According to another reading, the twenty chén acted on behalf of Kuāng’s zhòng 眾 (✶tuŋ-s),
denoting a social status or function and thus referring to an individual under Kuang’s authority
(translated as “commoner” (Gemeiner) by Lau, Quellenstudien: 372, or “servant” (Knecht) by
Schunk, “Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”: 148), while Laura Skosey applies the meaning
“masses” (“Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou”: 357) or “multitudes” [“Hu
ding”: 134]), apparently referring to Kuang’s “people” in general. By contrast Keightley, “Public
Work in Ancient China”: 197–99, n. 1, interprets the inscriptional graph 眾 as a scribal error for the
conjunction 眔 (tà < ✶m-rˤəp).
 Lau, Quellenstudien: 372.
 Schunk, “Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”: 148.
 Skosey, “Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou”: 357 as well as “Hu ding”:
134–35.
chén 臣,76 each also mentioned by name. The verb used is yòng 用 , “to use.” Due
to several epigraphic issues, either Kuāng “used” the fields and chén to compensate
Hū, that is, giving them to Hū, or Hū was going to “use” their labor and the agricul-
tural yield until his loss was compensated. In this case, both fields and chén would
have remained those of Kuāng.77
Because of this apparent “transaction,” as well as their “gift-giving” in other in-
scriptions, chén 臣 has been understood as a status term, denoting “slaves,” or at
least a social “class” of “servants.” However, as I have discussed elsewhere, the indi-
vidual contexts to the various chén mentioned in bronze inscriptions point to a great
difference in their respective social standing, which makes it likely that this was nei-
ther a status term nor descriptive of a specific function, but a general term for subor-
dination, from which other compounds denoting more specific functions may have
developed. This is consistent with the Shāng evidence as presented by Keightley
2012, with similar Western Zhōu findings made by Raimund Kolb 1991, Vassilij Kru-
kov 1997 or Wáng Jìnfēng 王进锋 2011, and with the contextual use of chén in later
Warring States sources as studied by Robert Gassmann in 2006.78 The individuals
named in the Hū dǐng inscription were in a relation of asymmetrical dependency in
the sense that they were objects of an exchange and served others. But we have no
proof of any “force” used on them. Definitions of “serfs”79 or “villeins”80 are also too
specific: They presume the existence of a determinable social class and require delin-
eating the individuals’ “freedom” or “unfreedom” in relation to other social strata. It
 “Fields, seven, and men, five.” 田十(七)[田]人五夫.

 Compare the different readings in Lau, Quellenstudien: 372, 382‒83; Schunk, “Dokumente zur
Rechtsgeschichte”: 142–43, 148–50; Skosey, “Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western
Zhou”: 98‒99, 357‒59; Skosey, “Hu ding”: 133–35.
 Compare Adamski, “Sklave oder Dienstmann”; see the works by Vassilij M. Krjukov, Ritualnaja
kommunikacija v drevnem Kitae (Moscow: Institut Vostokovedeniya RAN, 1997): 62, and Wáng Jìn-
fēng 王进锋, “Hǔchén yǔ cì chén 虎臣与赐臣,ˮ Sìchuān wénwù 四川文物 5 (2011): 47–52; see also
his more recent book-length study of chén, xiǎochén and society in the Shāng and Western Zhōu
dynasties: Wáng Jìnfēng, Chén, xiǎochén yǔ Shāng Zhōu shèhuì 臣、小臣与商周社会 (Shànghǎi:
Shànghǎi Rénmín Chūbǎnshè 上海人民出版社, 2018). Raimund Kolb, whose Die Infanterie im alten
China had previously been unavailable to me, very judiciously discusses chén of the Shāng and
Western Zhōu on pages 48–50 and 115.
 According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a “serfˮ is defined as “a member of a servile feu-
dal class bound to the land and subject to the will of its owner,ˮ its first known use attested for
the year 1611 (see Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “serf,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictio
nary/serf [accessed 17.05.2022]).
 A “villein” is defined as referring to “a free common villager or village peasant of any of the
feudal classes lower in rank than the thaneˮ, “a free peasant of a feudal class higher in rank than a
cotterˮ, and “an unfree peasant standing as the slave of a feudal lord but free in legal relations with
respect to all others.ˮ The word’s earliest occurrence in the first sense is not attested until the four-
teenth century. See Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “villein,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/
dictionary/villein [accessed 17.05.2022].
32 Susanne Adamski
remains unclear whether the men, or their families, “owned” the fields they worked
on or returned to. The peasant population of the Western Zhōu was normally tied to
the land, under jurisdiction of royal lineages or “regional rulers.” So far, the Hū dǐng
documentation of a transfer of specific persons along with fields as the result of a
lawsuit is singular. We cannot say that chén “in general” could be “bought” or ex-
changed in commerce.
To further complicate our evidence base, David Keightley 1969 has argued
against the genuineness of the inscription, based on character errors and inconsis-
tencies in the alleged provenances of the inscription’s rubbings.81 We must at least
consider this possibility.82
2.1.2 Indefinite Terms? Problems in Searching for Social Status
There are other terms that are sometimes identified as denoting “slaves” or other
subordinate “classes,” such as rénlì 人鬲.83 We need more information on these
people than the mere fact that they were personnel “given” to élite members. This
is, for the reasons I have given, not sufficient grounds to assign any specific status
to them. So far, it is not easy to make out any specific “strata” or “classes” of people
denoted by specific epigraphic terms in early ancient China.84 Some terms are
 See Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China”: 197–99, n. 1.

 Another general reason for paleographic and epigraphic irregularities in inscriptions might be
the use of blueprint manuscripts on perishable materials in the process of inscription making, as
was recently shown by Škrabal for Western Zhōu bronzes (see Ondřej Škrabal, “Writing before In-
scribing: On the Use of Manuscripts in the Production of Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions,” Early
China 42 (2019): 273–332).
 Such an identification can be found in quite recent studies, for instance in Li Feng, “The West-
ern Zhou State”: 101, as already cited; see also Li Feng, Landscape and Power: 127, where rénlì is
directly translated as “slaves.” Also compare its lexicalization as “captives or slaves” 俘虜或奴隸 in
Jīnwén chángyòng zìdiǎn 金文常用字典 (Xī’ān 西安: Shǎnxī Rénmín Chūbǎnshè 陕西人民出版社,
2004): 766.
 As an aside, “class” and “stratum” are modern social concepts that developed in nineteenth-
century Europe while estate-based society dissolved; according to Reinhart Koselleck, the tradi-
tional German concept Stand (“estate, degree”) in 1807 in Prussia, for instance, comprised a vast
array of meanings, while the rather new term Klasse seems to have been defined mostly by econom-
ical and legal criteria; neither being a clear-cut concept: “Der Begriff des Standes enthielt um die
damalige Jahrhundertwende unendlich viele Bedeutungsstreifen politischer, wirtschaftlicher und
rechtlicher Art, so daß aus dem Wort selber keine eindeutige Zuordnung abzuleiten ist. [. . .] Der
Begriff ‘Klasse’ enthielt damals ebenso mannigfaltige Bedeutungen, die sich streckenweise mit dem
von ‘Stand’ überlappten. Immerhin kann für den deutschen, speziell den preußischen Sprachge-
brauch der Bürokratie gesagt werden, daß damals eine Klasse eher durch wirtschaftliche und ver-
waltungsrechtliche Kriterien bestimmt wurde als durch politische oder gar geburtsständische
Kriterien.” Reinhart Koselleck, “Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte,” in Historische Semantik
und Begriffsgeschichte, ed. Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978): 22. According to the
obviously used as official titles; some seem to denote certain functions, and may
then have been used as so-called “official titles,” too.
To give an example of the broad social connotations of Shāng and Western
Zhōu terms, I should like to make some additional comments on two terms which
are known throughout the pre-imperial and imperial written sources: chén 臣, com-
monly in the sense of “minister” or “servant,” and qiè 妾, meaning “spouse” in the
earliest inscriptions, and “concubine” in later historical sources.85 These terms
were often used together, already in the early Western Zhōu period, implying a
close connection of the two. As a compound, chén qiè 臣妾 is lexicalized as male
and female “slaves” already for early periods in Chinese history, for example in the
comprehensive Chinese language dictionary Hànyǔ dà cídiǎn 汉语大词典 (2006), or
in the dictionary of commonly used bronze inscriptional characters Jīnwén chán-
gyòng zìdiǎn 金文常用字典 of 2004.86 As we have seen so far, and as has been criti-
cized by Huáng Xiànfán already prior to the 1980s,87 such an identification should
be questioned for the earliest Chinese periods.
Merriam-Webster dictionary, the English noun “class” is first attested for 1583 in the meaning “a
group, set, or kind sharing common attributes,” and not yet in the sense of “a group sharing the
same economic or social status” or “social rank” (Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “Class,” https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/class#h1 [accessed 17.05.2022]). The first known use of
“stratum” was in 1599 in the sense “a bed or layer artificially made” (Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.
v. “Stratum,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stratum [accessed 17.05.2022]). The
term “class” (French classe, German Klasse) was first used in the biological classification of plants,
“[a]ls Konzept zur Analyse der Gesellschaft tauchte er erstmals bei den Physiokraten im 18. Jh. auf
(Physiokratie). In ähnlicher Weise übernahm ihn zu Beginn des 19. Jh. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon
zur Bezeichnung der einzig produktiven industriellen Klasse. Für Karl Marx, der den modernen Be-
griff der Klasse prägte, war der Besitz an den Produktionsmitteln das entscheidende Kriterium, das
in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft die Zuordnung zur Arbeiter- oder Kapitalistenklasse bestimmte”
(Ruedi Brassel-Moser, “Klassengesellschaft,” June 13 2012, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz
(HLS), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/015984/2012-06-13/ [accessed 17.05.2022]). The word was
borrowed from Latin classis, “fleet, class, division,” there also denoting “a class, into six of which
Servius Tullius devided the whole Roman people” (see John Relly Beard, Cassell’s Latin dictionary,
by J.R. and C. Beard (London: John Cassell, 1854): 66), compare Wolfgang Pfeifer, “Klasse,” in Digi-
tales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS), https://www.dwds.de/wb/Klasse [accessed
17.05.2022].
 See also the earlier discussion of the two in Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì:
16–17. For semantics of the term qiè in early and later imperial sources, see Griet Vankeerberghen,
“A Sexual Order in the Making: Wives and Slaves in Early Imperial China,” in Sex, Power and Slav-
ery, ed. Gwyn Campbell and Elizabeth Elbourne (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014): 121–39.
 Jīnwén chángyòng zìdiǎn: 349. See also the comprehensive Chinese language dictionary edited
by Luó Zhúfèng 罗竹凤, Hànyǔ dà cídiǎn 汉语大词典, vol. 8 (Shànghǎi: Hànyǔ Dà Cídiǎn Chū-
bǎnshè 汉语大词典出版社, 2006): 720.
 In the collocation chén qiè, Huáng sees a clear distinction of “male” and “female” in transmitted
texts, where it appears to have denoted poor, ordinary servants, or poor and common people, and
34 Susanne Adamski
While this composite can already be found in Western Zhōu bronze inscrip-
tions, it does not yet occur in excavated oracle-bone corpora from the last Shāng
capital Yīn 殷.88 However, some divination inscriptions prove that chén 臣 and qiè
妾 were already correlated, such as piece Huādōng 409 (27), belonging to a corpus
of oracle-bones and turtle shells excavated in 1991 at Huāyuánzhuāng 花园庄 vil-
lage, Hénán 河南 province, which was published in 2003:
己卜: 叀臣又妾禦子馘妣庚.89
Cracks made on jǐ 己(-day): It should be captive chén 臣 and qiè 妾 to make the exorcism rite
for prince Guó 馘 (to) ancestress Gēng 庚.90
Another example is Héjí 629 (2):
貞今庚辰, 夕用甗小臣三十, 小妾三十于帚. 九月.91
within some contexts referred to the conquered and captured populace in war; according to him, its
predominant notion as “male and female slaves” and as a status term is therefore a modern misinter-
pretation of old commentaries. Compare Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 19–20.
 For this paper, I consulted the following oracle-bone corpora: Jiǎgǔwén héjí (abbreviated Héjí 合
集), 13 vols. (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1999); Xiǎotún nándì jiǎgǔ 小屯南地甲骨 (abbreviated
Túnnán 屯南), 2 parts (5 vols.) (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1983); Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ
殷墟花园庄东地甲骨 (abbreviated Huādōng 花东), 6 vols. (Kūnmíng 昆明: Yúnnán Rénmín Chū-
bǎnshè 云南人民出版社, 2003); and Yīnxū Xiǎotún cūnzhōng cūnnán jiǎgǔ 殷墟小屯村中村南甲骨
(abbreviated Túnzhōngnán 屯中南), 2 vols. (Kūnmíng: Yúnnán Rénmín Chūbǎnshè, 2012), as well as
their respective concordances: Yīnxū jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn 殷墟甲骨刻辞类纂, 3 vols. (Běijīng: Zhōng-
huá Shūjú, 1989); Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn (Běijīng: Xiànzhuāng Shūjú,
2011); Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔwén lèizuǎn (Fúzhōu: Fújiàn Rénmín Chūbǎnshè, 2016);
Yīnxū Xiǎotún cūnzhōng cūnnán jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 2017). I did not con-
sider collections that date back to before academic excavations, in particular those in the Royal
Ontario Museum and the British Library, since forgeries are not securely identifiable in every single
case.
89 See rubbing in Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ, vol. 3, no. 409, 820 (the inscription can be
found on the upper left side of the turtle shell, the graphs running from right to left, then down-
wards, and again from left to right). Transcription follows Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔwén
lèizuǎn, 95. Also see Yīnxū jiǎgǔwén móshì quánbiān 殷墟甲骨文摹释全编, vol. 10 (Bějiīng: Xian-
zhuang Shūjú 线装书局, 2010), 5670 and Adam Craig Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from
Huayuanzhuang East: Translated with an Introduction and Commentary, Library of Sinology 3 (Bos-
ton and Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019): 341 (HYZ 409), both of which transcribe the graph as
“Ěr” 而; I follow Schwartz, however, in reading it as “Guó” 馘 in the Huādōng corpus (for the iden-
tification see: 81, n. 18).
 Cf. the translation by Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East: 341
(HYZ 409).
 See rubbing in Jiǎgǔwén héjí, vol. 1, no. 629, 150. Transcription follows Jiǎgǔwén héjí shìwén,
vol. 1, no. 00629.
Divined: This gēngchén (day), in the evening (we) use as sacrificial offering thirty minor chén
(and) thirty minor qiè to (the king’s deceased) wife.92
A parallel structure in Héjí 630 (1) indicates that qiè could refer to “women” in gen-
eral, because it contains both chén and nǚ 女, “womanˮ:
癸酉卜, 鼎(貞): 多匕(妣)甗小臣三十, 小女三十[于]帚(婦).93
Cracks made on (day) guǐyǒu, divined: (To) the many ancestresses offer thirty minor servants
[小臣] (and) thirty minor women [小女], or: girls to the (king’s deceased) wife.
Thus, qiè 妾 seem to be female equivalents of the male chén 臣, which would explain
their later collocation. During the 1950s there was already some debate among schol-
ars about the social status of qiè in oracle-bone inscriptions: Most believed that qiè
obviously accompanied the king, apparently being wives and concubines and not
slaves; others held that those qiè who were not referred to as the king’s wives could
be killed like cattle, and were sacrificed together with animals, and thus certainly
were “slaves.”94 Because the term chén had a very broad range and could even refer
to high-ranking officers or “officials,ˮ sometimes even translated as “ministers,ˮ it
stands to reason that the word qiè 妾 is also used in a broad sense. Although it was
sometimes synonymous to qī 妻, “wife,ˮ I would suggest a translation as “female
servantsˮ in the Shāng context, wherever the meaning “wife” is unclear.95 But we
know nothing about their living conditions except the fact that some qiè and some
chén were offered as human sacrifices. This, however, was an important argument in
their identification as “slaves,” for example by Wáng Chéngshào 王承袑 1955, which
is only seldom disputed.96 We also often find the assumption that all victims of
human sacrifice must have been of “low status” and “humble origin.”97 But human
 Cf. the translation by Christian Schwermann and Wang Ping 王平, “Female Human Sacrifice in
Shang-Dynasty Oracle-Bone Inscriptions” (unpublished manuscript, September 29, 2014): 63.
 See rubbing in Jiǎgǔwén héjí, vol. 1, no. 630, 150. Transcription following Jiǎgǔwén héjí shìwén,
vol. 1, no. 00630. Compare translation in Schwermann/Wang, “Female Human Sacrifice”: 54.
94 For example Wáng Chéngshào 王承袑, “Shìlùn Yīndài ‘xī’, ‘qiè’, ‘fú’ de shèhuì shēnfèn 试论殷
代’奚’、‘妾’、‘ ’ 的社会身份,ˮ Běijīng dàxué xuébào 北京大学学报 1955, no. 1: 114–21; for quotes
of this and other works see Yú Xǐngwú 于省吾 vol. 1, ed., Jiǎgǔwénzì gǔlín 甲骨文字詁林 (Běijīng:
Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中華書局, 1999): no. 0428, 453.
 Compare other translations, for example “maid-servantsˮ, in Schwermann/Wang, “Female
Human Sacrifice”: 17–19.
 See Wáng Chéngshào, “Shìlùn Yīndài ‘xī’, ‘qiè’, ‘fú’.ˮ Aside from Huáng Xiànfán, Zhōngguó
lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì, on the respective Shāng terminology (see especially 16–24), cautious treat-
ment of Shāng and Zhōu epigraphic social terms can be found in Kolb, Die Infanterie im Alten
China, and Kolb, “Bemerkungen zu Ulrich Lau.ˮ
 For example, the reference work “History of the Shāng-Yīn Period” (Yīn Shāng shǐ 殷商史) pub-
lished in 2003 classifies the archaeologically excavated remains of Shāng human sacrifice and ac-
companying-in-death as clearly belonging to a class of “slaves,” identifying them in the epigraphic
record as well (in particular chén qiè 臣妾); an entire chapter of the book is dedicated to “slaves”
36 Susanne Adamski
victims need not automatically be of low status.98 This fails to consider various possi-
ble motives of Shāng sacrifice that still need to be studied in detail.
Bronze inscriptions also mention chén and qiè in connection: In Western Zhōu
evidence, chén qiè occurs six times as a collocation, once in an early (before ca.
957 BC) and five times in late Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions (ca. 857–771 BC).99
From the contexts, we can make out chén qiè as subordinate people that are in
some way dependent:
In the short Fù Zuò Fù Yǐ zūn 复作父乙尊 inscription (Jíchéng #5978), the “re-
gional rulerˮ of Yàn 燕 bestowed on Fù 复: “a cap, an overcoat, chén qiè 臣妾, and
cowry shellsˮ 冂衣臣妾貝 as gifts.100 These kinds of gifts are known from early
(Chapter 8, “Núlì zāoyù 奴隶遭遇”; see Hú Hòuxuān 胡厚宣 and Hú Zhènyǔ 胡振宇, eds., Yīn
Shāng shǐ 殷商史 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Rénmín Chūbǎnshè, 2003): 149–211). This assumption is
mainly based on the fact that many of these victims seem to have been captives from non-Shāng
tribes.
 In ancient China, we have transmitted accounts of high-ranking officials being buried together
with their lord, for instance the three brothers Zǐchē (or: Zǐjū) Yǎnxī 子車奄息, Zǐchē Zhòngháng 子
車仲行, and Zǐchē Zhēnhǔ (or: Qiánhǔ) 子車鍼虎, who in 621 BC followed Duke Mù 穆公 of Qín into
the grave (purportedly among altogether 177 victims), their deaths being lamented in the well-
known poem “Yellow Bird,” or “Oriole” (“Huáng niǎo” 黄鳥), which is included in the “Book of
Songs” (Ode #131 in the Máo 毛 tradition). See Zuǒ zhuàn, chapter “Lord Wén sixth year (621 BC)”
(“Wén Gōng liù nián 文公六年”), which states disapprovingly: “All were good men of Qin.” 皆秦之
良也. See text and annotated translation in Durrant, Li and Schaberg, Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan 左
傳: 490‒91. See also the interesting analysis by Griet Vankeerberghen, “ʻYellow Bird’ and the Dis-
course of Retainer Sacrifice in China,” in Sacrifices humains: Perspectives croisées et représenta-
tions. Human Sacrifice: Cross-cultural Perspectives and Representations, Religions 2, ed. Pierre
Bonnechere and Renaud Gagné (Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège, 2013): 175–203. Although
strictly speaking, these “accompaniers-in-death” (rénxùn 人殉) differ somewhat from the “human
sacrifices” (rénjì 人祭) found in great numbers in pits in the Shāng royal cemetery at Ānyáng 安阳,
their high social standing clearly did not prevent them from being killed; instead, their very posi-
tion seems to have been the reason why they were chosen as victims. Still useful as an overview of
human sacrifice and accompanying-in-death in Chinese transmitted sources is Eduard Erkes, “Men-
schenopfer und Kannibalismus im alten China,” Der Erdball: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Menschen-
und Völkerkunde 1, no. 1 (1926): 1–6. Outside of China, human sacrificial victims in the pre-
Columbian Americas could be of high social status, such as Inca children sacrificed on Andean
mountains (see Patrick Tierney, The Highest Altar: The Story of Human Sacrifice [New York: Viking,
1989], and, more recently, Maria Constanza Ceruti, “Frozen Mummies from Andean Mountaintop
Shrines: Bioarchaeology and Ethnohistory of Inca Human Sacrifice,” BioMed Research International
(2015), https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/439428 [accessed 17.05.2022]).
 Western Zhōu reign dates follow Edward L. Shaughnessy, Sources of Western Zhou History: In-
scribed Bronze Vessels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991): xix, and periodization as
given in Li Feng, Landscape and Power: xvii.
100 For the identification of the graph 冂 as a variant of mì < ✶mˤ[e]k ʔ, “cover,” possibly “cap,”
see Susanne Adamski, Die Darstellung des Bogenschießens in Bronzeinschriften der West-Zhōu-Zeit
(1045–771 v.Chr.): Eine philologische Quellenanalyse, Veröffentlichungen des Ostasieninstituts der
Ruhr-Universität Bochum 66 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017): 66‒67. Compare the rubbing and
investiture inscriptions.101 The long and famous Dà Kè dǐng 大克鼎 inscription (Jí-
chéng #2836) describes the investiture of the official Kè 克. The king bestows on him
settlements and fields at different locations, belonging to different families, which
was clearly a practice of the late Western Zhōu:102
易(賜)女(汝)田于埜. 易(賜)女(汝)田于渒. 易(賜)女(汝)井家田于 . 㠯(以)氒臣妾. 易(賜)女
(汝)田于康(康).103
I bestow on you fields at Yě 埜. I bestow on you fields at X 渒. I bestow on you X fields at X

belonging to the Jǐng 井 lineage, along with their chén qiè 臣妾. I bestow on you fields at
Kāng 康.104
Here, the chén qiè 臣妾 are tied to the fields they apparently live and work on. On
the Shī Huǐ guǐ 師毀簋 vessel (Shī X guǐ 師簋) (Jíchéng #4311), dated to 841 BC but
unfortunately lost, the minister Bó Héfù 伯龢父,105 orders Shī Huǐ 師毀 to:
䔲(司)我西扁(偏)東扁(偏)僕馶(馭)百工牧臣妾. 東(董) (裁)内外.106
Supervise and administer the pú and the charioteers, the artisans, the herders, and the chén qiè
臣妾 of the eastern and western wings of my armies, managing internal and external affairs.107
transcription in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 4, no. 5978, 257, as well as the transcription in
Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 2090, 113–14.
 On “gifts” of various kinds Virginia Kane in 1982 noted that “in Western Chou bronze inscrip-
tions, it seems important to bear in mind the fundamental distinction between those presented as a
reward for services already rendered or military valor already displayed, and those ‘gifts’ which ac-
companied a charge or appointment whose duties and services were yet to be performed. It seems
that only the former – the rewards or recompense for services already rendered – should actually
be considered as gifts (understood as objects which the recipient may keep and use as he wishes),
while the latter comprised instead the insignia and accouterments essential to the official duties
being assigned and as such were always, at least in theory, subject to return to the superior.” Vir-
ginia C. Kane, “Aspects of Western Chou Appointment Inscriptions: The Charge, the Gifts, and the
Response,” Early China 8 (1982–83): 14.
 For developments in the Western Zhōu granting of land, see Li Feng, Landscape and Power:
125–26.
 Punctuated transcription from Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 4023, 253; compare rubbing and transcription
in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2836, 408–9.
 Compare the transcription, translation and discussion by Constance A. Cook, “Da Ke ding 大
克鼎 and related inscriptions,” in A Source Book of Ancient Chinese Bronze Inscriptions, Early China
Special Monograph Series 7, ed. Constance A. Cook and Paul R. Goldin (Berkeley: The Society for
the Study of Early China, 2016): 172–79, especially 177–79.
 Identified as Gòngbó Hé 共伯和, Firstborn and head of the Gòng lineage. For the historical
context as well as the dating of the inscription, compare Li Feng, Landscape and Power: 106.
 Punctuated transcription from Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 5041, 324. Compare rubbing and transcription
in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 3, no. 4311, 439.
 Compare the translation in Li Feng, Landscape and Power: 106; another translation can be
found in the freely available class text readings by Robert Eno, “Inscriptional Records of the
38 Susanne Adamski
The late Western Zhōu Nì zhōng 逆鐘 (Jíchéng #0062) records how Shū Shì 叔氏 or-
ders Nì 逆 to:
用于公室僕庸臣妾小子室家. 母(毋)又(有)不 (聞) (智).108
Supervise the pú 僕 and yōng 庸 and chén qiè 臣妾 of the lord’s house, and the houses and
families of the minor sons (xiǎozǐ 小子). Let there be nothing you do not hear or know.
According to two other inscriptions, chén qiè were part of the royal household at
the Kāng 康 palace or palace-temple: In the Zǎi Shòu guǐ 宰獸簋 inscription, from
the late middle or late Western Zhōu,109 the king orders Zǎi Shòu 宰獸 to:
(兼) (司)康宫王家臣妾 (庸). 外入(内)母(毋)敢無 (聞) (知).110
Administer the chén qiè 臣妾 as well as the X and yōng of the Kāng 康 palace and the royal
household. Do not dare not to hear and know of inner and outer affairs.
And on the transmitted rubbing of the Yī guǐ 伊簋 (Jíchéng #4287), dated to the late
Western Zhōu:
王 [. . .] 命伊官 (司)康宫王臣妾百工.111
The king [. . .] orders Yī 伊 to x supervise and administer the king’s chén qiè 臣妾 as well as
the hundred artisans at (or of) the Kāng palace.
Obviously, chén qiè belong to the personnel of the king’s and other lineagesʼ house-
holds alongside other more specified personnel.112 Therefore, chén qiè seem to denote
Western Zhou,” Indiana University, IUScholarWorks Repository, Fall 2012: 68–69, http://hdl.han
dle.net/2022/23466 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Punctuated transcription from Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 0056, 4. Compare rubbing and transcription
in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 1, no. 0062, 35.
 The vessel was found 1997 in Dàtóngcūn 大同村, Fúfēng 扶风 county, Shǎnxī 陝西 province,
and is held in the province’s Zhōuyuán Museum 周原博物館 in the city of Bǎojī 寶雞. See Luò Xi-
zhang 罗西章, “Zǎi Shòu guǐ míng lüèkǎo 宰兽簋铭略考,” Wénwù 文物 1998, no. 8: 83–87.
 Punctuated transcription from Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 5048, 325. For the rubbing see Luò Xīzhāng,
“Zǎi Shòu guǐ míng lüèkǎo 宰兽簋铭略考”: 85, Fig. 3.
 Transcription from Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 5030, 322; compare rubbing and transcription in Yīn Zhōu
jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 3, no. 4287, 406.
 Early transmitted literature in a few instances also refers to chén qiè 臣妾 as a pair. While the
chain does not occur in the anthology of poetry “Book of Songs” (Shī jīng), it can be found twice in
the divination classic “Book of Changes” (Yì jīng 易經), without however many contextual clues as
to the semantics of the collocated words. In the “Book of Documents” (Shàng shū), chapter “Ha-
rangue at Bi” (“Bì shì” 費誓), chén qiè are mentioned in the context of military campaigns. In a
speech attributed to Bó Qín 伯禽, the Prince of Lǔ 鲁, son of the Duke of Zhōu 周公 (reigned
1042–1036 BC for young King Chéng 成), before a campaign against the Xúróng 徐戎 and Huáiyí 淮
夷 he warns his officers and soldiers, as well as the people of Lǔ: “When horses and cattle abscond,
and chén and qiè (male and female servants) flee, do not dare to get over (the entrenchments) and
chase them. If you repectfully restore them, I will commensurately reward you. If you trespass and
male and female people who are attached to élite households which they serve in
one way or another. They are administered and supervised. Aside from their “admin-
istration,ˮ we lack information on the personal relations between these “servingˮ
people and their official superiors. Can we securely identify this social asymmetry as
“strongˮ? I think not. This reflects a problem of our sources.
pursue or do not return them, you will receive the usual punishment. Do not dare to plunder or
steal. If you pass over enclosures or walls to steal horses and cattle, or lure away chén and qiè
(male and female servants), you will receive the usual punishment.” 馬牛其風, 臣妾逋逃, 勿敢越
逐. 祗復之, 我商賚汝. 乃越逐不復, 汝則有常刑. 無敢寇攘, 逾垣牆, 竊馬牛, 誘臣妾, 汝則有常刑. Sìbù
cóngkān 四部叢刊, Shàng shū 尚書, juàn 卷 13 (my punctuation); compare the translations by Séra-
phin Couvreur, Chou king 書經: Les Annales de la Chine, Humanités d’extrême-Orient: Série Cultur-
elle des Hautes Études de Tien-Tsin (Leiden: Brill/Les Belles Lettres; Paris: Cathasia, 1950): 393–96,
and James Legge, The Chinese Classics, with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegom-
ena, and Copious Indexes, vol. 3, part 2, Containing the Fifth Part of the Shoo King, or the Books of
Chow; and the Indexes (Hongkong: At the Author’s; London: Trübner & Co., 1865): 621–25, and
Maria Khayutina, “‘Bi shi’ 粊誓, Western Zhou Oath Texts, and the Legal Culture of Early China,” in
Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu
(Classic of Documents), ed. Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2017): 416–45. This text, at
least in its wording, cannot be regarded as an authentic Western Zhōu “document” (compare
Khayutina, “‘Bi shi’ 粊誓,” as well as Shaughnessy, “Shàng shū 尚書”). However, if we treat this
speech, or “oath,” as reflecting some of the circumstances of that period, it indicates that chén and
qiè also served in the military, following warriors on campaigns, the use of the chain pointing to
unspecified male and female “servants” or “retainers” at large, perhaps being responsible for tasks
such as cooking, tending animals, etc. (also compare Legge, The Shoo King: 623–24, n. 4). Interpre-
tations as “slaves” in this context may have arisen because the commentary attributed to the West-
ern Hàn scholar Kǒng Ānguó 孔安国 (156–74 BC) explains chén qiè as “nú bì 奴婢,” commonly
understood and translated as “slaves,” or due to their collocation with livestock and possibility of
absconding. For another recent translation and study of this chapter regarding its composition, his-
torical background, and questions of authenticity, see Khayutina, “‘Bi shi’ 粊誓.” All in all, this oc-
currence of chén qiè seems largely in accord with the usage of the collocation in Western Zhōu
bronze inscriptions (search performed using the electronic collectanea Sìbù cóngkān 四部丛刊 pro-
vided by the Unihan Ancient Books Database 書同文古籍數據庫, https://guji.unihan.com.cn/, via
CrossAsia [crossasia.org]). A glimpse into digitalized manuscript sources shows that in Qín Shuì-
hǔdì legal bamboo manuscripts, we still find the collocation chén qiè 臣妾 (altogether 22 times, ei-
ther in legal statutes [Qínlǜ shíbā zhǒng 秦律十八種], questions and answers on them [Fǎlǜ dáwèn
法律答問], or model cases for sealing and investigating [Fēngzhěn shì 封診式]); not always as part
of the now frequently used chain lìchén qiè 隸臣妾, but apparently also as a generic term for depen-
dent “servants,” see for example the following coordination in Fēngzhěn shì, section “Sealing and
Guarding” (“Fēngshǒu” 封守): “shìwǔ A’s household, wives, children, chén and qiè (male and female
servants), clothes, vessels and tools, and livestock” 士五(伍)甲家室、妻、子、臣妾、衣器、畜產.
Punctuated transcription from Shuìhǔdì Qín mù zhújiǎn, 149, slip no. 8. As such it is at present not, and
perhaps no longer, found in excavated Hàn legal manuscripts. The database search was performed
on August 25, 2020 using the Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT) Jianbo databases 竹簡帛書 1–3. For infor-
mation on the various manuscript corpora, see the Manuscripts Database provided by the Institute of
Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University (http://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/manuscript/index.php/
sites/find [accessed 17.05.2022]).
40 Susanne Adamski
2.2 Problems of the Sources
If we choose to identify “slavery” and other forms of “human bondage and coer-
cion” on the level of personal relations, as Patterson does, we need information on
the nature of these relations. For example, official texts or statutes by which society
is described or legally structured, or personal written accounts of the living condi-
tions of the lowest members of society. Excavated legal texts from the Qín and early
Hàn not only speak of dependents who could be “manumitted,” miǎn 免,113 thereby
changing their legal, and apparently also their social, status; the legal manuscripts
also mention a stratum of so-called “commoners” or “free men,” shùrén 庶人. Here
is one example from the “Statutes on Abscondance” (“Wáng lǜ” 亡律) found at the
early Hàn Zhāngjiāshān 張家山 tomb 247, as cited and translated by Yates 2014:
奴婢為善而主欲免者, 許之, 奴命曰私屬, 婢為庶人, 皆復使, 及筭事之如奴婢.
If a male or female slave is good and the master wishes to manumit (mian) [them], permit it,
and male [sic] slave is [then] called a “private dependent” (sishu) and the female slave is made
a freedman (shuren); in all cases they may again employ [them] as well as pay the poll tax
(suan), and make them serve like male and female slaves.114
While Cáo Lǚníng 曹旅宁 2007 has argued that shùrén, according to the legal bam-
boo and wooden slips of the Qín and Hàn, also showed clear signs of personal
bondage, therefore translating them as “subordinate people” instead of “com-
moners,”115 more recent studies further problematize reading shùrén as a “status”:
Jiǎ Lìyīng 贾丽英 2019 and Takatori Yūji 鷹取祐司 2019 both emphasize that the
term shùrén, while found as referring to certain people in a legal context, generally
is not used to designate specific persons (such as “shùrén X,” in contrast to “lìchén
隶臣 X” or “chéngdàn 城旦 X”), based in part on the recently published legal texts
 For certain regulations on “manumitted” lìchén qiè 隸臣妾, see for instance the “Statutes on
Granaries” (Cāng lǜ 倉律) in the Shuìhǔdì manuscript “Eighteen Statutes of the Qín” (Qín lǜ shíbā
zhǒng 秦律十八種): “As to manumitted lìchén qiè and wall-building lìchén qiè as well as those who
fulfill tasks that equal wall-building, a male receives half a food portion in the morning and three
in the evening, a female three.” 免隸臣妾、隸臣妾垣及為它事與垣等者, 食男子旦半夕參, 女子參.
Punctuated transcription from Shuìhǔdì Qín mù zhújiǎn, 34, slip no. 59. Robin Yates generally trans-
lates lìchén qiè as “male and female bondservants,” noting however that this term is much debated:
“either, most likely, three-year hard-labor convicts or types of slave” (Robin D.S. Yates, “The Qin
Slips and Boards From Well No. 1, Liye, Hunan: A Brief Introduction to the Qin Qianling County
Archives,” Early China 35–36 (2012–13): 299).
 Yates, “The Changing Status of Slaves”: 210. Here, “male or female slave” is the translation of
núbì 奴婢. Yates translates the term shùrén as “freedman,” regardless of whether it refers to a man
or a woman.
 See Cáo Lǚníng 曹旅宁, “Qín Hàn fǎlǜ jiǎndú zhōng de ʻshùrénʼ shēnfèn jí fǎlǜ dìwèi wèntí 秦
汉法律简牍中的ʻ庶人ʼ身份及法律地位问题,” Xiányáng shīfān xuéyuàn bào 咸阳师范学院报 22, no. 3
(2007): 12–14 (translation from the English abstract).
in the Yuèlù Academy Collection of Qín bamboo strips 嶽麓書院藏秦简 acquired in

2007 and 2008 (unfortunately not archaeologically excavated, but bought on the
Hong Kong antiques market); Takatori therefore takes issue with its “treatment as a
specific social identity.”116
Regardless of whether shùrén in early imperial China should be regarded as a
distinct “status” or as a broader generic term for several social categories, in the
Qín and Hàn periods we clearly find terminologically specified social categories as
distinguished by law, including the lowest strata such as núbì 奴婢 or lìchén qiè 隸
臣妾, who certainly were “unfree,” the former of which evidently could be bought
and sold.117 In view of new evidence, Robin Yates 2014 partly revised his earlier con-
clusions on Qín and Hàn “slavery,” stating that “it seems that the early Han made
some significant alterations in the nomenclature and legal status of slaves, simpli-
fying the complex and harsher Qin system. [. . .] It is also clear from the evidence
that violence was not always a feature of slavery in early times. [. . . T]he Han made
a conscious effort to assimilate slaves into the family system,”118 and that “[a]nother
important difference between the Qin and the Han is that the Han recognized
the legality of a slave’s marriage. [. . .] [W]omen who married slaves as wives
were not ‘dishonored persons,’ as in Orlando Patterson’s terminology.”119 Regard-
ing the new evidence it seems thus necessary to either modify Patterson’s definition
of “slavery” ‒ including, for example, some of the rejected Marxist views such as
the tradeability of people as a feature ‒, or to embrace the possibility that the differ-
ent Qín and Hàn rénnú qiè 人奴妾, nú 奴 and bì 婢, lìchén 隸臣 and lìqiè 隸妾 and
other designations reflect further gradations of dependency at its lower end, thus
needing further research into early imperial social structure before categorizing
them as “slaves.”120 This issue certainly cannot be solved within a short time. Suf-
fice it to say that in early imperial China, marked low status is evident from indige-
nous texts which sought to regulate the population and their relations towards the
government.
 See Jiǎ Lìyīng 贾丽英, “Shùrén: Qín Hàn shèhuì juézhì shēnfèn yǔ túlì shēnfèn de xiánjiē 庶
人: 秦汉社会爵制身份与徒隶身份的衔接,” Shānxī dàxué xuébào 山西大学学报 2019, no. 11: 16–25,
and Takatori Yūji 鷹取祐司, “Qín Hàn shídài de shùrén zàikǎo ‒ duì tèdìng shēnfèn shuō de pīpíng
秦漢时代的庶人再考 – 對特定身份説的批評,” Jiǎnbó 簡帛 18 (2019) / Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts
2019, no. 1: 75–89.
 Compare the prices for individual nú 奴 given in the Qín Lǐyè 里耶 legal documents, as trans-
lated by Yates, “The Changing Status of Slaves”: 208.
 Yates, “The Changing Status of Slaves”: 207.
 Yates, “The Changing Status of Slaves”: 213.
 Terminological ambivalence has already been observed by Yates, who, for instance, identifies
“rennu 人奴, renchen 人臣, or chen 臣” in Qín legal texts as “a person’s male slave or servant,” and
“renqie 人妾 or qie 妾” as “a person’s female slave or servant.” (Yates, “Slavery in Early China”:
304).
42 Susanne Adamski
Problematically, the epigraphic texts of the Shāng and Western Zhōu lack this
kind of information: Certain terms and circumstances indicate the social dependency
of both groups of people and individuals, but do not explain their social ties or even
their everyday lives. Thus, even when legal cases are recorded, as in the Hū dǐng in-
scription, the social situations and the exact status of apparently dependent individu-
als or groups remain unclear. This is mainly due to the form and content of the
inscriptions. They are either records of divinations, particularly important during the
Shāng dynasty, or dedications and documentations cast in bronze, to be used within
the ruling Shāng and Zhōu élite. They were not made to legally structure society in
written form.121 I therefore believe, as a hypothesis, that their social terminology is
not yet shaped by legal definitions, but by the social conventions of the time.
Most recently, Ernest Caldwell 2018 and Li Feng 2016 and 2018b convincingly
demonstrated that: a) the development of statutory written law was mainly a pro-
cess of the Spring and Autumn (Chūnqiū 春秋, 771–481 BC) and Warring States
(Zhànguó 戰國, 481–221 BC) periods, as a reaction to the vast social transformation
and disorder within now independent territorial states;122 and b) this transforma-
tion necessitated, in the words of Li Feng, “the establishment of new social institu-
tions such as taxation, household registration, and codification of law,” in order to
totally control the population.123
This population had changed over time. After the military defeat in 771 BC, the
Western Zhōu royal house had to flee from its Western domain towards the east, to-
gether with some of the “regional states,” offspring of the Zhōu royal lineage. During
the Spring and Autumn period, these states competed for hegemony and influence, the
Zhōu royal power in decline. After 481 BC, the now independent polities annexed and
eliminated one another as the “Warring States,” until military unification under
Qín in 221 BC. Within these competing states, an “impersonal” bureaucracy developed;
 Some inscriptions seem to have functioned as “contracts,” for instance recording transactions
of land between lineages and/or states, as on the late Western Zhōu Sànshì pán 散氏盤 (Jíchéng
#10176) vessel (for a translation and discussion, see Li Feng, “Literacy and the Social Contexts of
Writing in the Western Zhou,” in Writing & Literacy in Early China, ed. Li Feng and David Prager
Branner (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011): 287–93; for rubbing and transcription see
Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 6, no. 10176, 134–35); but Shāng and Western Zhōu bronze in-
scriptions usually have one “donor,” and generally refer to his or her (living and future) descend-
ants, thus being “documents” to be used within the respective donor’s lineage. A summary of the
multiple uses of Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions is given by Li Feng, “The Development of Liter-
acy in Early China: With the Nature and Uses of Bronze Inscriptions in Context, and More,” in Liter-
acy in Ancient Everyday Life, ed. Anne Kolb (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018): 26–32.
 See Ernest Caldwell, Writing Chinese Laws: The Form and Function of Legal Statutes found in
the Qin Shuihudi Corpus (London and New York: Routledge, 2018); see also Lǐ Fēng 李峰, “Zhōng-
guó gǔdài guójiā xíngtài de biànqiān hé chéngwén fǎlǜ xíngchéng de shèhuì jīchǔ 中国古代国家形
态的变迁和成文法律形成的社会基础,” Huádōng zhèngfǎ dàxué xuébào 华东政法大学学报 2016,
no. 4: 20–32.
 Li Feng, “The Development of Literacy”: 34.
philosophy evolved, which was often concerned with moral and efficient ways to
rule.124 Over time, many states with their ruling aristocratic lines had vanished – but
their offspring lived on. This resulted in enormous downward social mobility,125 and in
masses of free peasants and craftsmen who were no longer tied to aristocratic line-
ages.126 Therefore it was only the newly developed impersonal bureaucratic govern-
ments that found it necessary to register, legally structure and terminologically define
society, which meant, as Li Feng emphasizes, every single member of society.127
This was not yet the case during the Shāng and Western Zhōu periods.128 I think
it is therefore unlikely that we may find a terminologically clearly distinguished “so-
cial class” or “status” during these periods, as it seems that these categories were not
 For highly readable overviews of these periods, see Cho-yun Hsu, “The Spring and Autumn
Period,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC., ed.
Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999):
545–86, and Mark Edward Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” in Cambridge History of Ancient
China: 587–650. A well-known example for political philosophical texts from the Warring states pe-
riod is the “Book of Lord Shang” (Shāngjūn shū 商君書), which mirrors the legal and economic prin-
ciples applied by the government in the state of Qín, see for instance Chapter 20.10, “Weakening
the People” (“Ruò mín” 弱民), translated by Yuri Pines: “When the government does whatever the
people detest, the people are weak; when the government does whatever the people delight in, the
people are strong. When the people are weak, the state is strong; when the people are strong, the
state is weak. [. . .] Hence, employing the strong multiplies weakness; [employing] the weak multi-
plies strength and turns one into the [True] Monarch.” (Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang: Apolo-
getics of State Power in Early China, ed. and trans. Yuri Pines [New York: Columbia University Press,
2017]: 146.) Unpunctuated original in Sìbù cóngkān, Shāng zǐ 商子, juàn 卷 5: 政作民之所惡, 民弱;
政作民之所樂, 民強. 民弱國強; 民強國弱. [. . .] 故以強重弱; 弱重強, 王. (Ellipsis and punctuation
added, following Pines. Electronic version: https://guji.unihan.com.cn/, accessed via Unihan An-
cient Books Database 書同文古籍數據庫 on September 27, 2020.)
 A thorough study of the Spring and Autumn period’s social structure as seen from transmitted
sources, especially the Zuǒ zhuàn, can be found in Robert Gassmann, Verwandtschaft und Gesell-
schaft im alten China: Begriffe, Strukturen und Prozesse (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006).
 Cf. Li Feng, “The Development of Literacy”: 34.
 Cf. Li Feng, “Zhōngguó gǔdài guójiā xíngtài”: 31, and Caldwell, Writing Chinese Laws, which is
more detailed with regard to Qín practice, see 45–92 (“Inscribing control in Qin”); especially for the
role of written law in controlling commoners, see 81–85.
 This is not to say that there were no records at all of any personnel attached to households
(see also n. 129 below); bronze inscriptions also show that people who appear to belong to certain
categories had been counted, at least when being transferred to a new jurisdiction (for example on
the early Western Zhōu Yíhóu Zè guǐ 宜侯夨簋 vessel (Jíchéng #4320), where the new regional ruler
of the state Yí 宜 is awarded land and people, see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 3, no. 4320,
452); just as enemies killed in battle and war booty were counted, too (for instance on the late West-
ern Zhōu Duō Yǒu dǐng 多友鼎 (Jíchéng #2835), see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng shìwén, vol. 2, no. 2835,
406). However, categorizations of people do not imply the existence of full-fledged social statuses
or classes, and the population still appears to have been attached to land and lineage, their respec-
tive lord and overlord. In this regard, structures were far more “personal” than under later Qín and
Hàn rule.
44 Susanne Adamski
yet conceptualized, or only in the process of being conceptualized. It is possible that

the late Western Zhōu evidence already reflects certain social developments, because
ongoing lineage segmentation rendered élite society more complex, and therefore
possibly also élite relations towards their attached peasants and personnel.129 But on
the whole, it seems that late Shāng and Western Zhōu terms for “social groups” are
129 Intra-lineage conflicts involving land and personnel can be seen, for instance, in the recently
excavated Diāo Shēng zūn 琱生尊 inscription, the subject of which was a land dispute between two
branches of the Shào 召 lineage, the “ducal” branch, and the junior branch headed by Diāo Shēng
琱生 (see Edward L. Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the Royal Court: A Ninth-Century BCE Case of
Family Law Recorded in Chinese Bronze Inscriptions,” in Structures of Power: Law and Gender
Across the Ancient Near East and Beyond, Oriental Institute Seminars 12, ed. Ilan Peled [Chicago:
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2018]). As transcribed and translated by Shaugh-
nessy: “I have grown aged. Our laborers and field bosses have many complaints. Would that you
assent and not let them disperse and abscond. We will be allotted three parts of them and you will
be allotted two parts of them.” 余老之. 我僕庸土田多柔; 弋許, 勿使散亡. 余宕其三, 汝宕其貳.
(Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the Royal Court”: 164; compare also, with slight differences, Ed-
ward L. Shaughnessy, “Newest Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels,
2000–2010,” in Imprints of Kinship: Studies of Recently Discovered Bronze Inscriptions from Ancient
China, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Monographs Series 17, ed.
Edward L. Shaughnessy [Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2017]: 169–70,
where he transcribes 僕庸土田多刺, tentatively translating: “Our retainers and fields are much liti-
gious”; for the rubbing see Jìnchū Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jílù èrbiān 近出殷周金文集录二编, vol. 2 [Běijīng:
Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 2010]: no. 587, 273–74). The inscription uses the terms pú yōng 僕庸 as a colloca-
tion, translated by Shaughnessy as “laborers,” and it shows that control over such “laborers” was
at least limited. In the already cited late Western Zhōu Nì zhōng 逆鐘 inscription, pú yōng are at-
tested together with chénqiè 臣妾: “Supervise the pú and yōng and chén qiè of the lord’s house”
用于公室僕庸臣妾小子室家, indicating their function in service or menial tasks of various kinds.
Note that the plausible understanding of 僕庸土田 as a coordination of “laborers/retainers” (pú
yōng) and “land and fieldsˮ (tǔ tián 土田) marks this conflict as a dispute primarily over land, or at
least equally over land and people. Although he gives a different translation in his 2018 essay cited
above, Shaughnessy expects “40 percent of all of the property or its produce” to have been allotted
to Diāo Shēng’s junior branch, instead of only personnel as implied by the chosen translation “la-
borers and field bosses” (see Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the Royal Court”: 167). This latter in-
terpretation, on the other hand, would imply not only the use of land registers but also – even
primarily – registers of personnel. It is therefore an interesting question how the circumstances re-
corded in this inscription should be interpreted. As it appears from two related vessel inscriptions
concerning Diāo Shēng, the head of the senior branch further had to “formalize the agreement with
the royal authorities,” finally signing “records” (diǎn 典) which “must have been deeds or land
registers, which Duke Hu then turned over to Diao Sheng” (Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the
Royal Court”: 167). In view of the fact that the allocation of land was crucial in granting authority
within the Western Zhōu élite, it seems likely that the main focus here is on the land being divided
and officially registered, the people being attached to it (compare, for instance, the same interpreta-
tion in Xú Yìhuá 徐义华, “Diāo Shēng sān qì míngwén bǔshì 琱生三器铭文补释,” Nánfāng wénwù
南方文物 2015, no. 3: 102–6, here 105–6): If it had become unclear to which branch lineage the land
and fields (and, in consequence, their produce) actually belonged, and to whom the pú and yōng
working on it owed their allegiance, a clear solution was needed, lest the situation become chaotic.
broader in their semantic scope than the social terminology of later periods in Chi-
nese history.
The mere continuity of certain terms used within social contexts in the written
sources, not only over centuries but even millennia beginning from the late Shāng and
Western Zhōu, often obscures possible semantic shifts that can be hard to trace, but
which need to be borne in mind as a strong probability.130 For instance, in her 2014
article “A Sexual Order in the Making: Wives and Slaves in Early Imperial China,”
Griet Vankeerberghen argues that the differences between primary and secondary
wives in Qín and Hàn élite households apparently were less strict at the beginning,
but the distinctions between them were actively defined and hardened by a scholarly
discourse on “wifely virtue” starting during the late Western Hàn dynasty (206 BC‒
9 AD).131 This seems to have prepared a “semantic shift in the word qiè 妾,” meaning
“secondary wife” in early imperial sources, but in later sources such as the Táng 唐
(618–907) legal code denoting “concubine” that was being bought into the house-
hold:132 While in early imperial China, secondary wives could actually replace a pri-
mary wife regardless of their social background, even including “slaves” (bì 婢), this
was no longer possible in later times, where the primary wife now was the rightful
“wife,” élite marriage having shifted towards “polygynous monogamy.”133 Processes of
conceptualization and semantic change thus could be the result of conscious efforts.
It is unsurprising that social concepts and definitions seem to have become
more specified and elaborate over the course of Chinese pre-imperial and imperial
history, since the state bureaucracy became more systematized and society grew
more and more complex, becoming, in the eyes of the rulers, an “impersonal” mass
The Shào 召 lineage’s explicit concern that the “laborers,” “retainers” and/or “servants” might
“disperse and abscond” (sàn wáng 散亡) may therefore suggest that they had not been formally
registered as such, but had simply fulfilled that role, and would thus become untraceable. Perhaps
this late Western Zhōu case already reflects general circumstances of people’s detachment from lin-
eages; further studies and future evidence will certainly reveal more about Western Zhōu relation-
ships between lineages and their attached personnel at different times.
 As to the well-known transfer of Western concepts and word fields to China, often via Japan,
during the process of modernization, for which – inter alia – indigenous terminology was used, see
Frederico Masini, The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and its Evolution toward a National Lan-
guage: The Period from 1840 to 1898, Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series 6 (Berkeley:
Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California Press, 1993); compare also Huáng Xiànfán,
Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 76, who emphasizes that the terms “slave” (núlì), “slave system”
(núlìzhì) and “slave society” (núlì shèhuì) are foreign modern historiographical terms, which have
become widely used within Chinese scholarship during the second half of the twentieth century.
 This being in the interest of families bringing daughters in the imperial harem and struggling
for lasting influence (compare Vankeerberghen, “Sexual Order in the Making”: 122).
 Since terminologically they were all “spouses,” fūrén 夫人, or “wives,” qī 妻 (cf. Vankeerber-
ghen, “Sexual Order in the Making”: 123 and 125).
 Vankeerberghen, “Sexual Order in the Making”: 123–24.
46 Susanne Adamski
that needed to be controlled.134 In other words: it is not necessary to clarify social

conventions, but there is a need to clarify what has become disordered and ill-
defined, due to unprecedented developments.
Important developments took place during the late pre-imperial period and the
early Chinese empire, which can be studied from a relative abundance of indigenous
sources. In fact, state-organized unfree labor outweighed private forms of depen-
dency during the early Chinese empire, the former of which especially the Qín state
drew heavily upon, while the state apparently sought to minimize the latter, as was
suggested by Walter Scheidel in a comparative perspective, and discussed in detail
by Maxim Korolkov with regard to Qín political economy and the role of the early
imperial state in market formation, with particular focus on the economic and social
effects of the Qín government lending system.135 In this regard, as Korolkov suggested
after analyzing legal and administrative documents, “the concept of labour as a
quantifiable and tradable commodity took shape in Qin law,”136 playing an important
role in strengthening the early Qín empire via infrastructure construction projects;
and these already were a feature of the competing Warring States.137 In spite of David
Keightley’s attempts in 1969 to prove the existence of state-managed “forced labour”
for the Shāng and Western Zhōu dynasty, the concept of labor as a commodity is not
yet evident in the written sources of these far earlier, administratively and economi-
cally less developed states. Looking at our extant sources and their mentioned limita-
tions, so far we have not been able to find clear cases of either “slavery” or “strong
asymmetrical dependency” in early ancient China.
 One important element in strengthening the political authority of the emergent Qín empire
was the common acceptance of the legal system, which was to prevail over other forms of adminis-
tering justice traditionally carried out within families and community structures (cf. Maxim Korol-
kov, “Arguing about Law: Interrogation Procedure under the Qin and Former Han Dynasties,”
Études chinoises 30 (2011): 37–71). For an earlier example of the royal court’s ultimate legal author-
ity over family property during the late Western Zhōu see Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the Royal
Court.” On developments of “Confucianization” of law during the Hàn dynasty see Paul R. Goldin,
“Han Law and the Regulation of Interpersonal Relations: ʻThe Confucianization of the Law’ Revis-
ited,” Asia Major (third Series) 25, no. 1 (2012): 1–31.
 I am indebted to Maxim Korolkov for drawing my attention to this fact and to the works men-
tioned; see Walter Scheidel, “Slavery and forced labor in early China and the Roman world,” Ver-
sion 1.0, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, Stanford University, April 2013, http://
www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/papers/authorMZ/scheidel/scheidel.html [accessed 17.05.2022] (pub-
lished in Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Contacts and Exchange Between
the Graeco-Roman World, Inner Asia and China, ed. Hyun J. Kim, Frederik J. Vervaet, and Selim
F. Adali [Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2017]: 133–50); Korolkov, “Between Command
and Market.”
 Korolkov, “Between Command and Market”: 221.
 Korolkov, “Between Command and Market”: 30 and the following on labor as a commodity.
3 Did “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency”

Exist in Shāng and Western Zhōu China?
Nevertheless, I agree with many scholars that it is possible to assume relations
of “strong asymmetrical dependency” already in early Chinese antiquity. Forms of
“human bondage and coercion” seem highly imaginable or even plausible during the
Shāng and Western Zhōu periods, due to the nature of the extant sources: oracle-bone
inscriptions abound with sacrificial violence offered to the ancestors and spirits, and
Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions ‒ even if their production might have been meant to
stress the donor’s or lineage’s position within the aristocracy as well as to delight the
spirits ‒ exalt the merits of a ruling élite. In particular forms of “slavery,” as defined
above, namely as “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and gener-
ally dishonored persons” or, as usefully modified by Miller 2012 with regard to Patter-
son’s own thesis, “the violent domination of permanently natally alienated and socially
dishonored persons” seem conceivable.138 As shown by Robert Gassmann 2006, Robin
Yates 2001 and 2014 and others based on the received sources and indigenous manu-
scripts, social strata were clearly distinguished at the latest by the late Warring States,
specific groups of people were traded in private and by the state, and convict labor, as
demonstrated by Maxim Korolkov 2015, was commonly used on district level by the
Qín and early Hàn dynasty, as was debt labor during the Qín empire.139 It thus stands
to reason that already before any terminological conceptualization and legal definition
of dependent “slaves,” “bondservants” or “convicts” by a state bureaucracy, there
might have been individual forms of “human bondage and coercion” in early ancient
China. We can assume that they existed because people from other tribes or states
were taken captive, and individual children, women or also men in certain situations
may have lost the protection of their families. According to Michael Zeuske 2013, there
must have been early forms of “slavery” at certain points in pre-modern societies,
which may eventually have led to its later institutionalization, and which in general
were kin-slaveries: “Zunächst werden ʻinnereʼ (endogene) Formen dieses Status wich-
tiger gewesen sein. Mit der Ausbreitung von Konflikten und Kriegen gegen andere
Gruppen mögen [sich] ʻäußereʼ (exogene) Vorformen des Sklavenstatus entwickelt
 See Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 32.

 Bamboo slips excavated from a disused well at Lǐyè 里耶, Húnán Province, in 2002 (published
in 2012) provide evidence that convict labor was administered on Qín local government level and
that, according to Korolkov, “the operation of convict labor was among the main functions of local
government.” See Maxim Korolkov, “Convict labor in the Qin Empire: A preliminary study of the
‘Registers of convict laborersʼ from Liye,” in Jiǎnbó wénxiàn yǔ gǔdài shǐ: Dì èr jiè chūtǔ wénxiàn
qīngnián xuézhě guójì lùntán lùnwénjí 简帛文献与古代史: 第二届出土文献青年学者国际论坛论文集,
ed. Fùdàn dàxué lìshǐxué xì 复旦大学历史学系 and Fùdàn dàxué chūtǔ wénxiàn yǔ gǔwénzì yánjiū
zhōngxīn 复旦大学出土文献与古文字研究中心 (Shànghǎi: Zhōngxī Shūjù 中西书局, 2015): 20.
48 Susanne Adamski
haben.”140 According to Zeuske, early situations of “slavery” almost always involved

women and children who lost the protection of their families or kin groups, due to
abandonment or violence, but also those who were taken prisoner in raids or battle.141
A point worth noting is that these kin-slaves or female slaves “without institutionalized
slavery” are not to be found in early written documents: “Die Masse der Kin-Sklaven
und gar Sklavinnen ‘ohne Institution Sklaverei’ oder Schuldsklaven kommen nicht in
Texten vor.”142 If so, how can we ever prove they existed?
From a cross-cultural historical perspective, the enslavement of captives and
prisoners of war is known from other early societies and so-called primitive cultures,
especially of women and children, as for example John Gillingham 2012 has shown
for early medieval Europe, and Fàn Chuánxián 范传贤 1988 for indigenous peoples of
North and South America.143 Following this, and taking Orlando Patterson’s defini-
tion of “slavery” as a basis, Shāng- and Western Zhōu “slaves” might perhaps be
identified within the context of battle and tribute, when people were torn from their
societies of origin, which would have produced “natal alienation.” In an as-yet un-
published paper144 I presented evidence from late Shāng oracle-bone inscriptions for
the so-called “taking” of women, qǔ nǚ 取女, in altogether ten divinations on seven
bones or plastrons of the Héjí 合集 and Túnnán 屯南 corpora, for example on turtle
shell Héjí 09741 recto: “(We) order to take women / a woman” 乎取女,145 or on the
bone piece Héjí 19982: “Take X women / an X woman” 取女146 (Fig. 3).
From the analysis of these inscriptions we can see that these women apparently
were welcome “goods” at the royal court, either just “taken” or “taken by order” of
the king, apparently from other, allied peoples or states.147 They were perhaps gifts
 Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei: 100.

 Compare Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei: 99.
 Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei: 227–28.
 John Gillingham, “Women, children and the profits of war,” in Gender and Historiography.
Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds
and Susan M. Johns (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012): 61‒74; Fàn Chuánxián 范传贤,
“Lüèlùn yuánshǐ shèhuì fúlǔ de mìngyùn 略论原始社会俘虏的命运,” Dōngběi shīdà xuébào 东北师
大学报 1988, no. 1: 59–63.
 See Susanne Adamski, “‘Qǔ nǚ 取女’: Weibliche Gefangene während der späten Shāng-Zeit
(13.–11. Jh. v.Chr.),” paper presented at the 29th annual conference of the Deutsche Vereinigung für
Chinastudien e.V. (DVCS) at the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China,
Technical University of Berlin, November 30 – December 1, 2018.
 Compare transcription in Jiǎgǔwén héjí shìwén, vol. 1, no. 09741 recto (16). In the rubbing, the
graph hū < ✶qʰˤa 乎, “to call, to order” (often normalized to its later form 呼, distinguished by the
component “mouth”), is a little obscured by underlying cracks and fissures in the shell, but still
recognizable (compare the oracle-bone and bronze inscriptional forms given in Liú Xīnglóng 刘兴
隆, Xīnbiān jiǎgǔwén zìdiǎn 新编甲骨文字典 (Běijīng: Guójì Wénhuà Chūbǎn Gōngsī 国际文化出版
公司, 1993): 276–77).
 Cf. the transcription in Jiǎgǔwén héjí shìwén, vol. 2, no. 19982.
 For this and the following paragraph, cf. Adamski, “‘Qǔ nǚ 取女’.”
Fig. 3: Left: Héjí #09741 recto (detail). From Jiǎgǔwén héjí 甲骨文合集, ed. Guō Mòruò 郭沫若, Hú
Hòuxuān 胡厚宣 and Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxuéyuàn lìshǐ yánjiūsuǒ 中国社会科学院历史研究所
(Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1999), 13 vols., vol. 4, no. 09741, 1417. Reproduced with permission.
Right: Héjí #19982 (detail). From Jiǎgǔwén héjí, vol. 7, no. 19982, 2599. Reproduced with
permission.
or tributes, but we cannot exclude the possibility that violence was involved; there is
a certain probability that these women were not “taken” voluntarily, and came to live
in slave-like conditions. But the inscriptions do not inform us about the intended use
of these “natally alienated” women, and so we still cannot securely identify them as
“slaves” in the sense of “permanently, violently dominated and generally dishonored
persons.” The same goes for prisoners of war mentioned in oracle-bone and Western
Zhōu bronze inscriptions, because we do not know whether they were actually turned
into “slaves” after being caught.
Other scholars see evidence for practices of “slavery” even long before the so-
cial phenomenon is ascertainable through any textual or archaeological sources.
Arguing against the treatment of “slavery as an institution,” Joseph C. Miller 2012 in
his book The Problem of Slavery as History problematizes “slavery as a historical
strategy,” which he outlines in broad terms, using the term slaving: “I propose strat-
egies of introducing outsiders for private local purposes that recurred in infinitely
variable particulars throughout the history of the world.”148 Perhaps deliberately,
Miller does not precisely define the subject of his book, “slavery,” because “slavery
as an institution,” he argues, is a cliché and a construct. Thus, Miller does not prob-
lematize the identification of “slavery” as a social constellation distinct from other
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 8.

50 Susanne Adamski
phenomena such as “serfdom” or “forced labor.”149 According to his global history

approach, “slaving arguably contributed to the very beginnings of human history,
tens of thousands of years before times recorded in any conventional document-
based sense.”150 Miller’s arguments, therefore, are hypothetical in nature:
An approximate date for when history in this inclusive sense may be said to have begun is
roughly forty thousand to twenty thousand years ago. I propose that date partly for purposes
of debate, but also with a degree of consideration that leaves me confident that the remote era
I suggest is at least a professionally responsible estimate. It is the threshold of both humanity
and history, marked by abilities to strategize collectively, in contexts of shared meaning. The
marker of such strategically effective collectivity is functionally syntactical language: that is,
language sufficiently grammatical that speakers can wield it flexibly enough to succeed in
confronting novel, unexpected historical contexts. [. . .] That remote epoch is also an analyti-
cally considered starting point for slaving. With language, early humans learned to strategize
together [. . .].151
This reasoning is problematic in several ways. Historical linguistics, providing the

“primary evidence” for Miller’s “dating of the beginning of efficaciously historical
strategizing,”152 is in itself a field struggling with many theories. Miller does not pro-
vide the evidence, but refers to an article by Patrick Manning, “Homo sapiens Popu-
lates the Earth: A Provosional Synthesis, Privileging Linguistic Evidence,” who also
follows a world-historical approach.153 Thus, we can assume that Miller bases his
considerations on paleolinguistic and evolutionary approaches to the origins of
human language. There has been, however, some evidence against a “genetic-based
 While speaking of “enslaved,” “slaves,” “slavery,” Miller apparently has “historically varying
local results of slaving” in mind (Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 22). In his very conception of
“slavery,” however, Miller seems to think along similar lines as Orlando Patterson: in contrast, but
perhaps also in addition to the latter’s definition of “slavery” from “the perspective of the masters,
not of the enslaved,” he particularly emphasizes the “isolation of the enslaved” (33).
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 41.
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 41, further states: “Slaving was arguably one successful
strategy that these earliest peoples hit upon as a means of creating and maintaining the commit-
ment to mutual loyalties that gave such humans the edge in confronting other, contemporary, but
less inventive, hominids, as well as the changing environmental and other contextual challenges
that have brought us to where we are today. That is, humanity, history, and slaving were inherently
linked; they were fundamentally mutually constituted. Slaving has also proved exquisitely adap-
tively efficacious, including subsequent resort to slaving by key initiators in new ways in new con-
texts during the last twenty thousand years. This deep imbrication ought to be obvious, given the
ubiquity of the practice, even today, though our progressivist conviction in our own slavery-freed
perfectibility has tended to obscure its elementally human temptation.”
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 41.
 See Patrick Manning, “Homo sapiens Populates the Earth: A Provosional Synthesis, Privileging
Linguistic Evidence,” Journal of World History 17, no. 2 (2006): 115–58.
revolution 50,000 years ago” (often attributed to the gene FOXP2).154 Miller’s theory
that the development of “functionally syntactical” language in a remote epoch of
some forty to twenty thousand years ago (a period usually regarded, due to the lack
of any textual sources, as prehistoric) can be seen as a “starting point for slaving”155
just because “slaving” seems to have become a mere possibility, is therefore question-
able; and it is certainly not sufficient grounds for his firm conclusion that “humanity,
history, and slaving were inherently linked” and “fundamentally mutually consti-
tuted,” asserting that the latter is an inherent human characteristic. This strikes me
as highly problematic. Ancient Chinese philosophers would have a lot to say about
this, as the Warring States period saw the beginning of a prominent discourse on
human nature (xìng 性) in Confucian philosophy, led by Mencius (Mèngzǐ 孟子, ca.
372–289 BC) and Xúnzǐ 荀子 (ca. 310–ca. 235/217 BC), the former arguing that human
nature was inherently good, the latter that it was evil.156 As Miller concedes in the
 See Carl C. Diller and Rebecca L. Cann, “Evidence against a genetic-based revolution in lan-
guage 50,000 years ago,” in The Cradle of Language: Studies in the Evolution of Language, ed. Ru-
dolf Botha and Chris Knight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009): 135–49: “[M]any people
speculate or argue that there was a revolution in language, one important genetic mutation for lan-
guage, about 50,000 years ago, that brought about a revolution in culture and allowed modern hu-
mans to leave Africa for Europe and the rest of the world. [. . . W]e present genetic evidence that
the mutations in FOXP2, the gene at issue, may actually have occurred some 1.8 million years ago”
(135); “The archaeological and anthropological evidence accumulating in the last decade and a half
does not support the claim that there was a revolutionary behavioural change in humans 50,000
years ago.” (148); “The capacity for modern language needed a long time to evolve before anatomi-
cally modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago. The date we present of 1.8 or 1.9 million
years ago for the selective sweep at FOXP2 supports this neurolinguistic scenario of the co-
evolution of speech and language with the neural and anatomical substrates of language.” (149);
more recently: Elizabeth Atkinson et al., “No evidence for recent selection at FOXP2 among diverse
human populations,” Cell 174 (2018): 1424–35, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.048 [accessed
17.05.2022]: “[W]e show that recent natural selection in the ancestral Homo sapiens population can-
not be attributed to the FOXP2 locus and thus Homo sapiens’ development of spoken language.”
(1432). See also Francesco d’Errico et al., “Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language,
Symbolism, and Music – an Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective,” Journal of World-History 17,
no. 1 (2003): 1–70: “This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution co-
inciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but
also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically-culturally modern equation and the potential
contribution of anatomically ‘pre-modern’ human populations to the emergence of these abilities.
No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper
Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already
show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still
unrecorded, phases of development.” (2).
 See further Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 181–82, n. 14.
 For translations into English, readers may be referred to Bryan W. Van Norden, Mengzi: With
Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008), and
John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1988).
52 Susanne Adamski
following chapter, “[m]uch of the insight into the possible (plausible?) beginnings of
slaving in creating coherent communities presented in Chapter 2 in fact come from
African materials.”157 In his synthesis of African motives and strategies of slaving,
Miller’s theories seem, at least from the perspective of a non-specialist, plausibly ap-
plied to African (pre-)history. But while historians of Africa may indeed “now have
sufficient density of possibilities, even probabilities, based on these radically inde-
pendent and thereby also increasingly revealing [archaeological, linguistic, etc.] sour-
ces that they cohere around a plausible broad narrative, several thousand years in
depth, of slaving as a historical strategy,”158 these possibilities are clearly rooted in
specific social and cultural traditional contexts. We learn that “the evidence of mean-
ings in Africa’s past, particularly for its earlier eras, is significantly linguistic,” “orally
transmitted memories may allude to innovations far back in time, apparently as
much as seven or eight centuries”; “in Africa wealth was people, and people were
power,” and that “the key strategies were and continue to be directed at forming col-
lectivities and then, in reaction, for individuals marginal to these groups to attract
and integrate personal dependents who might allow them to secure positions more
central in them: wives were the most accessible and (re)productive dependents of
this sort.”159 All these social specificities would need to be verified for other societies
and cultures around the world, if one intended to formulate a broad narrative of
“slaving as a historical strategy” even in conventionally termed historical times, par-
ticularly if one wants to postulate “slaving” as an “elementally human temptation.” I
stress this point, because Miller sees a direct link between the development of a)
“functionally syntactical language,” b) “the abilities to strategize collectively,” and,
at the same time, c) the beginnings of “slaving” practices.
More recently in 2016, David M. Lewis addressed Orlando Patterson’s rejection
of the traditional approach of defining a “slave” as “property,” criticizing it as
being based on a misconception of the latter. While Patterson thought “the property
approach cannot designate a specific category of persons, and is cross-culturally in-
consistent,”160 Lewis sees the theory of “ownership” by Anthony M. Honoré of 1961
applicable to the legal concept of slavery in both classical Athens and Babylonia
“during the seventh through fourth centuries BCE,” for which he presents two case
studies; and he regards Honoré’s theory as useful in a comparative approach.161
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 90.

 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 90. My comment.
 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 88, 89, 91.
 David M. Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery: The Definitional Problem Revis-
ited,” in On Human Bondage: After Slavery and Social Death, ed. John Bodel and Walter Scheidel
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017): 31–54, here 34.
 In this regard, Lewis also argues against the rejection of the definition of “slaves” as “prop-
erty” by several Africanists during the 1970s, citing Moses Finley in support, who proposed that
“the appellation ‘slaves’” should be reconsidered for some “African statuses and status terms,” in-
stead of criticizing “‘western’ historians” for their “ethnocentrism” (Lewis, “Patterson, Property,
Lewis does not inform his readers if the Babylonian and Greek “slaves” from his
examples are translations of one or more particular terms, instead concentrating on
the similarities in the notion of their “ownership” and usage for various kinds of
labor. His reasoning, however, seems convincing.
Taking a cross-cultural view, Honoré analyzed the concept of ownership, mean-
ing “the ‘liberal’ concept of ‘full’ individual ownership, rather than any more re-
stricted notion to which the same label may be attached in certain contexts.”162
According to Honoré, “ownership” is “provisionally defined as the greatest possible
interest in a thing which a mature system of law recognizes,” comprising “the right to
possess, the right to use, the right to manage, the right to the income of the thing,
the right to the capital, the right to security, the rights or incidents of transmissibil-
ity and absence of term, the prohibition of harmful use, liability to execution, and
the incident of residuarity.”163 These eleven legal incidents (i.e. “legal rights, duties
and other incidents”) constitute the common features of ownership, “in the sense
that, if a system did not admit them, and did not provide for them to be united in a
single person, we would conclude that it did not know the liberal concept of owner-
ship, though it might still have a modified version of ownership, either of a primi-
tive or sophisticated sort.”164
Such a clear concept of “ownership” would make for a narrow and clear defini-
tion of “slavery”; for the identification of “slavery” in Shāng and Western Zhōu
China, we would then need to determine whether these societies a) had a “mature”
and Ancient Slavery”: 45). To show that “[i]n fact, the property approach works perfectly well for
African societies” (50, n. 14), Lewis refers to the work of Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery:
A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), without how-
ever specifying which period he means: as the book description informs us, Lovejoy deals with “the
history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries” (this being the time
span of the Atlantic slave trade), examining in particular “how indigenous African slavery devel-
oped within an international context.” Thus, originally “non-African” features of “slavery” may al-
ready have found their way to Africa, and the property approach perhaps does not work for earlier
African societies or the whole continent. Further, Lovejoy does not limit his definition of slavery to
a property relation: “Slavery is one form of exploitation. Its special characteristics include the idea
that slaves are property; that they are outsiders [. . .]; that coercion can be used at will; that their
labor power is at the complete disposal of a master; that they do not have the right to their own
sexuality and [. . .] their own reproductive capacities; and that the slave status is inherited [. . .],”
and: “Slavery is fundamentally tied to labor.” Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: 1 and 4.
 Anthony M. Honoré, “Ownership,” in The Nature and Process of Law: An Introduction to Legal
Philosophy, ed. Patricia Smith (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993): 370, previ-
ously published in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, ed. Anthony G. Guest (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1961): 107–47.
 Honoré, “Ownership”: 370.
 However, “the listed incidents are not individually necessary, though they may be together
sufficient, conditions for the person of inherence to be designated ‘owner’ of a particular thing in a
given system. [. . . T]he use of ‘owner’ will extend to cases in which not all the listed incidents are
present.” Honoré, “Ownership”: 370.
54 Susanne Adamski
legal system; b) did “know the liberal concept of full individual ownership”; and c)
if so, whether or not this concept was actually applied to humans, i.e. if humans
were treated as “property” of individual persons. It is neither possible nor part of
the object of this paper to make a full re-evaluation of the whole extant epigraphic
record in this regard; we can at any rate answer the first question in the negative.165
As to individual property, at first glance the “ownership” over fields, their products
and other items – including people, as already discussed – seems to be rather
straightforward in bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhōu, some of which document
the settling of legal disputes: very often the king or head of a lineage “gave” land or
other items to particular officials or other élite members, and fields, for instance,
were sometimes transferred between private individuals; “property” issues concern-
ing land were either solved by the king himself or his officials (for example on the
unprovenanced late Western Zhōu Guō Bǐ guǐgài 比簋蓋 (Jíchéng #4278), Guō Yōu Bǐ
dǐng 攸比鼎 (Jíchéng #2818) and Guō Bǐ xǔ 比盨 (Jíchéng #4466) vessels, concern-
ing the “misappropriation of fields” and “wrongful acts towards another’s fields and
yi-settlements” (as discussed by Laura Skosey),166 by officials of the polities concerned
 A comprehensive study of the Western Zhōu legal system is Skosey, “Legal System and Legal
Tradition of the Western Zhou”; this work was reviewed by E. Bruce Brooks, “The Apocryphal Em-
pire. Laura Skosey. The Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou. UMI 1996,” Warring
States Project, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, October 21, 2012, https://www.umass.edu/
wsp/introduction/principals/reviews/skosey.html [accessed 17.05.2022]. Brooks cautiously con-
cludes: “Of her 25 vessels with inscriptions, only five are provenanced. [. . . I]t can be said that
these inscriptions do not imply a proactive legal structure with a bureaucratic basis. [. . .] Not once
is any law explicitly referred to, or is any previous case cited as a guide to present decision. All five
cases involve disputes about land, or are resolved in part by transfer of land. The basic term of rela-
tion between the Jou [= Zhōu] and everybody else was allocation of land. It makes sense that land,
and the promises made in return for receiving the land, were of continuing relevance to the grant-
ing authority. If we accept the evidence of these five test vessels as valid, the late Jou picture that
they give us is that of a punishment system, deriving its authority from the Jou King. That royal
authority was sometimes exercised by his high officers who are not yet officials in the bureaucratic
sense, and in charge of procedures which are not yet standardized. The procedures did not rely on
codes, or on case records apart from a previous oath which may be a part of a specific res gestae.
Cases were judged separately, on their own merits, and as far as this sample goes, they were chiefly
concerned with with [sic] title to land. Jou here is acting as monitor of rights which Jou itself had
previously conferred. The result is a vertical obligation system, without being a criminal law sys-
tem. A feudal overlord is exerting its function as the overlord, over the limited area defined by the
original underlord relationship. This is as far as the inscriptions seem to take us.” Compare Schunk,
“Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”: 176: “Eine institutionelle Eigenständigkeit des Rechtswesens
ist in der West-Zhou-Zeit noch nicht deutlich erkennbar. [. . .] Juristische Kompetenzen wurden
nicht in Verbindung mit bestimmten Ämtern, sondern in Bezug auf bestimmte Personen verliehen.”
For a study of Western Zhōu land transmissions see the monograph by Lau, Quellenstudien.
166 Skosey, “Legal System and Legal Tradition of the Western Zhou”: 104–6 (discussion) and
293–94 (classification); see her transcriptions and translations of the identical Zhōu Guō Bǐ guǐgài
and Guō Yōu Bǐ dǐng inscriptions (dated to 797 BC), as well as the inscription on the Guō Bǐ xǔ (dated
(as in the treaty of border demarcations between Sàn 散 and Zè 夨, recorded on the
late Western Zhōu Sànshì pán 散氏盤, possibly found during the nineteenth century
in Bǎojī, Shǎnxī province; Jíchéng #10176),167 or within the family concerned (such as
the intra-lineage dispute recorded on the Diāo Shēng zūn 琱生尊 and related vessels) –
then needing, however, ultimate recognition by the court.168 In one case of a private
transfer of land in exchange for four horses, however, instead of the royal court, offi-
cials from Péngshēng’s lineage seem to have been involved (on the mid-Western Zhōu
Péngshēng guǐ 倗生簋 of unknown provenance, Jíchéng #4262, as was discussed by Li
Feng).169 We may therefore ask whether the rights over land, which clearly was a com-
modity within the lineage-based Western Zhōu aristocracy, really were “united in a sin-
gle person,” or in the respective individual’s lineage as well, or – as discussed further
below – ultimately even in the reigning king, and to what extent this was “property”
as in the “liberal concept of full individual ownership.”
As to the Western Zhōu epigraphic evidence already discussed, we have not
been able to confidently identify terms for non-aristocratic social “statuses,” and so
far we find no evidence for the existence of distinguished non-aristocratic social
“classes.” Nevertheless, there might be evidence for individual cases of “owner-
ship” over humans: can those named individuals in the Hū dǐng inscription which
were “given” to Hū in order that he “use” them together with fields, apparently as
recompense,170 classified as being originally (or still) “owned” by Kuāng? Following
Honoré, Kuāng apparently had the “right to manage” them, and probably the
“right to the income,” which should be their labor; we do not know whether he
held the “right to possess” (i.e. had exclusive physical control of them) and the
801 BC), on pages 417–27. The donor’s name is also transcribed Guō Yōu Cóng 攸从; see the rub-
bings in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng, vol. 8, no. 4278, 217; vol. 9, no. 4466, 122; and vol. 5, no. 2818, 215;
compare the transcriptions in Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 5025, 321; no. 5262, 340; and no. 4011, 250–51.
 See the discussion in Li Feng, “Literacy and the Social Contexts of Writing”: 287–91, including
a transcription and translation; see also the rubbing and transcription in Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng
shìwén, vol. 6, no. 10176, 134–35.
 See Shaughnessy, “The Dowager v. the Royal Court,” mentioned above; related inscriptions
are on the Fifth Year Diāo Shēng guǐ 五年琱生簋 (Jíchéng #4292) and Sixth Year Diāo Shēng guǐ 六
年琱生簋 vessels (Jíchéng # 4293), see Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng, vol. 8, no. 4292–93, 237–38 and Jīn-
wén yǐndé, no. 5032 and 5034, 322–23 (here the vessel is called Shào Bó Hǔ guǐ 召伯虎簋). For a
discussion of the same dispute having regard to the use of land registers, see Li Feng, “Literacy and
the Social Contexts of Writing”: 282–84.
 See Li Feng, “Literacy and the Social Contexts of Writing”: 284–85, including a transcription
and translation of the inscription (the vessel is also called Gé Bó guǐ 格白簋). See Yīn Zhōu jīnwén
jíchéng, vol. 8, no. 4262, 196–97 and Jīnwén yǐndé, no. 5011, 319.
 In Schunk’s reading, the fields and men were offered as recompense, apparently because he
was unable to produce the twenty thieves (Schunk, “Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”: 148); in
the reading of Lau, the named men apparently were some of the thieves, declaring themselves un-
able to replace the stolen grain (Lau, Quellenstudien: 378).
56 Susanne Adamski
“right to use” them for private purposes other than working fields or carrying out
other tasks; whether he held the “right to the capital,” meaning the right to sell
them, giving them away as gifts, or to hurt or kill them; whether he held the “right
to security,” i.e. being protected from their being seized; he apparently had “rights
of transmissibility,” that is, transfer some of his rights over them to a third party;
but it is unclear whether his interest in the men was permanent (“absence of
term”); whether, or to what extent, he was prohibited from their “harmful use”;
and whether Kuāng held the “liability to execution” (i.e. whether they could be
taken away from him for debt) as well as “residual rights.”171 Kuāng could offer Hū
either the men or their labor in recompense; but are the three identified legal inci-
dents sufficient to call him their “owner”? It was evidently important enough for
Hū to have their names included in the inscription; did he do so because they had
become his demonstrable “property” (whereas the fields were not further specified
in terms of their exact location), or because they became identifiable servants of
his? We should bear in mind that it is not clear from the wording of the inscription
whether these men actually worked fields – this is just one possible conclusion
drawn from the verb yòng, “to use,” which is employed both for the men and the
fields, the former perhaps accompanying the latter.172 It is possible that this “ex-
change,” singular in our extant bronze inscriptions, may have been a rare case in a
special situation – it had been a year of famine.173
Looking at this particular Western Zhōu piece of evidence, some of the difficul-
ties and problems of which have already been addressed, it is in my view not quite
clear if, and to what extent, the concept of private ownership as outlined by Honoré
applied to humans.174 Moreover, thinking of captives taken by the earlier Shāng
 For detailed explanations see Honoré, “Ownership,” as well as Lewis, “Patterson, Property,
and Ancient Slavery”: 35–37.
 Compare the translations as “give” (geben) in Schunk, “Dokumente zur Rechtsgeschichte”:
148–49, or as “offer” (offerieren, mit etw. herantreten an) Lau, Quellenstudien: 372.
 Compare Skosey, “Hu ding”: 133: “This is the only case of theft in the inscriptional record.”
 To an objection to the “property definition” with regard to the pater familias in early Rome,
who “had powers amounting to ownership over his children; one could make the same point for
pre-Solonian Attica and parts of the ancient Near East,” Lewis replies with Herman J. Nieboer:
“‘Slavery is the fact that one man is the property or possession of another beyond the limits of the
family proper’.” Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 51, n. 20. If Lewis means to
imply that this notion should be included in a definition of “slavery” as a “property” relationship,
he would need to describe the limits of “family proper,” meaning “nuclear family” or perhaps kin
in general, therefore possibly also referring to lineage in the case of Shāng and Western Zhōu
China. Further, Nieboer apparently does not solely base his understanding of “slavery” on a “prop-
erty” relation, because he actually differentiates between “male” and “female” in this regard: “we
know that a slave system without male slaves is not slavery proper.” Herman J. Nieboer, Slavery as
an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches (Dordrecht: Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.,
1900): 54. His definition aims at being “sociological relevant” and focuses on compulsory labor:
“the great function of slavery can be no other than a division of labour”; he therefore deals “with
which are frequently mentioned in the tersely formulated oracle-bone inscriptions,

David Lewis further distinguishes between “possession” and “ownership”: “Corpo-
real possession may seem to imply ownership, but sensu stricto possession is a poten-
tially ephemeral condition, whereas ownership is a permanent right.” Aside from the
fact that neither captives nor victims of human sacrifice are usually referred to as the
object of a relationship (to a particular named person or an official), this makes it
difficult to place them in the concept of private “individual ownership.”
It should be noted that in his application to “slavery,” Lewis neglects Honoré’s
eleventh aspect of ownership, namely its “residuary character.” He does not even
define it, even though it seems to be significant: “This is important, but I omit it
from my list since it is a principle that is indemonstrable for nearly all historical
legal systems, whether it applied or not.”175 Since Honoré’s list is not based on his-
torical legal systems, there is no reason to exclude any of the criteria if one attempts
to apply the whole concept to ancient societies – if the principle is “indemonstrable
for nearly all historical legal systems,” it might still be demonstrable for some. The
“residuary character” aspect pertains to the notion of ownership in an interesting
way that complicates matters. According to Honoré,
it is characteristic of ownership that an owner has a residuary right in the thing owned. In
practice, legal systems have rules providing that on the lapse of an interest rights, including
liberties, analogous to the rights formerly vested in the holder of the interest, vest in or are
exercisable by someone else, who may be said to acquire the ‘corresponding rights’. [. . .]
Sometimes, [. . .] a new ownership vests in the state, as is the case in South Africa when land
has been abandoned. [. . . I]t is not a sufficient condition of A’s being the owner of a thing
that, on determination of B’s interest in it, corresponding rights vest in or are exercisable by A.
[. . .] Can we say that the ‘owner’ is the ultimate residuary? When the sub-lessee’s interest de-
termines the lessee acquires the corresponding rights; but when the lessee’s right determines
the ‘owner’ acquires these rights. Hence the ‘owner’ appears to be identified as the ultimate
residuary. The difficulty is that the series may be continued, for on the determination of the
‘owner’s’ interest the state may acquire these rights; is the state’s interest ownership or a mere
expectancy? A warning is here necessary. We are approaching the troubled waters of split
ownership. Puzzles about the location of ownership are often generated by the fact that an
ultimate residuary right is not coupled with present alienability or with the other standard inci-
dents we have listed.176
That means, although an “owner” might be identifiable who apparently holds all the
rights and liabilities listed above, one must consider that the state, for instance,
holds an ultimate residuary right, and therefore might be identified as “owner” as
well. Such a splitting of ownership makes us indeed think of the convict laborers
the general character of slavery as an industrial system,” the ethnological researches being limited
to “savage tribes.” (x, xxv, and 6).
 Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 49, n. 5.
 Honoré, “Ownership”: 375. My emphasis.
58 Susanne Adamski
(lìchén qiè) of the Qín empire, whose somewhat ambiguous status Korolkov has re-
ferred to as “state-owned slaves.”177 In fact, some scholars see “ownership” not re-
stricted to individuals: in his book on the history of slavery in Africa, Paul Lovejoy
notes that “it is characteristic of slavery that the slave is considered property of an-
other person or some corporate group, despite restrictions on the nature of this prop-
erty relationship that developed in actual situations.”178 In his 1972 discussion of
“The Concept of Property,” Frank Snare remarks that “in a corporation we have a
complex of interlocking rights few of which are exclusive or permanent (in that they
go with offices and positions rather than particular persons). To speak of the corpora-
tion owning property is a convenient shorthand way of speaking of a complex net-
work of individual rights over the object,” and none of these “can be called property
rights.”179 The individual within the corporation is, according to Snare, similar to the
individual in the feudal system, since “both have offices or roles which determine
rights and duties with respect to certain objects and where [. . .] it is misleading to
call the rights these individuals have property rights.”
Classificatory issues such as these relate to the ways in which a society func-
tions, and are therefore important in studying it. It would, however, make an
“owned” person probably not feel better if he or she were “owned” by the state or a
corporation instead of a private individual, and it appears that Orlando Patterson
had these factors in mind in his theory of “slavery as social death,” focusing on per-
sonal rather than legal relations. Seeing merely a “shift in perspective” here, David
Lewis therefore advocates “a more productive synergy” between the traditional
“property approach” and Patterson’s “social death,” using Patterson’s criteria as an
analytical tool in order to understand “the cross-culturally consistent social effects
of slave ownership.”180 Following the traditional definition of a “slave” as being
“property,”181 a precise understanding of the concept of “ownership” is essential.
But this is not necessarily universally valid. There are other typologies of this legal
concept besides Honoré’s, most of which are far less specific, proposing a smaller
number of components.182 Will they prove useful in looking for “slaves” in ancient
societies with limited written sources?
 Korolkov, “Empire-Building and Market-Making”: 101, n. 138, and 309.

 Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: 2.
 Frank Snare, “The Concept of Property,” American Philosophical Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1972): 205.
 Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 45 and 48.
 Without proposing an alternative definition of “slavery,” David Lewis nevertheless broadly
summarizes the traditional “property” definition, which has been criticized by Patterson, as fol-
lows: “the slave was an article of property (the object of the relationship) held in ownership (the
relationship itself) by his or her master (the subject of the relationship).” Lewis, “Patterson, Prop-
erty, and Ancient Slavery”: 32.
 A useful and readable overview in a bioethical context is given in Barbro Björkman and Sven
Ove Hansson, “Bodily rights and property rights,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 4 (2006):
209–14.
While it is necessary to “investigate exactly what terms such as ‘property’ and

‘ownership’ mean in a concrete sense,”183 this should not be universally synthe-
sized from the legal systems of modern societies – which are likely to share com-
mon aspects –, but from the contemporary sources and contexts of the society one
wishes to study. Honoré’s property definition as simplified by Lewis is therefore
“extremely precise in its ability to determine who is or is not a slave”184 in classical
Athens and Babylonia in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods, which ap-
parently had a visible concept of “full individual ownership” in the modern legal
sense that encompassed ownership over humans. As to our extant Shāng and West-
ern Zhōu epigraphic sources, the concept of “slavery” cannot be ascertained for
these periods, even when applying the clearly defined concept of “ownership” by
Honoré. Walter Scheidel reasonably remarked in 2013 with regard to Hàn dynasty
specialized slave labor, in words I should like to borrow here: “although absence of
evidence does not equal evidence of absence, the latter cannot readily be read as
pervasive neglect by the sources either.”185
Albeit far from being a comprehensive and detailed analysis, this short discus-
sion indicates that not every historical society might have a clear-cut concept of full
individual ownership; and even in mature legal systems, a clear identification of a
proposed “slave’s” individual “owner” might be more complicated than implied by
David Lewis, depending on the respective legal sources at hand. Thus, a property-
based approach to “slavery” seems reasonable and useful in distinguishing “slav-
ery” from other types of dependency, but this in turn does not mean that “slavery”
is a cross-culturally identifiable, universal phenomenon already in ancient times.
In any case, whether focusing on “slaving” as a historical strategy or on “slav-
ery” as a sociological institution, it seems necessary to have a clear definition to
work with. For early ancient China, there remains the difficulty to catch specific
forms of “human bondage and coercion,” or “strong asymmetrical dependency,”
red-handed, such as forms of subservience achieved by means clearly identifiable
as being coercive.186
 Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 47.

 Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 46.
 Scheidel, “Slavery and forced labor in early China and the Roman world”: 7.
 With regard to Shāng China, Huáng Xiànfán criticized contemporary scholars of his day for
attributing “slave” status to groups mentioned in the oracle-bone inscriptions without following
precise definitions, such as the scholarly definition given by Karl Marx or the one given in the Chi-
nese encyclopaedic dictionary Cíhǎi 辞海, or even without any definition at all (Huáng Xiànfán,
Zhōngguó lìshǐ méi yǒu núlì shèhuì: 446; for the individual definitions, see: 194–95).
60 Susanne Adamski
4 Preliminary Conclusion
As a preliminary conclusion, we can say that some of the terms denoting groups of
people in Shāng and Western Zhōu bone and bronze inscriptions are also used in
later written sources of the Warring States and early empire. In these latter sources,
they designate the lowest social strata at the time, including possible equivalents of
“slaves” and “bondservants” as defined by modern terminology. This cannot be as-
certained for the Shāng and Western Zhōu periods. Epigraphic evidence so far is
too scarce to determine cases of “strong asymmetrical dependency” in earliest
China. Their existence can be interpreted from the sources, but not proved. We
should be careful not to implicitly or unconsciously project the semantic ranges of
these terms back to earlier periods. We should also be careful not to assume the
existence of certain social categories or strata in the earliest dynasties without de-
fining the terms, and without being aware of the epigraphic and historical issues
involved. Based on these examples of unclear evidence, I would like to bring up the
following question: How can phenomena of “human bondage and coercion” be se-
curely determined, if the sources of any given society are limited to certain types
and also limited in their content? Any form of “asymmetrical dependency,” or
“bondage and coercion,” may it be classified as “slavery” or something else, is al-
ways relative to other, more or less severe forms of “bondage and coercion,” or to
human relations devoid of “bondage and coercion.” We thus need a fixed point
among the social relations of a given society, which enables us to determine other
relations that differ from it. Having regard to new developments in classical Greece,
Perry Anderson 1974 already characterized ancient domestic “slavery” as being
“relative” to other forms of dependency:
In classical Greece, slaves were thus for the first time habitually employed in crafts, industry
and agriculture beyond the household scale. At the same time, while the use of slavery became
general, its nature correspondingly became absolute: it was no longer one relative form of ser-
vitude among many, along a gradual continuum, but a polar condition of complete loss of
freedom, juxtaposed against a new and untrammeled liberty. For it was precisely the forma-
tion of a limpidly demarcated slave sub-population that conversely lifted the citizenry of the
Greek cities to hitherto unknown heights of conscious juridical freedom. Hellenic liberty and
slavery were indivisible: each was the structural condition of the other, in a dyadic system
which had no precedent or equivalent in the social hierarchies of the Near Eastern Empires,
ignorant alike of either the notion of free citizenship or servile property.187
Also, Charlotte Sussman in 2018 showed how to the end of the eighteenth century,
after decades of coerced mobility, British migration to the new world came to be rede-
fined against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade; thereby “slavery” was being
 Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: New Left Books, 1974; Lon-
don: Verso, 1996): 23. I am indebted to the article of Robin Yates for highlighting this statement
(see Yates, “Slavery in Early China”: 287).
construed as the antithesis of the movement of British emigrants to Canada, which

was intentionally categorized by the state as “free”: “without taking anything away
from the horrors of chattel slavery, it is still possible to say that slavery was not the
opposite of European mobility in the way we have been taught to think of it. Instead,
slavery was the limit case at one end of a continuum of coerced movement and servi-
tude.”188 Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Cluster of Excellence “Beyond Slavery
and Freedom: Asymmetrical Dependencies in Pre-Modern Societies” refers to “slav-
ery” as one form, as well as the bottom line, of “strong asymmetrical dependency”
(i.e. the “most extreme” form of “human bondage and coercion”), without however
defining its distinctive characteristics as opposed to other forms of the concept
“strong asymmetrical dependency”; which, in turn, are not further distinguished
from relations of “asymmetrical dependency.”189 “Asymmetrical dependency” is thus
defined as the “loss of autonomy” of actors in relations of (often reciprocal) depen-
dency as a result of “strong asymmetries,” and this loss of autonomy190 further needs
to be institutionally ensured. Accordingly the worst case in dependency relations
must be the institutionally supported total loss of autonomy on the part of the depen-
dent. If “slavery” is generally regarded as the worst case (i.e. the “most extreme”
form) of “strong asymmetrical dependency,” then this requires a clear definition, to
prevent “slavery,” if one wishes to use this term, from becoming a loose category of
all kinds of “worst cases” of dependency, which may however differ to a considerable
degree from one society to the next. Perhaps one should follow Moses Finley, and
use the term “slave” only for those dependent people who clearly resemble the
“slaves” in classical antiquity and the post-Columbian Americas. Other appellations
 Compare Charlotte Sussman, “Historicizing Freedom of Movement: Memory and Exile in Polit-
ical Context,” in Revisiting Slavery and Antislavery: Towards a Critical Analysis, ed. Laura Brace and
Julia O’Connell Davidson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 99, 106 and 107.
 The Cluster’s “tentative and rather broad understanding of ‘asymmetrical dependency’” is
subject to re-conceptualization: “Dependencies between actors are based on the ability of one actor
to control the actions and the access to resources of another. This type of control over actions and
access to resources is often reciprocal, and in this case, it is compatible with the autonomy of both
actors. So the existence of strong asymmetries between actors is decisive for the loss of autonomy
of one of them. In addition this asymmetrical dependency between actors has to be supported by
an institutional background that ensures that the dependent actor normally cannot change their
situation by either going away (‘exit’) or by articulating protest (‘voice’).” Thus, “strong asymme-
tries” in dependency relations seem to be constitutive for “asymmetrical dependency,” and re-
search is based on the hypotheses that: “(1) There are enduring institutions of asymmetrical
dependency in all human societies; and (2) these asymmetrical dependencies are formative for
these societies.” BCDSS, “Research Objective.” However, it is not explained what further distinguishes
“strong asymmetrical dependencies,” the declared subject of the research areas A and B.
 “Autonomy” is defined as “1. the quality or state of being self-governing; 2. self-directing free-
dom and especially moral independence; 3. a self-governing state” according to the Merriam-Webster
dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autonomy [accessed 17.05.2022]).
62 Susanne Adamski
or categories would need to be found for those persons whose circumstances were
(and are) essentially different.191
But not only “strong asymmetrical dependencies,” but also commonplace and
rather obscure forms of dependency, such as dependencies created by the labor
market, ought to be recognized as parts of a continuum – even contemporary schol-
ars find themselves within a continuum of social asymmetries, and not outside of it.
It thus seems helpful to distinguish forms of dependency within a given society.
With regard to changing forms of bondage and coercion, reasons for the decline
and eventual abolition of “slavery” as a legal institution – a topic that is increas-
ingly becoming the focus of critical analyses –192 were already formulated by Max
Weber, who saw global economic processes of modernization as driving factors in
the emergence and advancement of an indirect compulsion to work, making the
need for “slavery” more or less obsolete for the efficient extraction of labor:
Die Unterdrückung der Sklaverei durch Ausschluß auch der freiwilligen Ergebung in formal
sklavenartige Beziehungen war Produkt vor allem der Verschiebung des Schwerpunktes der
ökonomischen Weltherrschaft in Gebiete hinein, in welchen die Sklavenarbeit infolge der
Kostspieligkeit des Lebensunterhaltes unrentabel ist und zugleich der Entwicklung des indir-
ekten Arbeitszwanges, wie ihn das Lohnsystem mit seiner drohenden Chance der Entlassung
und Arbeitslosigkeit bietet, als eines für qualitative Arbeitsleistungen gegenüber dem direkten
Zwang wirksameren und zugleich das große Risiko der Sklavenvermögen vermeidenden Mit-
tels galt, Arbeit aus dem Abhängigen herauszupressen.193
 Finley’s criticism has been cited by David Lewis: “First, a host of, let us say, African statuses
and status terms are translated as ‘slaves’; second, it is observed that at essential points these so-
called slaves are extremely unlike the slaves of classical antiquity or of the Americas; third, instead
of reconsidering their appellation ‘slaves’ to their own subjects, these anthropologists angrily pro-
test the ‘ethnocentrism’ of ‘western’ historians in order to provide a place for their own pseudo-
slaves.” (Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology [London: Chatto & Windus, 1980]:
69; after Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 45).
 For critical studies in different respects, see for instance Joel Quirk, “The Anti-Slavery Project:
Linking the Historical and Contemporary,” Human Rights Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2006): 565–98, and
The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking, Pennsylvania Studies in
Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); as well as Laura Brace and
Julia O’Connell Davidson, “Slavery and the Revival of Anti-Slavery Activism,” in Revisiting Slavery
and Antislavery: Towards a Critical Analysis, ed. Laura Brace and Julia O’Connell Davidson (Lon-
don: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 3–34.
 Weber, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik: 429; these are not the only reasons given by Weber, see
here and page 430 for further elaborations. Scholarly questions of similarities between “work prac-
tices before and after the abolition of chattel slavery” have, for example, been asked in Michael
Twaddle, ed., The Wages of Slavery: From Chattel Slavery to Wage Labour in Africa, the Caribbean
and England (Abingdon: Frank Cass, 1993); Mary Turner, ed., From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves:
The Dynamics of Labour Bargaining in the Americas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995);
and Mary Turner, “Modernizing Slavery: Investigating the Legal Dimension,” New West Indian Guide /
Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 73, no. 3/4 (1999): 5–26, https://doi.org/10.1163/13822373-90002575 [accessed
17.05.2022]. “Dependency” in modern and contemporary employment relationships is best expressed
Coercion has many facets. In ancient China, the domination of non-élite and thus
apparently dependent individuals or particular groups during the Shāng and West-
ern Zhōu period is clear from the epigraphic record. This is not surprising, because
it falls under the broad scope of Herrschaft (“power/authority”) as usefully outlined
by Max Weber.194 But it is not an easy matter to draw more precise information
from the sources, such as on the exact living and working conditions of the people
involved, and on how the relations towards their superiors were shaped and/or de-
termined their everyday lives. The application of social categories demands their
clear identification.
As to early ancient China, as long as we lack more precise facts, we cannot ex-
actly differentiate between certain terms, other than being sure that they represent
the social hierarchy’s “lower end.” This does not mean that these terms were neces-
sarily meant to denote status, in the sense of neatly differentiated non-aristocratic so-
cial strata, but possibly that they denoted non-aristocratic people performing certain
functions and having certain obligations. But to determine under which circumstan-
ces these members or non-members of society lived, what kinds of obligations and
by contemporary terminology itself, such as English “dependent employment” and German “abhängig
Beschäftigte” or “abhängig Erwerbstätige,” which are synonyms for the now commonly used Ar-
beitnehmer (“employees”), including inter alia employees subject to social incurance contribu-
tions, civil servants, judges, and soldiers, as described on the website of the Federal Statistical
Office of Germany: “Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer üben ihre Haupttätigkeit auf vertra-
glicher Basis für eine Arbeitgeberin beziehungsweise einem [sic] Arbeitgeber in einem abhängi-
gen Arbeitsverhältnis aus und erhalten hierfür eine Vergütung (Arbeitnehmerentgelt: Lohn
beziehungsweise Gehalt).” Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), “Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeit-
nehmer,” https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Arbeitsmarkt/Glossar/arbeitnehmer.html
[accessed 17.05.2022].
 “‘Herrschaft’ soll, definitionsgemäß [. . .] die Chance heißen, für spezifische (oder: für alle)
Befehle bei einer angebbaren Gruppe von Menschen Gehorsam zu finden. Nicht also jede Art von
Chance, ‘Macht’ und ‘Einfluss’ auf andere Menschen auszuüben. Herrschaft (‘Autorität’) in diesem
Sinn kann im Einzelfall auf den verschiedensten Motiven der Fügsamkeit: von dumpfer Gewöh-
nung angefangen bis zu rein zweckrationalen Erwägungen, beruhen. Ein bestimmtes Minimum an
Gehorchenwollen, also Interesse (äußerem oder innerem) am Gehorchen, gehört zu jedem echten
Herrschaftsverhältnis.” Weber, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik: 122. Weber further points out that for-
mally, relations of power/authority (Herrschaft) can be entered into voluntarity; a relation of
power/authority entails obedience, regardless of its voluntary or involuntary nature, the latter
being absolute only in cases of slavery: “Dagegen soll es den Begriff eines Herrschaftsverhältnisses
natürlich nicht ausschließen, daß es durch formal freien Kontrakt entstanden ist [. . .] Die absolute
Unfreiwilligkeit besteht erst beim Sklaven.” (123). Weber further states that relations of power/au-
thority are not always necessarily to be defined as “Herrschaft,” since they comprise all stages be-
tween commitment (Schuldverpflichtung) and enslavement (Schuldverknechtung); but precisely
because sharp distinctions often cannot be drawn, it is even more important to have clear concepts
(“Natürlich ist auch hier, wie überall, der Uebergang flüssig: von Schuldverpflichtung zur Schuld-
verknechtung finden sich alle Zwischenstufen [. . .] Scharfe Scheidung ist in der Realität oft
nicht möglich, klare Begriffe sind aber dann deshalb nur umso nötiger.” [123]).
64 Susanne Adamski
rights they had, and under which (degrees of) constraints or acceptable conditions
they came to live, we need further evidence and further studies. Particular situations
of apparent domination and coercion are only implicit in the extant epigraphic re-
cords. In the absence of explanations or definitions, they are hard to grasp in terms
of terminology. Whether they fall under a concept “strong asymmetrical dependency”
thus cannot be determined: more evidence is needed.
Shāng and Zhōu society clearly was hierarchical, showing apparently asymmetri-
cal relations. But so far, there is no clear evidence of “strong asymmetrical depen-
dency” as delineated by various concepts such as “slavery,” “debt bondage,” “convict
labor,” “tributary labor,” “servitude,” “serfdom,” “domestic work” or “wage labor,”
all forms of dependency which, by the chosen definition already discussed, need to
include “coercion.” Even if we take a broader definition of the term “bondage” as a
basis, further terminological questions arise that need to be addressed with regard to
our specific historical context, for example “bondage” as “a state of being bound usu-
ally by compulsion (as of law or mastery): such as a: captivity, serfdom, b: servitude
or subjugation to a controlling person or force.”195 How long does a particular situa-
tion of apparent bondage and coercion need to last to count as a relation of “strong
asymmetrical dependency” – hours, days, or months? Do victims of Shāng human
sacrifice, for instance, count as “strong asymmetrical dependents”? Certainly, their
very lives depended on the agents who decided on their fate, and sacrificial killings
were not necessarily performed shortly after prisoners were taken captive, as recent
studies suggest.196 But captives were by no means the only category of human victims
within the Shāng sacrificial system, indicating a variety of possible intentions and mo-
tives.197 How can these relations be categorized?
 Thus given as second definition of the term in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, see https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bondage [accessed 17.05.2022]. My italics.
 Christina Cheung et al. theorize that, due to the long duration of captivity as suggested by the
evaluated evidence, the victims may have been put to use as laborers: “Our results suggest that
these sacrificial victims were likely not local, but moved to Yinxu and adopted the local diet for at
least a few years before being killed.” Christina Cheung et al., “Diets, Social Roles, and Geographi-
cal Origins of Sacrificial Victims at the Royal Cemetery at Yinxu, Shang China: New Evidence from
Stable Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Isotope Analysis,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 48
(2017): 28, abstract; “[S]ome of the sacrificial victims in Yinxu were non-local, and likely partici-
pated in productive labour” (43).
 Gideon Shelach-Lavi made the first fruitful approach to explain human sacrifice as an integral
part of the Shāng political system in 1996, proposing that human sacrifice especially of Qiāng 羌 (i.e
non-Shāng people) played a significant role in the political legitimation of the Shāng kings, compara-
ble to human sacrifice practiced by the Mayan élite, and this focus on “captive sacrifice” has found
approval in more recent scholarship. But, as Shelach himself notes, Qiāng were approximately only
50 percent of human sacrificial victims in the epigraphic records (compare Gideon Shelach, “The
Qiang and the Question of Human Sacrifice in the Late Shang Period,” Asian Perspectives 35, no. 1
[1996]: 13); this raises the question as to possible multiple functions of the large-scale institution of
Shāng human sacrifice, which need to be further studied.
Maybe a shift of focus from mere terminological to social issues may be helpful
in studying “asymmetrical dependency,” strong or otherwise, during earlier peri-
ods, as far as the sources allow. The role that coercion may or may not have played
in enhancing, consolidating, or maintaining social asymmetries, and to whose par-
ticular benefits, appears especially worth analyzing. In the case of earliest historical
China, it seems promising to further study the relations and issues between individ-
ual agents or groups of people in the extant inscriptional record, such as the institu-
tion of ritual killing, sacrificial or otherwise, of both captive and native humans ‒
surely the most extreme form of coercion.
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Ludwig D. Morenz
Tax Coercion as a Real and Metaphorical
YOKE: On the Earliest State Administrative
Practices Reflected in Ancient Egyptian
Writing and Images Around 3000 BC
The first territorial state in global history was created in the second half of the fourth
millennium BC, in the Nile Valley. This formative phase of Egyptian culture saw strong
and productive interactions between socio-economic, mentalitarian and medial devel-
opments.1 There had never been a state2 with such an unprecedentedly vast surface
area as this territory that stretched along both banks of the Nile (partially expressed in
its Egyptian name t#.wj – “the Two Lands”3) for more than 800 kilometers (500 miles)
from north to south (Fig. 1). During the approximately three millennia of its “phara-
onic” history, this state was always dominated by a monarchical form of rule4 that
carried a sacral charge,5 albeit of varying intensity.
 Ludwig D. Morenz and Robert Kuhn, eds., Vorspann oder formative Phase? Ägypten und der Vordere
Orient 3500–2700 v. Chr, Philippika 48 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011); Morenz, Ludwig, Supplemen-
tärer Sinnüberschuß zur Ausweitung von Decorum. Thot, Beiträge zur historischen Epistemologie und
Medienarchäologie 6 (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2020); for the question of pictorial art see Ludwig D. Morenz,
Anfänge der ägyptischen Kunst: eine problemgeschichtliche Einführung in ägyptologische Bild-
Anthropologie, Orbis biblicus et orientalis 264 (Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2014).
 For internal Egyptian perspectives on “political” concepts and patterns of thought see e.g. Pascal
Vemus, Essai sur la Conscience de l’Histoire dans l’Egypte Pharaonique, Bibliothèque de l’École des
Hautes Études, Sciences Historiques et Philologiques 332 (Paris: Champion, 1995).
 The topic of national territory raises the issue of borders: for the issue of concepts and their lin-
guistic application see, for example, Stephen Quirke, “Frontier or Border? The Northeast Delta in
Middle Kingdom Texts,” in Proceedings of Colloquium ‘The Archaeology, Geography and History of
the Egyptian Delta in Pharaonic Times’. Wadham College, 29–31 August 1988, Oxford, ed. Alessandra
Nibbi (Oxford: Cotswold Press, 1989): 261–75.
 In contrast to Egypt with its monarchic constitution, roughly contemporaneous Mesopotamia in
the second half of the fourth millennium may be described as a more socio-politically differentiated cul-
ture in the region, albeit with a strong Uruk primacy (Guillerno Algaze, The Uruk World System: The Dy-
namics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilation [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993]). For
an informed broad and comparative cultural overview see Norman Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State.
Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press, 2005).
 This “pharaonic” rule carried a strong sacral charge; there has been much discussion among
scholars about the details, at least, of the precise definition of the divine/human hybrid, resulting
Note: I am very grateful for their comments and ideas to Vitali Bartash (esp. for his remarks on Excur-
sus 1), Beryl Büma, Stephan Conermann, Adam Fagbore, Christian Schwermann and Konrad Vössing
(esp. for his remarks on Excursus 2).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-003
74 Ludwig D. Morenz
Fig. 1: The complete Egyptian Nile Valley. Map by David Sabel.
In what follows, I propose to discuss questions of taxation with a view to struc-

tural societal violence, administration and medial enactment6 in this, the earliest
in pronounced chronological, regional, social, medial or even genre-related differences in terms of

representation (Georges Posener, De la Divinite du Pharaon (Paris: Paris Imprimerie Nationale,
1960); Joachim Friedrich Quack, “How unapproachable is a Pharaoh?,” in Concepts of Kingship in
Antiquity. Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop held in Padova,
November 28th – December 1st, 2007, History of the Ancient Near East Monographs 9, ed. Giovanni
Battista Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger (Padua: Sargon, 2010): 1–14). It is also interesting to note
that “pharaoh” is the most frequent loanword in the Hebrew Bible. It was used and glossed like a
proper name: paro melek mizraim – “Pharao, King of Egypt.” At least from the external perspective
of authors from the first millennium BC, “pharaonic” rule was a specific form of rule to which they
attempted to do adequate justice with this elaborate and formulaic linguistic designation.
 It will suffice to point to a single reference, Sarah Albiez-Wieck, ed., Taxing Difference: Empires
as Spaces of Ordered Inequality (St. Ingbert: Röhrig University Press, 2020), for a cultural compari-
son concerning this complex question. In what follows, I shall focus on a comparatively much ear-
lier period. In order to be able to substantiate the cultural comparison with a view to “the
beginnings,” I shall attempt base my argument on a concrete reading of the sources and the materi-
ality of the media. For a comparison with conditions in Sumer, which is roughly contemporaneous
to Proto and Early Dynastic Egyptian culture, see Vitali Bartash, “Age, Gender and Labor: Record-
ing Human Resources in 3350–2500 BC Mesopotamia,” in What’s in a Name? Terminology to the
Tax Coercion as a Real and Metaphorical YOKE 75
territorial state, whose limited state apparatus7 is characteristic of the pre-modern

period. My analysis will focus on the interaction of media materiality with socio-
economic and mentalitarian developments8 in the specific situation of the Proto
and Early Dynastic period in the Nile Valley of the late fourth and early third millen-
nia; or, put very simply, I shall look at “Foucaultian” questions through a media ar-
chaeological lens in the manner of Friedrich Kittler.9 In the terminology of Kittler/
Latour, what we perceive are traces of human/thing/media hybrids: an extraction of
plain sociological statements may appear correspondingly violent. Even with this
methodological reservation, our available data corpus, which has been substantially
expanded by research in recent decades, is really remarkable, both in terms of Egyp-
tology and of wider, global history. Our earliest written testimonies for strongly asym-
metrical dependencies originate in Sumerian culture10 and the Nile Valley; they are
massive, partially shrouded in euphemism, often surprisingly concrete and some-
times frighteningly drastic.
Among the earliest surviving written sources are records of tax levies in the Nile
Valley from the late fourth and early third millennia BC. They can be understood in
Work Force and Job Categories in the Ancient Near East, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 440, ed.
Agnés Garcia-Ventura (Münster: Ugarit, 2018): 45–80.
 See in this context a number of works that have emerged from the CRC 700 “Governance in Areas
of Limited Statehood,” esp.: Thomas Risse, Tanja A. Börzel and Anke Draude, eds., The Oxford
Handbook of Governance and Limited Statehood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); for a spe-
cifically Egyptological discussion see Richard Bussmann, “Scaling the State,” Archaeology Interna-
tional 17 (2014): 79–93; for the process of state formation in the Proto and Early Dynastic period see
Alice Stevenson, “The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation,” Journal of Archaeological Re-
search 24 (2016): 421–68.
 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: The MIT Press,
1964) is a classic; however, since then, given esp. the rise of media studies (“something to do with
media . . .”), the term “media” (between message and massage) may have experienced some
blurring.
 For a stimulating, albeit very edgy and provocative, and probably also at least in part deeply ironic
account (“Ja, schon ein Übertreibungskünstler. Aber das aus dem puren Grund, mich selbst und die
anderen nicht zu sehr zu langweilen.” – “Yes, I like to exaggerate. But for the simple reason that I do
not want to bore myself and others too much.”). See Friedrich Kittler and Christoph Weinberger, “Das
Kalte Modell von Struktur,” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 1 (2009): 93–102. I disagree with Kittler
in seeing a number of different beginnings not with “the Greeks,” but millennia earlier.
 Contrary to an opinion held by past scholarship, the emergence of writing in Mesopotamia can-
not be attributed solely to an administrative context: see Jean-Jacques Glassner and Ecrire a Sumer,
L’invention du cuneiforme (Suil: Éditions du Seuil, 2000); Jean-Jacques Glassner, “Antérieurement à
l’Uruk V: la première écritureen Mésopotamie,” in Niltal und Zweistromland: Die Anfänge der Kultur-
technik Schreiben im 4. und frühen 3. Jt. v. Chr, ed. Ludwig D. Morenz and Andréas Stauder (Berlin:
EB-Verlag, forthcoming); for an historical sociological perspective with an interpretation based on
a concrete reading of the sources see Bartash, “Age, Gender and Labor.”
76 Ludwig D. Morenz
the socio-cultural context of an at least moderately redistributive economy;11 and in-

deed there was a significant affinity between administration and writing from the
very beginning of the use of writing, in Ancient Egypt as elsewhere (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2: A modern caricature of bureaucracy. Image from Hans-Günther Semsek, Kauderwelsch 2,

Arabisch für Globetrotter (Bielefeld: Peter-Rump-Verlag, 1991, 5th ed.): 90.
In view of the potential of using ancient written sources12 in concrete terms it be-
comes clear, however – despite appearing at first, perhaps, somewhat counter-
intuitive (but then on closer reflection perhaps not all that surprising . . .) – that we
should expect a degree of inefficiency in bureaucracy and especially the bookkeep-
ing in use in the Nile Valley the Pharaonic period.13 A very precise distinction must
of course be made between administrative practices, their socio-cultural contexts
and their traces in the written record, which can only ever be partial.14 It is certainly
 Evamaria Engel, “The Organisation of a Nascent State: Egypt until the Beginning of the 4th Dy-
nasty,” in Ancient Egyptian Administration, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 1, Ancient Near
East 104, ed. J. C. Moreno Garcia (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 19–40.
 Christopher Eyre, The Use of Documents in Pharaonic Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013).
 A stronger general caveat should apply to administrative records in general, cf. Christopher
Eyre, “On the Inefficiency of Bureaucracy,” in Egyptian Archive: Proceedings of the First Session of
the International Congress Egyptian Archives, ed. Patrizia Piacentini and Christian Orsenigo (Milano:
Cisalpino, 2009): 15–30. For a broader cultural comparison see, for example, Peter Crooks and Tim-
othy H. Parsons, eds., Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twenti-
eth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
 A methodological difficulty in terms of archaeology is that we know of administrative practices
almost exclusively through written sources.
the case that a substantial part of social control played out in the field of orality
and collective social memory.15 Moreover, the coincidence of transmission plays a
large role in our modern perceptions of what has come down to us in writing. Despite
thousands of preserved papyri and hundreds of thousands of preserved ostraca, we
should be aware that (based on a rather associative extrapolation by Georges Pos-
ener, now almost 60 years old) there may once have been some 100,000 papyri for
every preserved papyrus fragment – and this is all the more true for the earlier peri-
ods of Egyptian history.16 There can of course be no guarantee for these or for any
concrete numbers, but we can and should certainly expect an enormous gap in the
evidence; and for early Egyptian history we must assume a vast chasm.17 Moreover,
modern Egyptology assumes a low literacy rate in the pharaonic Nile Valley – the
many uncertainties in terms of details and fluctuations caused by social, regional
and chronological factors notwithstanding.18 In the early third millennium, the liter-
acy rate may have been less than one percent of the total population (which may at
the time have been around one million people, but that is only a very rough esti-
mate).19 From a perspective of global cultural history, however, it is perhaps less
 Eyre, The Use of Documents in Pharaonic Egypt: 10.

 Georges Posener, “Histoire et Egypt eancienne,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 17 (1962):
631–46.
 The comparatively well-preserved library of the provincial temple of Tebtynis provides an indi-
cation of how many inscribed papyri there were in the Graeco-Roman period; for an overview see
Kim Ryholt, “On the Contents and Nature of the Tebtunis Temple Library: A Status Report,” in Tebt-
ynis und Soknopaiou Nesos. Leben im römerzeitlichen Fajum, ed. Sandra Lippert and Maren Schentu-
leit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005): 141–70.
 John Baines, Visual und written Culture in ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007):
110–16. For a critical discussion of the Egyptological methodology in dealing with a data corpus
that is highly dependent on the coincidence of transmission see John Gee, “Egyptologists’ Fallacies:
Fallacies Arising from Limited Evidence,” Journal of Egyptian History 3 (2010): 137–58. Friedhelm
Hoffmann and Joachim Friedrich Quack, Anthologie der demotischen Literatur, Einführungen und
Quellentexte zur Ägyptologie 4 (Berlin: LIT, 2018): 5 and 367 n.b., are more skeptical of prevailing
assumptions about literacy rates; this applies especially to the first millennium BC. In view of the
coincidence of transmission, which is likely to be further complicated by different levels of literacy,
our difficulties in estimating population densities in various times and regions, and estimates of
the total Egyptian population at a specific time, which at best remain very hypothetical, it seems
hardly possible to arrive at a firmer position on this point for the time being. Concrete case studies,
especially on the village of Deir el-Medina (Jacobus Johannes Janssen, “Literacy and Letters in Deir
el-Medina,” in Village voices: Proceedings of the Symposion Texts from Deir el-Medina, ed. Robert
Johannes Demarée and Arno Egberts (Leiden: CNWS, 1992): 81–94; Lesko, Leonard H., “Literature,
Literacy and Literati,” in Pharaoh’s Worker. The Villagers of Deir el Medina, auth. Leonard H. Lesko
[Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018]) are very much more robust; but it is more than likely that
this is an extraordinary case from the New Kingdom, specific to its place and time.
 Works and overviews such as Karl W. Butzer, “Demography,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeol-
ogy of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard (London: Routledge, 1999): 250–52, rest on a very slender
data corpus, especially for the fourth and early third millennia: Jürgen Kraus, Die Demographie des
78 Ludwig D. Morenz
surprising how few people (especially, albeit not exclusively, men: despite the fact
that the deity of writing was the goddess Seshat,20 writing in the ancient Nile Valley
was constructed as a masculine cultural technique21) were able to write at that time,
but rather how many. At this period, so very distant from modernity,22 the only other
place where writing was practiced at all was Mesopotamia and its cultural orbit.23
From the end of the fourth millennium onwards, regular tax collections were
closely tied to the central state/monarch(y), and in Early Dynastic Egypt took place
as part of annual or biannual “inventories” (in Egyptian, ṯnw)24 in the context of
the royal “Following of Horus”(šmsw ḥr).25
These tax collections were put on the record – in the sense of bookkeeping, but also
by displaying the royal state apparatus, i.e. the two overlapping aspects of administra-
tion and prestige;26 in the process they were partially exhibited and monumentalized.
In what follows, I will examine aspects of this five-thousand-year-old socio-
economic practice in terms of its writing and images (Schrift-Bildlichkeit und Bild-
Schriftlichkeit). In view of this evidence from the sphere of the royal administration,
I propose the thesis that an augmented script was created in this administrative
Alten Ägypten. Eine Phänomenologie anhand altägyptischer Quellen (Göttingen: Georg-August-

Universität Göttingen, 2004): 157–71. The availability of data is of course quite different for the
Greco-Roman period; cf. Roger Shaler Bagnal and Bruce W. Frier, The demography of Roman Egypt,
Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994): 40–50; Walter Scheidel, Death on the Nile: Disease & the Demography of
Roman Egypt, Mnemosyne: Supplementum 228 (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
 Dagmar Budde, Die Göttin Seschat, Kanobos 2 (Leipzig: Wodtke und Stegbauer, 2000).
 Ludwig D. Morenz, Kultur- und mediengeschichtliche Essays zu einer Archäologie der Schrift: von
den frühneolithischen Zeichensystemen bis zu den frühen Schriftsystemen in Ägypten und dem Vorde-
ren Orient, Thot. Beiträge zur historischen Epistemologie und Medienarchäologie 4 (Berlin: EB-
Verlag, 2013): 352–72.
 I will at this point not discuss the extent to which the medial development, i.e. the emergence of
writing, should be understood as a substantial forward stride of socio-cultural modernization (Ludwig
D. Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht, Thot. Beiträge zur historischen Epistemologie und Medienarchäo-
logie 2 [Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2020]), but the assumption that this is the case underlies my argument.
 Claus Wilcke, Wer las und schrieb in Babylonien und Assyrien. Überlegungen zur Literalität im
Alten Zweistromland, Sitzungsberichte/ Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-
Historische Klasse 2000, 6 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2000).
 For the questions of tax and “inventory” see Wolfgang Helck, Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit,
Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 45 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987): 212–21; Engel, “The Organisa-
tion of a Nascent State.”
 Scholars often regard the “Following of Horus” in analogy to the itinerant royal courts of medieval
Europe. On the question of medieval European itinerant kings see, for example, Andrea Stieldorf, “Re-
iseherrschaft und Residenz im Frühen und Hohen Mittelalter,” Historisches Jahrbuch 129 (2009): 147–77.
 Baines, Visual und written Culture, 281–98; Leslie Anne Warden, “Centralised Taxation during
the Old Kingdom,” in Towards a New History for the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Perspectives on the Pyra-
mid Age, Harvard Egyptological Studies 1, ed. Peter Der Manuelian and Thomas Schneider (Leiden:
Brill, 2015): 470–95.
context (as it were a script 2.0). I believe that this thesis can be well supported, de-
spite the problems relating to the coincidence of transmission discussed above.27
From the period before the Proto-dynastic king named Hor (or Iri-Hor) (around
3100 BC),28 we only have isolated evidence of phonographic notation, especially for
proper names (of gods, persons and places) – a sort of script 1.0. From the time of
this king named Hor onwards, generic terms for revenue levies were written down
in administrative contexts, such as in this cylinder seal inscription (Fig. 3), which
mentions the administrative office nbw (one of the most important offices in early
Egyptian society at that time29) as well as ḏf #w – “food.”
Fig. 3a–b: Reconstructed cylinder seal inscription from Abydos (Müller, “Seal Impressions”: 23),
compare with the fragmentary impressions in neck sealings of clay jars from the tomb of king Hor.
In addition to these two administrative terms – already attested on the hiero-

glyphic cylinder seal inscriptions of the Proto-Dynastic king Hor – we also find
 Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht.

 For a discussion of the name see Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht: 31–65. In favor of the
older reading was most recently Andréas Stauder, “Iri-Hor: Elaborations of an Early Royal
Name,” Göttinger Miszellen 262 (2020): 201–8. A definite conclusion (simple Hor or Iri-Hor) re-
mains difficult, because this is the very earliest, “experimental” phase of phonographic notation.
Bearing in mind the conventions of writing and the ideology of rule, I believe the simple “Horus”
to be more likely.
 Vera Müller, “Do Seal Impressions Prove a Change in the Administration during the Reign of
King Den?” in Seals and sealing practices in the Near East, ed. Ilona Regulski, Kim Duistermaat, and
Peter Verkinderen (Leuven: Peeters, 2012):17–32.
80 Ludwig D. Morenz
the administrative terms, pḥw, nḥb und jp.wt (Fig. 4) inscribed on jars in a differ-
ent script, namely the more cursive hieratic.
Fig. 4: Pottery sherd with hieratic inscription of the Proto-Dynastic king Hor:
under the name “Hor” is the administrative term pḥw – something that has been
accomplished or arrived = products have arrived. Drawing by Johann Thiele
based on a draft by Günther Dreyer.
The words pḥw, nḥb and jp.wt were borrowed from everyday speech but transformed
into specific technical terms in the administrative context. It is precisely this meta-
phorisation that testifies to the formation of a specific linguistic world within Proto
and Early Dynastic socio-economic practice. We can trace back the meanings of these
administrative terms as follows (Tab. 1):
Tab. 1: Specialist administrative terms, already attested in fourth/early third

millennium inscriptions.
Name Primary meaning Secondary meaning
pḥw accomplished / arrived products have arrived
jp.wt counted / registered registered revenues
nḥb harnessed / yoked (compulsory) levies
In this list, the word nḥb – “harnessed / yoked,” as a designation of (compulsory)

levies – stands out in terms of its etymological origin: the idea on which it is based
is a violent one. We might instead look to the verb nḥb, “to allocate,” but it is
 Some time later the terms jw.t – “that which has arrived” – and jn.wt – “that which has been
brought” were used in this sense. For an overview of the evidentiary record see Jochem Kahl, “Zur
Problematik der sogenannten Steuervermerke,” in: Divitiae Aegypti: Koptologische und Verwandte
Studien zu Ehren von Martin Krause, ed. Cäcilia Fluck, Lucia Langener, and Siegfried Richter (Wies-
baden: Reichert, 1995): 168–76.
 Primarily derived from nḥb.t – “neck” –, which was where beasts and dependent persons were
yoked (cf. the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman rock art with its corresponding inscription).
attested only later. The more likely scenario in this case is that the word is a meta-
phorisation of the presumably much older term meaning “(compulsory) levies.”
We are familiar with the image underlying nḥb – “harnessed / yoked,” being
under the yoke, from our own usage of language (think of the expression “cast off the
yoke” or its German equivalent, “das Joch abwerfen,” both of which denote an es-
cape from captivity or slavery), but also from the Hebrew Bible (“thou shalt break his
yoke from off thy neck,” in Gen 27.40) or from Akkadian. In the Sumerian royal in-
scriptions from the third millennium as well as in the literary texts from the Old Bab-
ylonian period (2000–1600 BC), the expressions “to carry a yoke” and “to yoke” are
used precisely in the sense of “to subjugate” (i.e. to dominate politically, to subju-
gate; the term itself goes back to Latin sub iugum, under the yoke, see below).32 In
the Nile Valley, the corresponding pattern of ideas – people were, in fact, presumably
put under an actual yoke; in addition the term carried a powerful metaphorical
charge – can be traced in linguistic, written and pictorial forms back to the very be-
ginnings of the Egyptian territorial state around 3000 BC. We should understand sub-
jugation as part of a particular socio-economic practice.
Starting from the reign of the Proto-Dynastic king who carried the symbolic
name of “Hor,” we can assume a more specific differentiation of phono-semantic
writing in the fourth-millennium Nile Valley, and thus a new type of script: version
2.0. It is likely that a specific (ideal-typically simplified) mentality and practice of
administration formed an important socio-cultural background to this period of cog-
nition33 that shaped writing, in the course of which around 3100 BC – according to
our evidence precisely under King Hor – administration on the one hand created
writing and writing on the other created administration. We can connect this script
2.0, which at the time was a new thing in terms of media technology, with the so-
ciological type “official.” Closely connected to this development of the writing sys-
tem was the development in the Proto and Early Dynastic period of a system of
graphic numerals,34 which during this epoch clearly served the administration in
the Nile Valley. In fact, the earliest attestation of this – almost35 – fully developed
 The sources include, among others, the inscriptions of Gudea, the ruler of Lagaš (22nd
century BC); the literary-mythohistorical text Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta; and the Neo-
Sumerian royal hymn Šulgi B. I thank Vitali Bartash for this information.
 In the historiography of science and technology, “cognition” can be understood with Günter
Ropohl (Günter Ropohl, Eine Systemtheorie der Technik [Munich: Karlsruhe KIT Scientific Publish-
ing, 1979]) as a formative phase during which a natural effect or a new law is discovered, described
and/or created.
 Ludwig D. Morenz, Zählen Vorstellen Darstellen: Eine Archäologie der altägyptischen Zahlen,
Bonner Ägyptologische Beiträge 1 (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2013): 96–98.
 The “ten” symbol was conceptualized somewhat later, only then was the decimal system com-
plete; see Morenz, Zählen Vorstellen Darstellen: 91–99.
82 Ludwig D. Morenz
decimal system, with special numeral hieroglyphs for units, hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions, is the list of the spoils of
conquest on the ceremonial macehead of King Nar-meher (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5: Ceremonial macehead of King Nar-meher, note the list of the spoils of conquest. Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford: E 3632 (Morenz, Zählen Vorstellen Darstellen: 90). Drawing by Johann Thiele
based on a draft by Günther Dreyer.
The very high numbers were practically never used in most people’s everyday lives
around 3000 BC (what would be the practical use of a number like 750,000 in a
household?), but they did have a very specific application in the central royal admin-
istration: to register the taxes of an entire, large country. As such, we can describe
the number system as a regulative cultural technique serving the administration and
closely related to writing. An expressive hieroglyph, which is also interesting in
terms of its graphic arrangement, is the composite sign for recording taxes with the
addition of walking legs. This hieroglyph is attested in early third-millennium BC in-
scriptions on seal impressions from the time of the Early Dynastic king named Horus
WARRIOR36 (Fig. 6a–c).
Fig. 6a–c: Cylinder seal inscriptions of the king named Horus WARRIOR, IÄF Figs. 144, 160, 161
(Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit: Tabs. 42, 45).
 For this reading of the name instead of simply Aha (“warrior”) see Morenz, VerLautungen von
Macht: 58–63.
Jnj – i.e. the hieroglyph WALKING LEGS37 combined with PAPYRUSLAND ( ) or

the sw plant ( ) to form a composite sign – is in my view not used as a verb in this
case (“to come”), but should be understood as a designation for taxes/levies jnw =
“that which has been brought.” We can thus read these inscriptions as follows:
jnj-t#-mḥw ḏf #.w nḥb – “that which has been brought from Lower Egypt, food, taxes” – and:
jnj-šmo.w ḏf #.w nḥb – “that which has been brought from Upper Egypt, food, taxes.”
The collected taxes recorded in writing on these cylinder seals show the group of
signs identified in previous scholarship as “tent administration” or similar.38 Wolf-
gang Helck more or less intuitively interpreted the sign of the lion/ness with sticks –
there has so far been wide agreement among scholars on this reading39 – as “a
scribe’s numen.”40 However, the identification of this sign with a stick does not re-
ally make iconographic sense (note the pronounced arch, see Fig. 7b); and there
appear to be no parallels in the abundant material available.41 It is more likely to
depict a yoke with a side fastening as can be seen in the roughly contemporary rock
art at Gebel Sheikh Suleiman (Fig. 7a).42 A comparable way of tying a row of prison-
ers by their necks can be seen in a roughly contemporary ivory carving from Abydos
(Fig. 8); in this case a single length of rope is depicted rather than a rod or bar.
And in fact we know of various other representations from the Proto and Early
Dynastic period where prisoners have not only their hands but also their necks tied
(Fig. 9).
With these ties, complete subjugation is inscribed into the foreign body. The
depiction in the rock art from Gebel Sheikh Suleiman (Fig. 7a) even shows the sub-
jugated man as both bound and shot dead with an arrow, i.e. it is less a simple,
naturalistic representation than an iconographically highly charged encoding of
 The pictorial metaphor walking legs occurs centuries before the use of writing on Early Naqada ves-
sels (Ghada Mohamed, “Menschenhafte Zeichen” (PhD diss., University of Bonn, 2020), where it dem-
onstrates a use of metaphor analogous to writing as an important basis of Egyptian written imagery.
 Peter Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit, Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 8 (Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz, 1963): 14–15, tables 40–47.
 Ilona Regulski, ed., A Palaeographic Study of Early Writing in Egypt, Orientalia Lovaniensia Ana-
lecta (Leuven: Peeters, 2010): 107.
 For a summary see Helck, Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit: 176–203.
 Ali Hassan, Stöcke und Stäbe im pharaonischen Ägypten bis zum Ende des neuen Reiches,
Münchner ägyptologische Studien 33 (Tübingen: Ugarit, 1976).
 For essential new documentation see Claire Somaglino and Pierre Tallet, “Une Campagne enNu-
bie sous la 1re Dynastie: La Scène Nagadienne du Gebel Sheikh Suleiman comme Prototype et Mod-
èle,” Nehet, revue numérique d’égyptologie 1 (2014): 1–46; in brief: Claire Somaglino and Pierre
Tallet, “Gebel Sheikh Suleiman: A First Dynasty Relief After All . . .,” Archéo-Nil 25 (2015): 123–34;
for a more detailed discussion of the interpretation adopted here see Morenz, VerLautungen von
Macht: 165–75.
84 Ludwig D. Morenz
Fig. 7a–b: Details of the relief from Gebel Sheikh Suleiman contemporaneous with Horus WARRIOR,
cylinder seal inscription from the time of Horus WARRIOR, IÄF III, fig. 140 (Kaplony, Die Inschriften
der ägyptischen Frühzeit: Tab. 41).
Fig. 8: Ivory fragment from Abydos (Petrie, The Royal Tombs of The Earliest Dynasties, pl. 4: 19).
Fig. 9a–b: Tied-up men (Wild, “Choix D’Objets Pré-Pharaoniques”: 47, pl. III).
submission. This new conception of the hieroglyph in the rock art of Gebel
Sheikh Suleiman also allows a new reading and interpretation of an object that has
been familiar to Egyptologists for neigh on a century, impressive in terms of both
its composition and its style: the ivory plaque of the 1st Dynasty king De(we)n43
(MacGregor plaque, BM 1922,0728.2 = EA55586, Fig. 10).44
Fig. 10a–b: MacGregor plaque, BM 1922,0728.2 = EA55586, image inscription transliteration: nHb
xAs.t in transcription, “Subjugating the foreign/mountainous lands.” Photograph by David Sabel.
Drawing by Johann Thiele based on a draft by David Sabel.
The inscription that goes with the subjugation scene, for which there is as yet no
plausible transliteration in the existing scholarship,45 can be read simply as a de-
scriptive text referring to subjugation. The sign top left ( ) depicts the hieroglyph
for yoke (side view), just as in the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription, with the arch
encircling the neck of the subjugated person (nḥb). It is followed on the right by the
sign for yoke (top view).46 Again, we should imagine the yoke as being placed
 For an overview of this ruler see Gérard Godron, Etudes sur l’Horus Den et quelques problèmes
de l’Égypte archaïque, Cahiers d’orientalisme 19 (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, 1990).
 A. Jeffrey Spencer, ed., Early Dynastic Objects, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British
Museum 5 (London: British Museum, 1980): 65, no. 460.
 The BM website (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA55586 [accessed 17.05.2022])
states, “Another group of three hieroglyphs in front of the king are of uncertain meaning. Possi-
bly the signs could be read ‘tm.sn’, or ‘They shall not exist’, referring to Egypt’s enemies as repre-
sented by the captive. The form of the sign at the top of the group is not a very good rendering of
‘tm’, however.”
 This explanation is a better fit with the sign’s shape than the previous reading of “sledge” (sign
list U 15; for early forms see Regulski, A Palaeographic Study: 195). This sign was not included in
the later hieroglyphic encyclopedia. It is true that we know of some sign forms and signs that are
only attested in the Proto and Early Dynastic period; see Ludwig D. Morenz, Kultur- und medienge-
schichtliche Essays zu einer Archäologie der Schrift: von den frühneolithischen Zeichensystemen bis
zu den frühen Schriftsystemen in Ägypten und dem Vorderen Orient, Thot. Beiträge zur historischen
Epistemologie und Medienarchäologie 4 (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2013): 292–94.
86 Ludwig D. Morenz
around the person’s neck, with the two cross beams running in front of and behind
the head respectively, thus enclosing it (Fig. 11).
Position of the head enclosed by the YOKE
Fig. 11: MacGregor plaque, detail, BM 1922,0728.2 = EA55586. Drawing by Johann Thiele based on
a draft by David Sabel.
In this early phase of writing, the two highly iconic hieroglyphs YOKE (side view)
and YOKE (top view) are being disambiguated. In fact, we could explain the YOKE
in top view in terms of its semantic function as a visually striking determinative.
Three possible meanings may be considered for the three-peaked zigzag line on the
Mac Gregor tablet. As a phonogram (n) it could phonographically support a reading
of nḥb, but this is less likely in terms of the context.47 In view of parallels such as
the inscription on the Nar-meher palette, which reads SLAUGHTER OF THE SEA
LAND ( ),48 here, too, might have signified a simple toponym. We might
think of WATER (region),49 specifically the Red Sea and so the Egyptian sea route
into the Sinai.50 Alternatively, the zigzag line could be read as a different toponym,
denoting instead the mountainous/foreign lands. It lacks the baseline compared to
the traditional hieroglyphic form (sign list N 25), but at this early stage of writ-
ing, this graphic variation does not, at least, seem impossible. A reference to either
WATER or MOUNTAIN, or both, would be an excellent fit for the mountainous SW
Sinai, which the Egyptians reached via the Red Sea,51 and a semographic reading of
as “region near water” is likely; resulting in this case specifically in the
 After all, in the king’s name the phonogram n is also written with just three peaks.
 Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht: 148–61.
 Although “water” in Egyptian hieroglyphs was normally written with three rippling water lines
stacked vertically, it may in this case – given the restricted space – be a shortened version. In addi-
tion, at the time of De(we)n orthographic traditions were still in the process of emerging gradually,
albeit in successive waves.
 This approach corresponded, after all, with an inscription of king Djer in the Wadi Ameyra
(Pierre Tallet and Damien Laisney, “Iry-Hor et Narmer au Sud-Sinaï (Ouadi ‘Ameyra). Un Complé-
ment à la Chronologie des Expéditions Minières Égyptiennes,” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte 112
(2012): 381–98; Pierre Tallet, La Zone minière pharaonique du Sud-Sinaï, part 2: Les inscriptions pré-
et protodynastiques du Ouadi ‘Ameyra (CCIS n°273–335), MIFAO 132 [Kairo: IFAO, 2015]), in which
this Early Dynastic ruler was already identified as “Lord of the Water” (= presumably a local, spe-
cific reference to the Red Sea, including the region adjacent to the WATER), while his opponent
was identified with the toponym Pš (toponym, place in the Sinai), see the discussion in Morenz,
VerLautungen von Macht: 69–72.
 Ludwig D. Morenz and David Sabel. “Koptos,” in Niltal und Zweitromland: Die Anfänge der Kul-
turtechnik Schreiben im 4. und frühen 3. Jt. v.Chr., ed. Ludwig D. Morenz and Andréas Stauder (Ber-
lin: EB-Verlag, forthcoming).
reading, “Subjugating the SW-Sinai.” This short inscription, and its correspondence
with the image, indicates that what was meant was that the population in the
south-western Sinai – with its deposits of turquoise and copper,52 both of great im-
port to Egyptian society – was subjugated by Egypt.
This approach (whether we read the toponym as “water region” or as “moun-
tainous/foreign land,” or simply as nḥb), firstly correlates text-internally as a con-
cretization of “First occasion: smiting the East”; secondly, it fits the pattern of this
type of short inscription with its typical structure of action + toponym; thirdly, it
matches the general historical situation: the Sinai policy under King De(we)n, as
we know it from the (sadly now destroyed) monumental inscriptions of the Wadi El-
Humur in the south-western Sinai,53 and from a series of annalistic tablets.54 The
reading presented in this paper can therefore claim, generally speaking, to rest on a
reasonably substantial basis. Scholarship has tentatively interpreted the three signs
on the left behind the king as a scribal name, jn-k#55 but the context better supports
the reading sḫn jnw – “embracing that which has been brought (= tribute)”; espe-
cially in view of the three other inscriptions on this tablet that center on the king.
Let me in this regard point to variations in the writing of jnw – “that which has
been brought (= tribute)” – in the Proto and Early Dynastic era.56 This would then
be a decidedly phonographic representation, which would not be an unusual occur-
rence for the phase of writing under De(we)n. In addition, we can discern a pictorial
pun in the arrangement of signs, inasmuch as the “arms extended” hieroglyph pic-
torially encloses the j reed (Fig. 12),57 so that this group of signs again shows the
same meaning in its written imagery.
So we have altogether four inscription blocks on this tablet, each of which func-
tions as a relatively self-contained microtext. They can be read as follows (Tab. 2):
 Tobias Gutmann and Ludwig D. Morenz, “Wertschätzung und Bedarf. Überlegungen zum Ver-
hältnis von Kupfer und Türkis und dem darum gestrickten kulturellen Bedeutungsgewebe im
Südwest-Sinai,” in Gegossene Götter. Metallhandwerk und Massenproduktion im Alten Ägypten, ed.
Martin Fitzenreiter, Christian E. Loeben, Dietrich Raue, Uta Wallenstein, Johannes Auenmüller, ed.
(Rhaden: VML Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2014): 45–51.
 Moustafa Rezk R. Ibrahim and Pierre Tallet, “Trois bas-reliefs de l’époque thinite au ouadi El-
Humur: aux origines de l’exploitation du Sud-Sinaï par les Égyptiens (Pl. XIV–XVI),” Revue d’Égyp-
tologie 59 (2008): 155–74.
 Morenz, Kultur- und mediengeschichtliche Essays: 324–28.
 Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit: 423.
 Ludwig D. Morenz, Supplementärer Sinnüberschuß zur Ausweitung von Decorum, Thot. Beiträge
zur historischen Epistemologie und Medienarchäologie 6 (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2020).
 As a matter of fact, we know several pictorial puns with the k# “arms extended” sign from the
Early Dynastic period, cf. Henry G. Fischer, “Some Emblematic Uses of Hieroglyphs with Particular
Reference to Archaic Ritual Vessel,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 5 (1972): 5–23, here 5–15.
88 Ludwig D. Morenz
Fig. 12: MacGregor plaque, detail, BM 1922,0728.2 = EA55586. j reed enclosed

by k# “arms extended.” Photograph by David Sabel.
Tab. 2: Elements from the label of king De(we)n (Fig. 10).
ḥr d(w)n Horus king De(we)n
sp tpj skr j#b.t “First occasion: smiting the East”
nḥb mw(?) Subjugation of the water people (/the mountainous lands)
sḫn jnw Embracing the tribute
The two following excursuses are devoted to a cultural comparison which I be-
lieve to be illuminating for our comprehension of Proto- and Early Dynastic Egyp-
tian forms of subjugation.
1 Excursus: On YOKE (ERIMa) and ROPE (SAG×MA)

as Expressive Symbolic Metaphors in
Contemporary Sumerian Writing
In texts from the Sumerian Jemdet Nasr period (end of the fourth millennium BC)59 we
find the names of persons made up of the following sign combinations: HEAD+YOKE
 An annalistic type; in addition, the sign for the east was emphasized iconographically by its
larger size and increased detail.
 Both the absolute dating and the exact correspondences between the early Egyptian and early
Sumerian periods are still not completely understood, and methodologically not easy to solve in
certain particulars; on this question see Erik Hornung, Ancient Egypt Chronology, Handbook of
(SAL+KURa ERIMa) and HEAD+ROPE (SAL+KURa SAG×MA). Despite the reduction of

figurativeness, the signs still contain a high degree of iconicity, leading Robert En-
glund to convincingly interpret them as designations for prisoners of war.60 Moreover,
the qualifier signs YOKE (ERIMa = erin2) and ROPE (specifically: HEADxNOSE [through
which the rope passes61]) are likely to have expressed variations of dependency. This
type of verbal representation of subjugated person corresponds closely with Sumerian
visual culture,62 in which subjugated persons are depicted with both rope and yoke.
In a period comparable to the Egyptian Early Dynastic era, the Sumerian Jemdet
Nasr period drew on remarkably similar linguistic and scriptural images of martial
subjugation and dependency, which include ROPE AND YOKE. This detail should not
be interpreted in terms of concrete dependency, but rather of structural similarity.
2 Excursus: On the Roman iugum and the subjugation

formula sub iugum mittere
Comparable practices and metaphors of subjugation are to be found not only in the
roughly coeval cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia during the fourth and third mil-
lennia, but also in a number of other cultures.63 In the Latin language and the
Roman conceptual world, on the initial, material level, the yoke implies slave labor
in the fields; it was also employed metaphorically. In addition, there is the set phrase
sub iugum mittere = “to send under the yoke (of slavery).” It reflected a ritual prac-
ticed by the victorious side in which the defeated soldiers had to pass under a yoke,
thereby publically admitting defeat and a humiliating symbolic enslavement; before
Oriental Studies. Section 1, The Near and Middle East 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). According to more
recent research, the lexical list Archaic Lu A appears to suggest be a more pronounced difference in
the social sphere between Uruk IV and Uruk III (= Jemdet Nasr); cf. Justin C. Johnson, “Late Uruk
Bicameral Orthographies and their Early Dynastic. Rezeptionsgeschichte,” in It’s a Long Way to a
Historiography of the Early Dynastic period(s), Altertumskunde des Vorderen Orients 15, ed. Rein-
hard Dittmann (Münster: Ugarit, 2015): 169–210, here 174–80.
 Robert K. Englund, “The Smell of the Cage,” Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 4 (2009): 1–27,
here 12; discussed in Bartash, “Age, Gender and Labor”: 55.
 We are familiar with this motif not only from Sumerian iconography, but from the Victory Pal-
ette of the Egyptian king Nar-meher. The possibility might be considered whether this concrete
motif was perhaps adapted from a Sumerian design.
 Jutta Börker-Klähn, Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs, Baghdader For-
schungen 4 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1982).
 However, the term iugum in Latin (and in the Indo-European language family as a whole: Old
Indic “yoga”) was verbally proliferous in various ways, generating e.g. the meaning “connection”
(iungere = to join draught animals, with derivations that range from “juncture” to “subjunctive”).
90 Ludwig D. Morenz
they were (or could be) released.64 This Roman linguistic usage of subjugation lives
on in various ways in our own time, although its pictorial impact has significantly
diminished.
We find such a combination – a subjugation scene and the collection of tribute – in

the year name on an ivory tablet of king Nar-meher in the eponymous smiting scene
and depicted in an intermedial composition of image and writing (Fig. 13).65
Fig. 13a–b: Annalistic tablet of king Nar-meher from Abydos, detail with smiting scene that can be
read in pictorial script (Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht: 176, Fig. 106).
In front of the face of this man who is being smitten is a more script-like sign: . This
should neither be read elliptically (contra G. Dreyer) as (ṯḥ)nw,66 nor (against my own
previous approach) as a proper name jn or nw.67 In fact, in Egyptian representations
the enemy was not considered worthy of being named,68 and indeed this tablet is no
exception. If we compare it with parallels, this notation is better interpreted as an ab-
breviation of “tributes” (jn[w]). The sign transports the message entirely on its own, in
a strongly autoreferential manner and without any direct pictorial counterpart. So the
scene of submission – depicted pictorially – is combined with the subsequent handing
 Theodor Kissel, “Sub iugum mittere. Zur kollektiven Bestrafung unterworfener Kriegsgefange-
ner im republikanischen Rom,” Antike Welt 28 (1997): 501–7.
 Morenz, VerLautungen von Macht.
 Günter Dreyer, “Egypt’s Earliest Historical Event,” Egyptian Archaeology 16 (2000): 6–7; followed by
Thomas C. Heagy, “Who was Menes?” Archeo-Nil 24 (2014): 59–92, without, however, explaining why
the POT hieroglyph alone should represent Thn.w. Arguments and/or evidence would be required.
 Ludwig D. Morenz, “Gegner des Nar-mer aus Papyrus-Land: NW und Wʿ-š,” Göttinger Miszellen
189 (2002): 81–88, here 83–84.
 Antonio Loprieno, Topos und Mimesis: Zum Ausländer in der ägyptischen Literatur, Ägyptologi-
sche Abhandlungen 48 (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1988): 1–59.
over of tribute, which latter is solely represented by the semogram . So this notation
in strongly pictorial script can be read as follows:
a) Nar-meher smites the Papyrus Land ([t#-]mḥw)
b) Tribute (jnw) of the Papyrus Land ([t#-]mḥw).
The 1st dynasty MacGregor plaque, on the other hand, shows a stronger medial sep-
aration of image and writing. It, too, however, proclaims both submission and the
tributes that result from it. In the case of king De(we)n – who wore the additional
sobriquet “the foreigner” (in the sense of “conqueror of foreigners,” compare the
similar naming pattern in Roman history, e.g. Germanicus) – we can establish a
more specific connection to a campaign of his in the Sinai mentioned in other sour-
ces (see above). This is, then, presumably a concrete representation of the royal
jackal standard driven into the desert soil to symbolize the claim to rule after the
“First occasion: smiting the East” (to quote the annalistic caption69): a representa-
tion of Egypt’s territorial claim. The quality of both image and layout – in contrast
to other contemporary tablets such as those of the high official Hema-ka – may be
related to the fact that this is a royal tablet.
The new reading presented here may also allow for a more specific interpretation
of the reverse of this tablet, which shows a pair of sandals. We may recall the royal
epithet “useful sandal against the foreign country” (ṯb.t #ḫ.t r ḫ#s.t)70 attested from the
2nd Dynasty, as well as the royal ideological conception of the enemies under the
soles of Pharaoh, attested over thousands of years.71 This ivory tablet may have desig-
nated specific royal victory sandals, which in turn corresponds well with the smiting
scene on the obverse. This word nḥb, written with the visually potent hieroglyph
YOKE, primarily implies coercion in a very direct way; this was probably why it was
used to refer to foreigners who were subjugated by the Egyptians (and in the Egyp-
tian ideological conception of history, specifically by the pharaoh).
The claim to the sovereign potential of violence applied both internally and ex-
ternally. In the formative phase of the Egyptian territorial state in the late fourth
and early third millennia, it even led to the development of specialist deities: the
god Sopdu as the sacral embodiment of sovereign punitive power towards the out-
side word (Fig. 14), and the goddess Mafdet as the sacral embodiment of sovereign
 For an overview of the Egyptian annalistic tradition see Donald Bruce Redford, Pharaonic King-
lists, Annals and Day-books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History, SSEA publi-
cation 4 (Mississauga: Benben, 1986).
 Relief of Kha-sekhemui at Hierakonpolis, Cairo JE 33895, Godron, Etudes sur l’Horus.
 Gerhard Rühlmann, “‘Deine Feinde fallen unter deine Sohlen.’ Bemerkungen zu einem altorienta-
lischen Machtsymbol,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.
Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 20, no. 2 (1971): 61–84.
92 Ludwig D. Morenz
Fig. 14: The god Sopdu, depiction on a 1st Dynasty ivory tablet. Photograph by David Sabel.
punitive power within the realm (Fig. 15).72 This is expressed iconographically in
the case of Sopdu by his image attribute spear (the god’s name spd.w means “the
sharp one”);73 in the case of Mafdet (the name of the goddess should be read as the
composite “Clawing Lioness”74) is the pictorial attribute of the crook used to exe-
cute criminals (in Egyptian: šms),75 which is being climbed by the large cat.
The sovereign’s monopoly on violence played a substantial role in early Egyptian
royal ideology, and it was given a specifically sacral sanction. In Sopdu and Mafdet
there were even specific functional deities conceived for this purpose and given a
special iconographic design. We know of a hieroglyph not only for the simple yoke,
but also for the yoke with a side fastening – although the latter was extremely rarely
used and apparently did not become part of the iconographic tradition – especially
in the Early Dynastic seal inscription (Fig. 16).
The group of signs (Fig. 17) has a strong figurative effect and is highly expres-
sive and ironically charged: on the one hand the royal palace/temple (a tent-like
 Morenz, Kultur- und mediengeschichtliche Essays: 307–32 (Mafdet und Sopdu. Die Prägung
neuer Göttergestalten im theopolitischen Diskurs der frühdynastischen Zeit).
 Morenz, Kultur- und mediengeschichtliche Essays: 318–24.
 Frank Kammerzell, Panther, Löwe und Sprachentwicklung im Neolithikum. Bemerkungen zur Ety-
mologie des ägyptischen Theonyms M3fd.t, zur Bildung einiger Raubtiernamen im Ägyptischen und zu
einzelnen Großkatzenbezeichnungen indoeuropäischer Sprachen (Göttingen: Seminar für Ägyptologie
und Koptologie, 1994): 17–37.
 For Mafdet’s iconography see most recently Ludwig D. Morenz, Vom Kennen und Können: Zur
Mentalitäts- und Mediengeschichte des Mittleren Reiches im Horizont von Abydos, Thot. Beiträge zur
historischen Epistemologie und Medienarchäologie 5 (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2020): 137–39.
Fig. 15: The goddess Mafdet, inscription in high relief on a 1st Dynasty alabaster jar from Abydos
(Petrie, The Royal Tombs of The Earliest Dynasties: pl. 7).
Fig. 16: Seal inscription IÄF III, 1963, fig. 40 (Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit: Tab. 20).
Fig. 17: Combination of the motifs royal palace/temple + LION/LIONESS+YOKES (Kaplony, Die
Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit: Tab. 41).
94 Ludwig D. Morenz
construction of mats and wood) and on the other the sovereign’s potential force in
the collection of taxes.
The YOKES can be explained as instruments for punishing and/or threatening
to bind those who had to pay tax,76 as shown in the relief from Gebel Sheikh Sulei-
man in correspondence with the hieroglyphic inscription (Fig. 7a). In structural
terms, this parallels the depictions (younger by several centuries) of tax collection
accompanied by floggings and also specifically men being tied to a pillory or sham-
ing post,77 such as those known in elite tombs from the Old Kingdom onwards.78
The group of signs under discussion seems to designate the royal tax authority spe-
cifically of the 1st Dynasty, although we have no more evidence for this way of writ-
ing after the 1st Dynasty. So the grouping PALACE/TEMPLE and LION/LIONESS
with YOKES is not simply the title of an official, but rather the institution of tax col-
lecting in the king’s name79 specifically of the 1st Dynasty.
Observed closely, this pictorial script allows and grants us certain insights into
the social mechanisms of this royally-oriented administration from the very begin-
nings of the Egyptian territorial state, five long millennia ago. In the process, we
become aware of a structural violence that explodes any naïve admiration of prog-
ress, whether in the field of state organization or of media development; wholly in
keeping with the seventh thesis in Walter Benjamin’s Über den Begriff der Ge-
schichte (1942):
Denn was er an Kulturgütern erblickt, das ist ihm samt und sonders von einer Abkunft, die er
nicht ohne Grauen bedenken kann. Es dankt sein Dasein nicht nur der Mühe der großen Gen-
ien, sondern auch der namenlosen Fron ihrer Zeitgenossen. Es ist niemals ein Dokument der
Kultur ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein.80
For what he surveys as the cultural heritage is part and parcel of a lineage which he cannot
contemplate without horror. It owes its existence not only to the toil of the great geniuses,
who created it, but also to the nameless drudgery of its contemporaries. There has never been
a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.81
 Renate Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen. zur Sanktionierung abweichenden Verhaltens

im alten Ägypten, Probleme der Ägyptologie 21 (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
 A scene such as in the Mastaba of Khenti-ka, see Thomas Garnet Henry James, The Mastaba of
Khentika Called Ikhekhi: Archaeological Survey of Egypt (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1953):
45, pl. 9.
 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen.
 The composite hieroglyph LION/LIONESS + YOKE is attested only in the 1st Dynasty, and then
again with Hesi-Re in the 3rd Dynasty (Morenz, Supplementärer Sinnüberschuß: 23–66). Was it per-
haps taken up in an archaizing way and reinterpreted as an official title? In parallel to the title
“Great one of the royal scribes” in the case of Hesi-Re we might think of something like, “Great one
of the ✶royal administration” or the like.
 Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte (1942).
 Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Illuminations, ed. Walter Benjamin and Han-
nah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969): 392.
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Winfried Schmitz
Dependent Rural Populations in Archaic
and Classical Greece: Free, Slave,
or Between Free and Slave?
In the twelfth book of his Geographica, which contains information about the king-
dom of Pontus on the Black Sea, the ancient geographer Strabo (ca. 64 BC–19 AD)
includes a report about the Mariandyni.1 He thought them a Thracian tribe similar
to the Bithynians. The Milesians had founded a city in the territory of the Marian-
dyni which they called Heracleia,2 and they forced the Mariandyni, whose land this
had been, into bondage: a state Strabo describes with the term heilōteúein, a type of
dependency similar to that endured by the helots of Sparta. Mariandyni could be
sold (pipráskesthai), but they had come to an agreement with the Heracleians that
they could not be sold outside the territory.3 Strabo does not explicitly tell us that
the Heracleians had conquered inland Mariandyni territory in military campaigns
from their own coastal base, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is what
happened. At that time, i.e. in the seventh or sixth century BC, it was usual for the
conquerors of a city to kill the men of fighting age and to sell the women and chil-
dren into slavery. However, in the case of the Mariandyni, the Heracleians chose a
different path: the Mariandyni could continue to live in their houses and villages
and to farm the land; but they had to live in a state of dependency and pay certain
tributes to their new masters. Unlike regular captives in war, they could not be sold
beyond their erstwhile territory; but since it was possible to sell them within the
 For the Mariandyni and their area of settlement see David Asheri, Über die Frühgeschichte von
Herakleia Pontike, Forschungen an der Nordküste Kleinasiens 1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichi-
schen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1972): 18–19; Stanley M. Burstein, Outpost of Hellenism: The
Emergence of Heraclea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976): 6–11.
 However, Burstein, Outpost of Hellenism: 13–15 is skeptical of the historicity of this account.
 Strab. 12.3.4–542 C: Θεόπομπος δὲ Μαριανδυνόν φησι μέρους τῆς Παφλαγονίας ἄρξαντα ὑπὸ πολ-
λῶν δυναστευομένης, ἐπελθόντα τὴν τῶν Βεβρύκων κατασχεῖν, ἣν δ’ ἐξέλιπεν ἐπώνυμον ἑαυτοῦ
καταλιπεῖν. εἴρηται δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὅτι πρῶτοι τὴν Ἡράκλειαν κτίσαντες Μιλήσιοι τοὺς Μαριανδυνοὺς
εἱλωτεύειν ἠνάγκασαν τοὺς προκατέχοντας τὸν τόπον, ὥστε καὶ πιπράσκεσθαι ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, μὴ εἰς
τὴν ὑπερορίαν δέ (συμβῆναι γὰρ ἐπὶ τούτοις), καθάπερ Κρησὶ μὲν ἐθήτευεν ἡ Μνῴα καλουμένη σύ-
νοδος, Θετταλοῖς δὲ οἱ Πενέσται.
Note: My thanks go to Imogen Herrad for the English translation of my text. The translations of the
Cretan inscriptions have been lightly adapted from those of Michael Gagarin and Paula Perlman
(The Laws of Ancient Crete c. 650–400 BCE [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016]). All other trans-
lations from the ancient Greek have been taken from the Loeb edition unless otherwise stated.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-004
100 Winfried Schmitz
boundaries, we may assume that they were given to individual Heracleians whose
property or dependents they became.4
The enserfed Mariandyni had to pay tributes (probably in kind). They are eu-
phemistically referred to as “bringers of gifts” (dōrophóroi) by the third-century BC
epic poet Euphorion and the second-century BC grammarian Callistratus.5 Strabo
describes the dependency of the Mariandyni with a term derived from the helots of
Sparta, heilōteúein, and mentions the restriction on the right to sell them. The late-
second/early-first century BC Stoic philosopher Poseidonius also sidestepped the
issue of slavery. In the eleventh book of his Histories he wrote:
[M]any people who are unable to care for themselves because of their intellectual deficiencies
surrender themselves into the service (hypēresía) of more intelligent individuals, so that they
can get the necessities of life from their masters and can in turn repay them with whatever
services they are capable of rendering (hypēreteín). This is how the Mariandyni became subject
to the Heracleians, by promising to be their servants (thēteúein) forever, provided the Hera-
cleians supplied them with what they needed and, adding as a further condition a ban on the
selling (prásis) of them outside of Heracleian territory: it would only be allowed in their own
country (chṓra).6
The assertion that someone of weak intellect should choose to put himself in bond-
age to a wiser person to obtain the necessities of life echoes very strongly Aristotle’s
concept of the “natural slave” – especially as in this case the “wise” are the Hera-
cleians, who are Greek, while the mentally lacking Mariandyni are “barbarians.”7
 Strabo (12.3.6–542 C) tells us that Heracleia had risen to become an important city – probably
thanks to the subjugation of the Mariandyni. Apoikíai, colonies, were founded by the Heracleians
in Tauric Chersonesus and Callatis. Strabo also tells us that the city had good harbours (πόλις
εὐλίμενος).
 Callistratus FgrH 348 F4 (the fragments are preserved in Athen. 6.84, p. 263d–e; see n. 8 below).
 Athen. 6.84 (p. 263c–d): Ποσειδώνιος (FgrH 87 F8) δέ φησιν ὁ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ἐν τῇ τῶν Ἱστοριῶν
ἑνδεκάτῃ· ‘πολλούς τινας ἑαυτῶν οὐ δυναμένους προίστασθαι διὰ τὸ τῆς διανοίας ἀσθενὲς ἐπιδοῦ-
ναι ἑαυτοὺς εἰς τὴν τῶν συνετωτέρων ὑπηρεσίαν, ὅπως παρ’ ἐκείνων τυγχάνοντες τῆς εἰς τὰ ἀνα-
γκαῖα ἐπιμελείας αὐτοὶ πάλιν ἀποδιδῶσιν ἐκείνοις δι’ αὑτῶν ἅπερ ἂν ὦσιν ὑπηρετεῖν δυνατοί. καὶ
τούτῳ τῷ τρόπῳ Μαριανδυνοὶ μὲν Ἡρακλεώταις ὑπετάγησαν, διὰ τέλους ὑποσχόμενοι θητεύσειν
παρέχουσιν αὐτοῖς τὰ δέοντα, προσδιαστειλάμενοι μηδενὸς αὐτῶν ἔσεσθαι πρᾶσιν ἔξω τῆς Ἡρα-
κλεωτῶν χώρας, ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτῇ μόνον τῇ ἰδίᾳ χώρᾳ.’ Strabo also uses the verb thēteúein for the de-
pendent labour performed by the mnōtaí in Crete and the penéstai in Thessaly, which indicates that
he assimilates their activities to those of the thetes, members of the free rural poor who sold their
labour for a year at a time as hired workers in archaic Greece (Strab. 12.3.4–542 C; see n. 3 above).
For thēteúein and dependent labour on an annual basis see Hom. Il. 21.441–57 (cf. Agatharchides
F 7 Woelk; Phot. Bibl. p. 442.29b–444.19b); Od. 11.489–90; 18.357–64; Hes. erg. 600–608; Hdt. 8.137;
Eur. Alc. 1–9; Aristot. rhet. 1.9.26–27; Timaeus FgrH 566 F11 (= Athen. 6.86, p. 264c–d), with
literature.
 For a detailed discussion of Aristotle’s concept of the “natural slave” see Eckart Schütrumpf,
“Aristoteles,” in Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei, vol. 1, ed. Heinz Heinen (Stuttgart: Steiner,
2017): 180–208.
Dependent Rural Populations in Archaic and Classical Greece 101
Poseidonius’ explanation doubtlessly serves to legitimize slavery, as does the euphe-

mistic label “bringers of gifts.”8 But were the Mariandyni slaves? Our knowledge
about this one dependent group in the region of Heracleia is too small to definitively
answer this question.9 Later authors, who looked upon them in hindsight, saw them
as slaves, albeit under a very particular set of conditions.10
Strabo tells us that the Mariandyni had been “forced [. . .] to serve as helots, so
that they could be sold, but not beyond the boundaries of their country,” and that
this special condition had also applied to the mnoía who served the Cretans and the
penéstai who served the Thessalians.11 There is additional proof for the fact that the
existence of this specific type of dependents was also reflected in the terminology of
different parts of Greece. Callistratus wrote that the Spartans had used the term helots
in order to avoid “the sting of the word ‘slaves’”; just as the Thessalians spoke of pe-
néstai and the Cretans of klarṓtai.12 Callistratus then further distinguishes between
Crete’s “urban slaves” (οἰκέται κατὰ πόλιν), who were called chrysṓnētoi (“bought for
 Athenaeus quotes a line from Euphorion (fr. 73 M.), δωροφόροι καλεοίαθ’ ὑποφρίσσοντες ἄνακ-
τας – “Let them be referred to as gift-bearers, shuddering before their masters.” The legitimizing
intent is also obvious in the claim that allegedly the Mariandyni surrendered themselves to the Her-
acleians and promised to be their servants in perpetuity.
 For the history of Heracleia and the Mariandyni see Burstein, Outpost of Hellenism and Alexandru
Avram, “Bemerkungen zu den Mariandyni von Herakleia am Pontos,” Studii Clasice 22 (1984): 19–28
(with a discussion of earlier literature, including Russian texts); Angela Bittner, Eine Polis zwischen
Tyrannis und Selbstverwaltung: Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft in Herakleia (Bonn: Habelt, 1998); Sergei
J. Saprykin, Heracleia Pontica and Tauric Chersonesus before Roman Domination IV. –I. c. B.C. (Am-
sterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1996); Annalisa Paradiso, “Sur la servitude volontaire des Mariandyniens
d’Héraclée du Pont,” in Fear of Slaves, Fear of Enslavement in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Anasta-
sia Serghidou (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007): 23–33; cf. Adrian Robu,
Mégare et les établissements mégariens de Sicile, de la Propontide et du Pont-Euxin: histoire et institu-
tions (Bern: Peter Lang, 2014).
 Avram, “Bemerkungen zu den Mariandyni”: 21. He comes to the (to my mind problematic) con-
clusion that there were two categories of Mariandyni: those of low status who, like the helots of
Sparta, were virtually identical to slaves; and those who had certain rights, were called períoikoi
and could potentially rise to become full citizens (26–28).
 See n. 3 above. For the penéstai in Thessaly see Detlev Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων.
Studien zur Rechtsstellung unfreier Landbevölkerung in Griechenland bis zum 4. Jh. v. Chr. (Berlin:
Akademie, 1959); Stefan Link, Landverteilung und sozialer Frieden im archaischen Griechenland
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991): 151–57; Jean Ducat, Les Pénestes de Thessalie (Paris: Presses Universi-
taires de Franche-Comté, 1994); Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, “Neuere Forschungen zur Rechtsstellung der
Penesten,” in Antike Lebenswelten. Konstanz – Wandel – Wirkungsmacht. Festschrift für Ingomar
Weiler zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Mauritsch et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008):
393–411; Peter Mauritsch, “Penesten,” in Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei, vol. 2, ed. Heinz
Heinen (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2017): 2181–84.
 Callistratus FgrH 348 F4 (apud Athen. 6.84, p. 263e–f): λέγει δὲ καὶ Καλλίστρατος ὁ Ἀριστο-
φάνειος, ὅτι τοὺς Μαριανδυνοὺς ὠνόμαζον μὲν δωροφόρους ἀφαιροῦντες τὸ πικρὸν τῆς [ἀπὸ] τῶν
οἰκετῶν προσηγορίας, καθάπερ Σπαρτιᾶται μὲν ἐποίησαν ἐπὶ τῶν εἱλώτων, Θετταλοὶ δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν πε-
νεστῶν, Κρῆτες δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν κλαρωτῶν.
gold” or “for money”), and “rural slaves” (κατ’ ἀγρόν) who were locals (ἐγχώριοι) and
had been enslaved in war (δουλωθέντες κατὰ πόλεμον), and who were called a(m)pha-
miṓtai. These were also called klarṓtai because they were “allotted,” i.e. because lots
had been drawn for them.13 So our sources – ancient, if not contemporaneous with the
conditions they describe – are in agreement that these particular forms of dependency,
where the defeated could stay in their own land as a rural subject population under
new rulers, had come about through war.14 They farmed the estates and were obliged
to pay tribute. The new masters had estates (klároi) assigned or allocated to them, com-
plete with the workers on the land. As an institution, this slave collective was called
mnoía; the “allocates” to individual citizens were called klarṓtai or a(m)phamiṓtai.15
This last term derives either from aphamía, “infamy,” or from apamía, the term for pe-
ripheral land.16 In addition, there were probably some chattel slaves who had been
 Athen. 6.84 p. 263e–f: καλοῦσι δὲ οἱ Κρῆτες τοὺς μὲν κατὰ πόλιν οἰκέτας χρυσωνήτους,
ἀμφαμιώτας δὲ τοὺς κατ’ ἀγρὸν ἐγχωρίους μὲν ὄντας, δουλωθέντας δὲ κατὰ πόλεμον· διὰ τὸ κληρω-
θῆναι δὲ κλαρώτας. Athen. 6.93, p. 267c (similarly in the epitomes): Ἀμερίας δὲ ἑρκίτας φησὶ κα-
λεῖσθαι τοὺς κατὰ τοὺς ἀγροὺς οἰκέτας. Ἕρμων δὲ ἐν Κρητικαῖς Γλώτταις μνώτας τοὺς εὐγενεῖς
οἰκέτας. – “Amerias says that slaves (oikétai) who work in the fields are referred to as herkítai; Her-
mon in the Cretan Vocabulary says that indigenous slaves (oikétai) are referred to as mnṓtai.” Eusta-
thius, drawing on the work of Athenaeus, which is preserved in Comm. ad Il. 15.431 (p. 752), writes:
Ἦσαν δὲ ἄλλως δουλικαὶ λέξεις ἐν Κρήτῃ μὲν οἱ κλαρῶται διὰ τὸ κληρωθῆναι, ἔτι δὲ οἰκέται μὲν οἱ
κατὰ πόλιν χρυσώνητοι, ἀμφαμιῶται δὲ οἱ κατὰ ἀγρὸν ἰδίᾳ δοῦλοι. ἐκάλουν δέ, φασί, Κρῆτες καὶ
μνοίαν τὴν κοινὴν δουλίαν, καὶ μνώτας τοὺς ἐγγενεῖς οἰκέτας. – “There were other words for slaves
(doulikaí léxeis) in Crete, the klarṓtai [who were so named] for having been appointed by lot, also
oikétai for those who had been bought for gold (chrysṓnētoi) in the city, and amphamiṓtai for those
slaves (doúloi) in the country [who had been allocated] privately; he says the Cretans also called
public slavery (koinḗ doulía) mnoía, and native slaves (oikétai) mnṓtai” (my own translation). For
a(m)phamiṓtai see also Strab. 15.1.34 (= Onesikrates FgrH 134 F24).
 For the Mariandyni see Strab. 12.3.4 (see also above n. 3); for the Cretan a(m)phamiṓtai see Cal-
listratus apud Athen. 6.84 (see above n. 12).
 The terms woikeús and woikéa are only attested in Cretan inscriptions (Michael Gagarin, “Slaves
and Serfs at Gortyn,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 127 (2010): 14–31, here 16).
 Hesych. α 8548 s.v. ἀφαμιῶται· οἰκέται ἀγροῖκοι, περίοικοι. For the aphamiṓtai and a possible
epigraphic attestation, see Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 15, n. 1; Hans-Joachim Gehrke,
“Gewalt und Gesetz: Die soziale und politische Ordnung Kretas in der Archaischen und Klassischen
Zeit,” Klio 79 (1997): 23–68, 26, n. 10 follows Henri van Effenterre, who states that apamía is “eine
lokale Bezeichnung für Land-, insbesondere Grenzgebiet.” (Henri van Effenterre, “Terminologie et
formes de dépendence en Crète,” in Rayonnement grec. Hommages à Charles Delvoy, ed. Lydie Ha-
dermann-Misguich and Georges Raepsaet (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1982):
35–44, here 38–41; Paula Perlman, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. The Economies of Archaic Eleu-
therna, Crete,” Classical Antiquity 23 (2004): 95–137, here 103). According to Angelos Chaniotis,
mnoitai were public slaves who work communal land, while aphamiotai were the unfree peasants
who farmed the aphamía, land on the periphery of the pólis territory. In this model, citizens re-
claimed marginal, less fertile land near the border, took possession of it and had it worked by
slaves (Angelos Chaniotis, Das antike Kreta [Munich: Beck, 2004]: 76).
bought, and as such were their masters’ personal property (the so-called “urban
slaves,” οἰκέται κατὰ πόλιν, or chrysṓnētoi).17
David M. Lewis argues in his 2018 work, Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern
Mediterranean Context, c. 800–146 BC, that the dependent populations of Crete,
Sparta and Thessaly should not be described as serfs. He sees instead compelling
reasons for classifying klarṓtai, helots and penéstai as “privately owned slaves,” and
believes that ancient Sparta should therefore be considered an extreme example of a
“slave society.” In his view none of the three groups had any rights, including that of
owning property. By arguing that helots, penéstai and klarṓtai were not tied to the
soil and had not been allotted to the citizens (who thereby received a share of the
usufruct of their work on the land), and that they were instead owned by individual
masters and could be sold, David Lewis positions himself in direct opposition to
Moses I. Finley, who had regarded this form of dependency as singularly positioned
between freedom and slavery. Helots, penéstai and klarṓtai could only be termed
“serfs” if they had been inalienable from the point of view of private citizens because
they belonged to the pólis, and tied to the individual plot of land – a point refuted by
David Lewis.18 Instead, Lewis believes that literary and epigraphical sources provide
 There is extensive debate among scholars whether woikeís, klarṓtai, aphamiṓtai, mnōtaí, dóloi
and chrysṓnētoi were different or identical unfree groups, and the ways in which their legal or so-
cial status may have differed. Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων; Detlef Lotze, “Zu den ϝοικέες
von Gortyn,” Klio 40 (1962): 32–43; Fritz Gschnitzer, Studien zur griechischen Terminologie der
Sklaverei, vol. 2, Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 7 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1976): 75–82; Claude
Mossé, “Le problème des dépendants paysans dans le monde grec,” in Actes du colloque sur l’e-
sclavage (Nieborów 2–6 XII 1975), ed. Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist and Jerzy Kolendo (Warsaw: Wydaw-
nictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1979): 57–64; Yvon Garlan, Les esclaves en Grèce ancienne
(Paris: La Découverte, 1982): 99–133; Reinhard Koerner, Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der frühen grie-
chischen Polis (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993); Alberto Maffi, Il diritto di famiglia nel Codice di Gortina
(Milan: CUEM, 1997): 120–21; Claude Brixhe (with Monique Bile), “La circulation des biens dans les
Lois de Gortyne,” in Des dialectes grecs aux lois de Gortyne, ed. Catherine Dobias-Lalou (Nancy: de
Boccard, 1999): 75–116, here 93–97; Stefan Link, “‘Dolos’ und ‘Woikeus’ im Recht von Gortyn,” Dike
4 (2001): 87–112; David M. Lewis, Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context,
c. 800–146 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018): 150–53.
 David Lewis, “Slave Marriage in the Laws of Gortyn: A Matter of Rights?,” Historia 62 (2013):
390–416, 394. Stefan Link (Das griechische Kreta. Untersuchungen zu seiner staatlichen und gesell-
schaftlichen Entwicklung vom 6. bis zum 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1994): 31–44) simi-
larly disputed that woikeís were inalienable and that they had a right to property and to marriage.
He believes that legally, there were only quasi-institutions akin to the Roman peculium and contu-
bernium, respectively. But Edmond Lévy (“Libres et non-libres dans le code de Gortyne,” in Esclav-
age, guerre, économie en Grèce ancienne, ed. Pierre Brulé and Jacques Oulhen (Rennes: Presses
universitaires de Rennes, 1997): 25–41, here 32–40), believes that woikées could not be sold and
had (albeit limited) property rights and marriages that were legally recognized; as does Paul Car-
tledge (Sparta and Laconia. A Regional History 1300–362 BC (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1979): 164–65; Cartledge, “Raising Hell? The Helot Mirage – a Personal Review,” in Helots and their
Masters in Laconia and Messenia. Histories, Ideologies, Structures, ed. Nino Luraghi and Susan
proof that Laconic helots and Cretan klarṓtai were private property, with the only re-
striction that they could not be sold beyond the borders.19 This ban on selling beyond
the borders implied the right to sell them within, i.e. to other citizens.20 Lewis sees
the ban on manumitting and selling abroad Mariandyni, helots or klarṓtai as a re-
striction of the otherwise unimpeded property rights of slave owners. He draws a par-
allel to classical Athens where in emergencies the authorities could legally manumit
slaves who served as combatants in the army or the fleet – even without their mas-
ters’ consent.21 The reported agreement between Heracleians and Mariandyni he re-
gards as an “obviously apocryphal ‘contract of servitude’.” Instead, Lewis prefers to
interpret such “‘contract’ stories as charter myths that seek to account for the origins
of genuine historical bans on sale.”22 Such treaties between victors and vanquished
are in fact more likely to have been a voluntary commitment by the citizens of Hera-
cleia (or of Sparta) not to sell off or manumit any Mariandyni (or helots) and to allow
only the pólis authorities to effect manumissions.23 Even so, I do not agree that the
property rights of masters over dependents were as clear-cut as David Lewis claims.
Alcock (London: Harvard University Press, 2003): 12–30; Cartledge, “The Helots: A Contemporary
Review,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 1, The Ancient Mediterranean World, ed.
Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 74–90). For mar-
riage law see Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 20–25 and Maffi, Il diritto di famiglia nel Codice
di Gortina: 139–47.
 Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 395: “Helotage was a system of private slavery” and, “the Gortynian
laws make it clear that slaves could be privately sold.” Jean Ducat, Les Hilotes (Paris: de Boccard,
1990): 19–29 and Nino Luraghi, “Helotic slavery reconsidered,” in Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, ed.
Anton Powell (London: Duckworth, 2002): 227–48, here 228–33 also argue that slaves were pri-
vately owned.
 Ephorus FgrH 70 F117 (πωλεῖν). For penestai and Mariandyni see Poseidonius FgrH 87 F8 (see
above n. 6) and Archemachus FgrH 424 F1 (see below n. 23).
 For slaves serving in the army and navy, and being manumitted before or subsequent to serv-
ing, see Peter Hunt, Slaves, Warfare and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Brian Bertosa, “The Social Status and Ethnic Origin of the Rowers of Spar-
tan Triremes,” War and Society 23 (2005): 1–20; Melina Tamiolaki, Liberté et esclavage chez les his-
toriens grecs classiques. Le discours historique et politique d’Hérodote, Thucydide et Xénophon
(Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010); Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, “Militärdienst,” in
Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei, vol. 2, ed. Heinz Heinen (Stuttgart: Steiner 2017): 1940–49.
 Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 138.
 Ephorus (apud Strab. 8.5.4–365 C) calls the helots δοῦλοι ἐπὶ τακτοῖς τισιν, “slaves in a way”
(who could neither be set free nor sold outside the borders of the country, μήτ’ ἐλευθεροῦν μήτε
πωλεῖν). Perhaps more plausible is the mutual arrangement in which the Boeotians were reported
to have agreed to submit to the Thessalians. Archemachus relates that a number of the Boeotians
who had settled near Arne did not return to Boeotia, but preferred to stay (presumably despite the
conquest of the area by the Thessalians). They entered into voluntary dependency on the Thessali-
ans (douleúein) “by agreement (homología), to be their slaves; on condition that they should not
take them out of the country (chṓra), nor put them to death, but that they should cultivate the
country for them, and pay them a yearly revenue (syntáxeis) for it.” Archemachus even goes on to
claim that “many of them are richer than their masters.” (FgrH 424 F1; Athen. 6.84, p. 263e–264a).
I would like to look at three aspects to illustrate my view that Mariandyni, pe-
néstai, helots and klarṓtai were dependent rural populations whose living condi-
tions and form of life were fundamentally different from the slavery practised in
classical Athens and many other Greek cities.
1 The Law on Marriage in Ancient Crete

Numerous law texts survive in inscriptions from ancient Crete, beginning in the
mid-seventh and extending into the fifth century. The best known is the so-called
Great Code of Gortyn, which is today on display in the Roman Odeion at the archae-
ological site of Gortyn. The Code lists a large number of laws in twelve columns.
The first column covers status and slave ownership, continuing in the second with
comprehensive rules about rape and adultery:
If someone rapes a free man (eleútheros) or woman (eleuthéra), he will pay a hundred staters
[200 drachmas] [. . .] If a slave (dólos) [rapes] a free man or woman, he will pay double. If a
free man [rapes] a woikeús or woikéa, [he will pay] five drachmas. And if a woikeús [rapes] a
woikeús or woikéa, five staters [ = 10 drachmas].24
On adultery, the Code states:

If someone is caught committing adultery (moikíōn) with a free woman (eleuthéra) in her fa-
ther’s or brother’s or husband’s [house], he will pay a hundred staters. And if in someone
else’s house, fifty. [. . .] And if a slave (dólos) with a free woman (eleuthéra), [he will pay] dou-
ble. vacat And if a slave (dólos) with a slave’s (dólos) [woman], five [staters]. Let [the captor]
declare before three witnesses to the relatives (kadestaí) of the one who is caught that he is to
be ransomed within five days. vacat And to the master (pástas) of the slave (dólos) before two
witnesses.25
What is interesting here is the use of the terms woikeús and woikéa alongside dólos
and dóla. The question of whether woikeís and dóloi were two different unfree
groups or whether the terms may be used synonymously has been long and hotly
 ICret IV 72 col. 2.2–10: vac. αἴ κα τὸν ἐλεύθερον ἒ τὰν ἐλευθέραν κάρτει οἴπει, ἐκατὸν στατε͂ρανς
καταστασεῖ· [. . .] αἰ δέ κ’ ὀ δõλος τὸν ἐλεύθερον ἒ τὰν ἐλευθέραν, διπλεῖ καταστασεῖ· αἰ δέ κ’ ἐλεύ-
θερος ϝοικέα ἒ ϝοικέαν, πέντε δαρκνάνς· αἰ δέ κα ϝοικεὺς ϝοικέα ἒ ϝοικέαν, π[έν]τε στατε͂ρανς. vac.
See Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 345–50, who translate woikeús as “serf”: “[I]n
this section, in particular, the terms appear to be legally interchangeable, but that would not mean
they are synonyms” (348). Brixhe with Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 75, n. 2 place the stress on
the first syllable: woíkea.
 ICret IV 72 col. 2.20–33: vac. αἴ κα τὰν ἐλευθέραν μοικίον αἰλεθε͂ι ἐν πατρὸς ἒ ἐν ἀδελπιõ ἒ ἐν τõ
ἀνδρός, ἐκατὸν στατε͂ρανς καταστασεῖ· αἰ δέ κ’ ἐν ἄλο, πεντέκοντα· [. . .] αἰ δέ κ’ ὀ δõλος τὰν ἐλευ-
θέραν, διπλεῖ καταστασεῖ· vac. αἰ δέ κα δõλος δόλο, πέντε. προϝειπάτο δὲ ἀντὶ μαιτύρον τριõν τοῖς
καδεσταῖς τõ ἐναιλεθέντος ἀλλύεθ̣θαι ἐν ταῖς πέντ’ ἀμέραις· vac. τõ δὲ δόλο τõι πάσται ἀντὶ μαι-
τύρõν δυõν. vac.
debated among ancient historians and legal historians. Most scholars are of the
opinion that the Code uses those terms interchangeably.26 Only if we assume that
both terms signify the same group of people does the text list all possible situations
of rape and adultery in which in all possible configurations of free and unfree per-
sons may be perpetrator or victim. But we still need to explain why a legal text –
which would surely strive for semantic precision – continually switches between
woikeús/woikéa and dólos/dóla. One explanation could be that this law, which was
written down in or at the beginning of the first half of the fifth century, takes into
account earlier legal texts in which the dependents of a master (pástas) were called
woikeús and woikéa; while the later, more comprehensive, redaction employed the
terms dólos and dóla.27 And it is in fact the case that woikeís is attested in earlier
inscriptions, while dóloi is only found in later ones and then increasingly becomes
the more common term. Woikeús and woikéa, on the other hand, are not attested
later than in the Great Code of Gortyn.28
However, in an article published in Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Michael Ga-
garin suggested a more subtle and convincing explanation for the different usages of
woikeús/woikéa and dólos/dóla.29 He posits that they are different groups. Dólos/dóla
should be understood as the general signifier for servile status, which in some
 Link, Das griechische Kreta: 44–47; for the most extensive discussion see Link, “‘Dolos’ und
‘Woikeus’”: 87–112; see also Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 150–53 and Lewis, “Slave Marriage”:
392–93; Maffi, Il diritto di famiglia nel Codice di Gortina: 120–21; Karen Rørby Kristensen, “On the
Gortynian ΠΥΛΑ and ΣΤΑΡΤΟΣ of the 5th Century BC,” Classica et Mediaevalia 53 (2002): 65–80,
here 73. For a different position see Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 16–18; Lotze, “Zu den
ϝοικέες von Gortyn”; Ronald F. Willetts, “The rights of ἐπιβάλλοντες,” Eirene 5 (1966): 13–16; An-
dreas Wittenburg, “Zum sozialen Gefüge in Kreta,” Opus 1 (1982): 67–74; Koerner, Inschriftliche Ge-
setzestexte: 467–70; Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 30–31; cf. Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, “Ursprung,
Verbreitung und Formen der Unfreiheit abhängiger Landbewohner im antiken Griechenland,” in
Unfreie und abhängige Landbevölkerung, ed. Elisabeth Herrmann-Otto (Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Verlag 2008): 1–52, here 2–3.
 Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 153. As a rule, Anglophone scholars tend to translate woikeís/woi-
kéa as “serf,” see e.g. Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 81, n. 216: “We translate
woikeis by ‘serf’ for convenience, without claiming an exact correspondence. Although a serf may
be defined as ‘an agricultural laborer bound under the feudal system to work on his lord’s estate’
(The New Oxford American Dictionary), the term is often used more broadly.” Lewis disagrees with
this understanding of woikeís as “serfs,” see Lewis, “Slave Marriage” and Lewis, Greek Slave Sys-
tems: 147–65.
 Woikeús is the more ancient term, attested in two (probably sixth-century) inscriptions as τõ
ϝοικήος (Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: G23 l. 3; L5 l. 14) and in ICret IV 41
col. 4.6 and the Great Code of Gortyn, but has not been found to occur later (Gagarin, “Slaves and
Serfs at Gortyn”: 16; Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 81).
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 14–23, which builds on positions in Brixhe with Bile, “La
circulation des biens”: 93–97 and Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 25–41. In a similar vein, Gagarin and
Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 81–84.
regulations included the woikeís.30 It depends on the context in each case, Gagarin
argues, whether the law uses the more specific terms, woikeús and woikéa, or the
more general ones, dólos/dóla. Where it is a question of legal status and the opposi-
tion and juxtaposition of free (eleútheros/eleuthéra) and unfree, the text employs
dólos and dóla.31 In these cases the woikeís were subsumed under the term dóloi,
since both were unfree for legal purposes, and penalties applied equally to both.32
In the case of rape, the penalty for an unfree perpetrator was twice that for a
free one, reflecting the increased loss of honor for the victim. The law on rape in-
cludes offences where the victim was a woikeús or a woikéa.33 In the case of adul-
tery – where, again, the perpetrator could be free (eleútheros) or unfree (dólos) – it
was clear that the woman referred to, who was wife to a dólos, had to be a woikéa,
as only woikeís could enter into marriages protected by law.34
So the law on rape and adultery uses the term dólos because the central issue is
the contrast between “free” and “unfree,” and woikeís are considered “unfree”; the
term woikeús is employed only when there is an additional need to clarify that of all
the unfree, only the woikeís are meant. So the two laws do not contradict the as-
sumption that in Gortyn (and in other Cretan cities) there lived two groups of unfree
persons, the woikeís and the other slaves. But the law also shows that in the first
half of the fifth century the woikeís could be subsumed under the term dóloi, that
they were “unfree”: “slaves.”35 Other sources (see below) also make it seem plausi-
ble that woikeís could enter into legally protected marriages,36 and at least possible
that a woikeús perpetrator was liable himself to pay his fine, and a woikeús victim
liable himself to receive his compensation, rather than his master paying or receiving
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 15–16: “The words refer to two different kinds of slaves
but in most cases the law treats both groups identically.” Detlef Lotze had previously advanced the
same argument, see Lotze, “Zu den ϝοικέες von Gortyn.”
 Such as e.g. in ICret IV 72, col. 1, which is about status disputes. Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”:
31; Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 18.
 He concludes, “Thus, there do seem to be reasons why one term or the other is used in the
laws. First, each term is used when the law applies exclusively or primarily to one group and not
the other: thus, woikeus is used of serfs living in a town house [. . .], and dolos is used of slaves
bought in the agora [. . .] Second, dolos is used whenever the law designates a servile person in
general, especially in contrast with an eleutheros [. . .]” (Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 22).
For the legal status of woikeís as an unfree group, see also Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 165.
 Presumably this law did not concern itself with the rape of chattel slaves.
 Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 31: “Il est donc clair que dans la ligne 27 doulos désigne un woikeus
et uniquement un woikeus.” See also Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 16–18.
 Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 392–93 is then correct in arguing that woikeís signified an unfree pop-
ulation group.
 For marriage law in Gortyn see Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 39–40; Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs
at Gortyn”: 23–24; Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 396–402. By contrast, Lewis argues that those living at
the time would have known who paid or received the fine in question – the masters or the woikeís –
so that there was no need to have this information included in the written text.
payment for him, respectively. In principle, the fines to be paid by dóloi perpetrators
were twice as high as those by free ones, whereas a wokeús victim would only receive
one fortieth of the compensation paid to a free victim. A clause in column 3/4 points
to the legal recognition of marital ties even between woikeís:
If a divorced woman (γυνὰ κε[ρ]ε[ύο]νσα̣) should bear a child, [she] is to bring it to her [former]
husband at his house (stéga) before three witnesses. [. . .] vacat If a divorced woikéa should
bear a child (αἰ δὲ ϝοικέα τέκοι κερεύονσα), [she] is to bring it to the master (pástas) of her
husband, who married [her] (ἐπελεῦσαι το͂ι πάσται τõ ἀνδρός, ὂς ὄπυιε), in the presence of two
witnesses. And if he does not accept it, the child is to be in the hands of the master of the
woikéa. And if she should marry the same [man] again within a year, the child is to be in the
hands of the master of the woikeús.37
So the biological mother, the woikéa, and the biological father, the woikeús, have
no claim to their child: it belongs to their master. But what is remarkable here is
that the primary right of deciding whether to accept or abandon the child lies not
with the mother’s, but with the father’s master.38 In chattel slavery, the child of a
slave is always the property of her master, since slaves cannot legally marry and, in
law, a slave child has no father. But under the laws of Gortyn, we have patrilineal-
ity, just as in any regular marriage in the ancient Greek world.39 It is also noticeable
that the father and the mother did not necessarily have the same master.
This “right” of paternal descent also shows in another clause: “If an unmarried
woikéa (ϝοικέα μὲ ὀπυιομένα) should be pregnant and give birth, the child is to be
in the hands of her father’s master; but if the father is not alive, it is to be in the
hands of the masters of her brothers.”40 The assumption is that a woikéa will have a
 ICret IV 72 col. 3.44–4.6: vac. αἰ τέκοι γυνὰ κε[ρ]ε[ύο]νσα̣, ἐπελεῦσαι τõι ἀνδρὶ ἐπὶ στέγαν ἀντὶ
μαιτύρον τριõν. [. . .] vac. αἰ δὲ ϝοικέα τέκοι κερεύονσα, ἐπελεῦσαι τõι πάσται τõ ἀνδρός, ὂς ὄπυιε,
ἀντὶ μαιτύρον δ̣[υ]õν. αἰ δέ κα μὲ δέκσεται, ἐπὶ τõι πάσται ἔμεν τὸ τέκνον τõι τᾶς ϝοικέας. αἰ δὲ τõι
αὐτõι αὖτιν ὀπυίοιτο πρὸ τõ ἐνιαυτõ, τὸ παιδίον ἐπὶ τõι πάσται ἔμεν τõι τõ ϝοικέος. Gagarin and
Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 357–61.
 Lewis does not regard these and other legal regulations as “slave rights” of marriage or owner-
ship: “[T]he rules may well be aimed at clarifying the property rights of other interested parties”
(Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 402); he argues that marriages or unions between the slaves of different
masters are not a singular phenomenon, but that they may be found in many slave societies.
 Again, there is no distinction in how the terms for “to marry” (opyíen) and “to divorce” (ker-
eúen) are used for free and for woikeís. Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 19, n. 15 points out:
“The verbs for divorce are krinen for woikeis (3.41) and diakrinen for free persons (2.46), but krinen
is used of the divorce of free persons in 11.46”; similarly: 23–24; Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of
Ancient Crete: 83, 360 and see already Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 39. Gagarin also sees the ruling
about the children born by a woikéa as confirmation for the existence of legally recognized mar-
riages. While Lewis, “Slave Marriage” concedes that the terminology is the same, he argues that
“there is no a priori reason, therefore, to suppose that the identical use of vocabulary for free and
slave marriages in Gortyn need imply legal equivalency” (402).
 ICret IV 72 col. 4.18–23: vac. αἰ κύσαιτο καὶ τέκοι ϝοικέα μὲ ὀπυιομένα, ἐπὶ τõι τõ πατρὸς πάσται
ἔμεν τὸ τέκνον· αἰ δ’ ὀ πατὲρ μὲ δόοι, ἐπὶ τοῖς τõν ἀδελπιõν πάσταις ἔμεν. vac.
father and brothers who are legally relevant – again, unlike chattel slaves, who had
no family ties and, as such, no family members; a state for which Orlando Patterson
coined the term “natal alienation.”41 If the law states that the child born to the un-
married woikéa is “to be in the hands of her father’s master” (ἐπὶ τõι τõ πατρὸς πάσ-
ται ἔμεν), it suggests that the child was not his property, but merely under his
control (as the head of household).42 It seems that when a woikéa got married, she
came under the authority of her “husband’s” master (the text says in col. 3.54, τõ
ἀνδρός, not τõ δόλο or τõ ϝοικέος) and lived with her husband, i.e. a virilocal rela-
tionship. If they divorced, she returned to her former master. Compensation does
not seem to have been paid in such a case; the clause that deals with the woman’s
property states, “If a woikéa is separated from a woikeús, either while he is living or
by his death, she is to have her own things (τὰ ϝὰ αὐτᾶς), but if she should carry
away anything else, it is a matter for trial.”43 So a woikéa had some sort of personal
property; or she might have been given a dowry by her master which she could take
with her after a divorce or the death of her husband. Unlike a free woman, a woikéa
was not entitled to any gifts from her husband, not even half of what she had pro-
duced in the marriage, or her share of what was in the house. During their mar-
riage, all proceeds of her work went to her husband’s master.44 To my mind, the
only possible conclusion from the clause about the divorced or widowed woikéa is
that the woman’s original master was not entitled to compensation for the loss of
her labor after she had gone to live with her husband in his master’s house. I
 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982): 35–76; Orlando Patterson, “Sklaverei in globalhistorischer Perspektive. Von
der Antike bis in die Gegenwart,” in ‘Die Sklaverei setzen wir mit dem Tod gleich’ – Sklaven in global-
historischer Perspektive, ed. Winfried Schmitz (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2017): 67–104, 68.
 For ἐπὶ see Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 359, “in the hands of”; for further
references with ἐπὶ see 366, “in none of these cases does it indicate ownership, though the master
of a serf does own the baby. Here [in col. 4.37] it is assumed by all scholars that the expression
indicates ownership, since the items mentioned are part of an estate to be inherited. But in 5.32–3 [. . .]
the expression clearly designates only temporary possession of the property.”
 ICret IV 72 col. 3.40–44: vac. αἴ κα ϝοικέος ϝοικέα κριθε͂ι δοõ ἒ ἀποθανόντος, τὰ ϝὰ αὐτᾶς ἔκεν·
ἄλλο δ’ αἴ τι πέροι, ἔνδικον ἔμεν. Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 356–57. This
clause applies exclusively to unfree rural people, not to chattel slaves in the city, so only the terms
woikeús and woikéa are used. Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 19, concludes that “[t]hese
rules show that woikeis could marry in the same way as free persons.” I am however skeptical
about his subsequent conclusion that the same applied to dóloi (19–20). Lewis, “Slave Marriage”:
399 argues from the context that τὰ ϝὰ αὐτᾶς was a peculium (as does Maffi, Il diritto di famiglia:
124) and that the purpose of this provision was to ensure a just division among the various owners.
It cannot have meant that slaves enjoyed a formal right of ownership.
 In the case of a free woman, the code states that upon the death of her husband she is entitled
to have her own property back and to remarry (ὀπυίεθθαι). There is no such provision for the case
of a married woikéa, which must mean decisions about her (re)marriage were made by her pástas.
Compare ICret IV 72 col. 3.16–20: vac. αἰ ἀνὲρ ἀποθάνοι τέκνα καταλιπόν, αἴ κα λε͂ι ἀ γυνά, τὰ ϝὰ
αὐτᾶς ἔκονσαν ὀπυίεθθαι with the provision in col. 3.40–44 (see n. 43).
conclude this from the fact that there is no provision in the Code for the return of
such a payment after the woikeús’ death or her divorce from him.
Things might have been different in the case of male woikeís. If an unmarried
and fatherless woikéa had a child, it was to come under the authority of the masters
of her brothers; in other words: the brothers could have different masters. This
seems to indicate that male woikeís could be “sold” to other masters, whose woikeís
had not produced male offspring who would continue to work their allotted land
(kláros).45 So it is perhaps not implausible if Strabo claims that members of these
dependent groups could be sold, as long as they remained inside the territory. Of
course, this is not a “right” granted to the dependents, but merely an arrangement
between members of the ruling elite in order not to lose valuable labor.
In view of the epigraphic record I am not entirely certain whether those sales
were the sort of transaction where property passes from one person to another. We
read in Column 4:
The fugitive woikeús (τὸν δὲ ϝοικέα τὸν ἐπιδιόμενον) is not to be sold (μὴ ἀποδόθθαι) when he
has taken refuge in a temple (μήτε ναεύοντα) nor before one year has passed. If the fugitive (ὀ
ἐπιδιόμενος) belongs to someone who is kósmos, he is not to be sold (μὴ ἀποδόθαι) while he is
kósmos nor before one year has passed.46
However, an epidiómenos is not a runaway who has fled from someone, but one
who has fled to someone.47 You are not allowed to sell this “windfall” before a year
has passed, because you only acquire the right to him – whether in terms of owner-
ship or of (paternal) power – after that period. And perhaps we should not
 For the brothers’ masters, see Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 361, “This im-
plies that it was common for a master to sell some or all of the sons of his serfs.”
 ICret IV 41 col. 4.6–15: τὸν δὲ ϝοικέα τὸν ἐπιδιόμενον μὴ ἀποδόθθαι μήτε ναεύοντα μήτ’ ἦ κ’
ἀπέλθηι τõ ἐνιαυτõ. αἰ δέ κα κοσμίοντος ἦι ὀ ἐπιδιόμενος, μὴ ἀποδόθαι ἆς κα κοσμῆι μηδ’ ἦ κ’
ἀπέλθηι τõ ἐνιαυτõ. The translation given above has been slightly adapted from that by Gagarin
and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete. Cf. Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 395. See also ICret IV 72
col. 1.47–51: a woikeús who has been transferred as surety must be returned within the year, other-
wise the recipient acquires legal ownership over him.
 ἐπιδιόμενον derives from ἐπι-δίεμαι (δίεμαι “be scared away,” “drive away,” “flee”). For the un-
certain meaning of ἐπιδιόμενον see Monique Bile, “IC 4.41 et le sens de ἐπιδίομαι,” in La codifica-
tion des lois dans l’antiquité. Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg 27–29 novembre 1997, ed. Edmond
Lévy (Paris: de Boccard, 2000): 161–74. According to Bile’s analysis, ἐπιδίομαι has the meaning
“amener,” “to bring”; she puts the provision into the context of a theft committed by a woikeús; for
her interpretation and those attempted by other scholars, see Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of
Ancient Crete: 298. I believe the provision should be read as referring to the woikeús “taking/bring-
ing himself (to another master),” “fleeing to (him).” He may then not be “sold” before the year is
out because only after a year will the new master have acquired legal ownership based on continu-
ous possession. For the question of whether μήτ’ ἦ κ’ ἀπέλθηι τõ ἐνιαυτõ should be understood to
mean “not for one year after he has run away” or perhaps rather “not before a year has expired,”
see Bile, “IC 4.41 et le sens de ἐπιδίομαι”: 172–73. Cf. Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 32, who suggests
the epidiómenos is not a “woikeus fugitive,” but “un woikeus poursuivi en justice.”
translate ἀποδόθθαι as “to sell,” either; it might be better understood in the sense of
“to yield” or “to give up (i.e. into the authority of another person)”; this would have
included the payment of compensation for the labor of the woikeús.48
So what we have in Gortyn is a situation where woikeís were able to enter into
marital, virilocal and patrilineal relationships with each other which were, how-
ever, arranged by their respective masters. Upon marriage the woikéa came under
the authority of her husband’s master, who was also entitled to the fruits of her
labor. In the case of divorce or the death of her husband, the woikéa received back
any moveable property she had brought into the marriage. Neither of the biological
parents had any rights to their children. These laid instead, first, with the hus-
band’s master, second with the wife’s, or if the woikéa was unmarried, with her fa-
ther’s or her brothers’ master or masters. This also meant that before her marriage,
a woikéa would grow up in her father’s or one of his brothers’ house, even though
her relatives had no rights over her and could not make any decisions regarding her
marriage.49 If no sons were born to the marriage between a woikeús and a woikéa,
their master was entitled to have another woikeús “given up” to him, to whose mas-
ter he probably paid some form of compensation. If a woikeús escaped and was
taken in by someone, this person had to wait for one year; if his old master laid no
claim to him during that period, he came under the authority of the new master.
Woikeís could also seek refuge in a sanctuary.
2 The Law of Inheritance

If the woikeís were “privately owned slaves,” as David Lewis posits, we should find
this reflected in the law of inheritance, which is the litmus test for slave ownership.
Among the dependent groups we know of in ancient Greece, it is only for the depen-
dent population of Crete, the klarṓtai, that we have any more specific information
about regulations regarding inheritance. These are part of the so called Great Code
of Gortyn.
 For apodóththai see Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 298: “Here the verb in
each case could be middle – ‘(one) is not to sell’ – or passive – the serf ‘is not to be sold’ or ‘is not
to be given back’. But ‘sell’ is the more likely meaning (whether middle or passive).” However, I do
not find Gagarin’s and Perlman’s subsequent interpretation of the one-year interval convincing.
The passage can only mean that to acquire the woikeús legally, the master must have been in his
possession for a full year, so that he cannot “sell” him before that time. Ephorus employs the verb
pōleín (“sell”) for the ban on “selling” helots outside the borders of the country (see above n. 20).
 Lewis again interprets the absence of the woikeís’ right to their children as evidence for the fact
that they were their masters’ privately owned slaves (Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 398); he sees it as
solely a matter of the owners’ property rights (403–4).
Regulation on inheritance for citizens is fairly comprehensive. The Code states:
And when one dies, the houses (stégai) in the city (pólis) and whatever is inside the houses
(stégai) – those in which a woikeús who lives (enwoikeí) in the country (chṓra) is not residing, –
and the livestock, small and large – that are not those of a woikeús –, are to be in the hands of
the sons; and all the rest of the property (chrḗmata) is to be ‘nicely’ (καλõς, i.e. fairly) divided,
and the sons, however many there are, are to receive two shares each, and the daughters, how-
ever many there are, [are to receive] one share each. The maternal estate too is to be divided,
when she dies, in the same way as is written for the paternal estate. And if there should be no
property (chrḗmata) but [only] a house (stéga), the daughters are to receive their share as is
written. vacat.50
The law indicates a fundamental spatial separation: the citizens of Gortyn have
“houses” in the city. The inheritance that goes to the sons includes houses as well
as “whatever is inside the houses”: the word stéga must mean a building. It should
not be understood as being synonymous with oíkos, which is descriptive of a resi-
dence that includes land and cattle and both free and unfree inhabitants: a house-
hold. The term stéga itself, which in the narrower sense means a roof, similarly
indicates that what is meant is the residence as a building. The sons’ inheritance
explicitly excludes stégai (in the city) “inhabited” (ἐνϝοικε͂ι) by a woikeús who lives
in the country. So, as a rule, free Gortynians and woikeís are separated in spatial
terms: free citizens live in the city while the woikeís live in the country (chṓra). Only
in exceptional cases does a woikeús live in the city.51 He was probably one of the
woikeís mentioned in one of the clauses in the Great Code of Gortyn:
[If the unfree man] goes to a free woman (eleuthéra) and marries her (opyíei), their children are
to be free (eleúthera). vacat But if the free woman (eleuthéra) [goes to] the slave (dólos), their
children are to be slaves (dóloi). vacat And if free and slave children are born from the same
 ICret IV 72 col. 4.31–48: ἐ͂ δέ κ’ ἀποθάνει τις, ‘τέγανς μὲν τὰνς ἐν πόλι κἄτι κ’ ἐν ταῖς ‘τέγαις ἐνε͂ι
αἶς κα μὲ ϝοικεὺς ἐνϝοικε͂ι ἐπὶ κόραι ϝοικίον καὶ τὰ πρόβατα καὶ καρταί̣ποδα ἄ κα μὲ ϝοικέος ἐ͂ι, ἐπὶ
τοῖς υἰάσι ἔμεν, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα κρέματα πάντα δατε͂θθαι καλõς, καὶ λανκάνεν τὸς μὲν υἰύνς, ὀπόττοι κ’
ἴοντι, δύο μοίρανς ϝέκαστον, τὰδ δὲ θυγατέρανς, ὀπότται κ’ ἴοντι, μίαν μοῖραν ϝεκάσταν. δ̣ατε͂θ[θ]αι
δὲ καὶ τὰ ματρõια, ἐ͂κ’ ἀποθά̣[νε]ι, ἆιπερ τὰ [πατρõ]ι’ ἔγ̣[ρατ]ται. αἰ δὲ κρέματα μὲ εἴε, στέγα δέ,
λακὲν τὰθ θ[υ]γατέρας ἆι ἔγρατται. vac. See Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 20–21; Lewis,
“Slave Marriage”: 406–8; Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 361–67. For a discussion
of the question of whether we should read ἐπὶ κόραι (= ἐπὶ χῶρᾳ) or ἐπικṓρα (= ἐπικουρία), see
Brixhe with Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 89–90, who put forward good reasons for maintaining
the reading ἐπὶ κόραι (“in the country”).
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 20 comments on the phrase ϝοικεὺς ἐνϝοικε͂ι ἐπὶ κόραι
ϝοικίον: “Thus it is likely that ἐπὶ κόραι, though perhaps not strictly necessary, helps explain the
sense: the sons are given houses in the town for their residences, though occasionally a serf, who
normally resides in the country, may be living in a town house.” I.e. this provision only applies to
woikeís and not to urban slaves (dóloi), who would have lived in houses in the city.
mother, when the mother dies, if there is property (chrḗmata), the free children are to have it;
but if there should be no free children, her relatives are to inherit it.52
This clause appears to target primarily cases in which a free widow after the death
of her first husband enters into a second relationship, this time with an enslaved
man who lives “in the country” (chṓra). As the focus here is again on issues of sta-
tus, dólos is employed as the opposite to eleuthéra. As, however, the unfree man
“goes to the woman to marry her” (ἐπὶ τὰν ἐλευθέραν ἐλθὸν ὀπυίει) and the free
woman “to the unfree man” (ἐπὶ τὸν δõλον), dólos can only refer to the woikeús liv-
ing in the county. If he goes to the free woman in the city and weds her, the house
(stéga) will be lost to her brothers as part of their inheritance, as there is now “a
woikeús residing in it.” Unlike the livestock, which “is” that of a woikeús, the woi-
keús only “resides” in the stéga.53 This means that the house will pass to the free
children from the marriage between free mother and woikeús father. It will provide
them with a permanent livelihood, since they cannot expect an inheritance from
their father, who cannot leave any property to them. If the free woman takes a woi-
keús into her house “in the city,” their child is born and grows up there among the
free citizens, and, on reaching adulthood, becomes one of them. But if the woman
should join her second husband “in the chṓra,” she relinquishes her citizen status,
and their child will be a woikeús or woikéa.
The fact that the sons explicitly inherit the houses in the city plus their contents
and livestock indicates that the land was not part of the inheritance – if it was, it
should have been mentioned.54 Again, in the case of livestock, excluded from the
 ICret IV 72 col. 7.1–10: [– αἴ κ’ ὀ δõλος] ἐπὶ τὰν ἐλευθέραν ἐλθὸν ὀπυίει, ἐλεύθερ’ ἔμεν τὰ τέκνα.
αἰ δέ κ’ ἀ ἐλευθέρα ἐπὶ τὸν δõλον, δõλ’ ἔμεν τὰ τέκνα. {palmula} αἰ δέ κ’ ἐς τᾶς αὐτᾶς ματρὸς ἐλεύ-
θερα καὶ δõλα τέκνα γένεται, ἐ͂ κ’ ἀποθάνει ἀ μάτερ, αἴ κ’ ἐ͂ι κρέματα, τὸνς ἐλευθέρονς ἔκεν. αἰ δ’
ἐλευθέροι μὲ ἐκσεῖεν, τὸνσς ἐπιβάλλον τανς ἀναιλε͂θαι. vac. I agree with Michael Gagarin that dólos
is being used here in opposition to eleútheros. Where questions of status were concerned, there
were only either the “free” or the “unfree”; whereas significant differences could and probably did
exist in the actual lives of rural woikeís and chattel slaves in the cities. It is therefore likely that this
provision was primarily concerned with the marriages of free women to woikeís, esp. since the
woman is spoken of as going “to the unfree man” (ἐπὶ τὸν δõλον).
 This is also highlighted by Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 26: “This law shows that serfs
could certainly own livestock, but it also implies that the serf is only residing in the house and does
not own it. Serfs, then, could own moveable property but perhaps not real property.”
 Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 365 also discuss the possibility of understand-
ing this rule on inheritance as stating that the sons were to inherit the “houses in the city” as well
as the furnishings of such houses in the country which were not being lived in by a woikeús, and
the livestock (in the country) that was similarly not that of a woikeús. So in addition to the houses
in the city, the sons would have inherited rural houses that had been vacated by woikeís without
descendants. But the text should not be read in this way. The provisions pertaining to the claims of
heiresses and the relatives they are required to marry stipulate that, if the heiress refuses to marry
the nearest eligible relative or to wait until he has come of age, she “is to have the house (stéga), if
there is one in the city, and whatever is in the house, and she is to receive half of the remaining”
sons’ inheritance are those “of a woikeús.” A further clause divides “all the rest of
the chrḗmata,” giving daughters half the share of sons. Some scholars suggested
that these chrḗmata might have included both the land and the woikeís who worked
there, in order to explain why explicit mention is made of the house and livestock,
but not of the land and the woikeís.55 The latest of these is David Lewis, who follows
Stefan Link’s view that both the land and the woikeís who worked it are included in
τὰ δ’ ἄλλα κρέματα πάντα, and would have been divided between sons and daugh-
ters.56 However, the order in which they are named argues against this view: one
would expect strategic property – the house, land, farming equipment, flocks and
herds – to be named first, followed by other, mobile assets.57 In addition, we find
that literary evidence for this clause has been preserved by Ephorus, a fourth-
century BCE author. He points to an idiosyncrasy of Crete whereby a daughter who
has brothers receives half of her brothers’ portion as phernḗ.58 This term can denote
a dowry; however in the classical era dowries only comprised mobile assets, never
a house, land or livestock. In classical Athens, phernḗ is the word for the personal
(col. 7.52–8.7: vac. αἰ δέ κα το͂ι ἐπιβάλλοντι ἐβίονσα μὲ λε͂ι ὀπυίεθαι ἒ ἄνορος ἐ͂ι ὀ ἐπιβάλ[λ]ον [κα]ὶ μ
[ὲ λε͂ι μέν]εν ἀ πατροιõκος, στέγαμ μέν, αἴ κ’ ἐ͂ι ἐν πόλι, τὰμ πατροιõκον ἔκεν κἄτι κ’ ἐνε͂ι ἐν τᾶι
στέγαι, το͂ν δ’ ἄλλον τὰν ἐμί<ν>αν διαλακόνσαν ἄλλοι ὀπυίεθαι τᾶς πυλᾶς το͂ν αἰτιόντοˉν ὄτιμί κα
λε͂ι. vac.). The same wording is used here as in col. 4.31–33, making it clear that what is being re-
ferred to are “houses in the city” and “such contents as are in these houses.”
 Link, Das griechische Kreta: 79–82; Alberto Maffi, “Studi recenti sul Codice di Gortina,” Dike 6
(2003): 175–80, here 175–76. For a brief summary of the arguments for both positions, see Gagarin,
“Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 24–25. Cf. Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 365:
“Serfs could own property in some sense (3.40–4), but serfs also belonged to a master and thus
must have been included (along with doloi) in the total estate that was divided among all the chil-
dren. Any cattle that a serf ‘owned’ presumably were inherited along with the serf himself by one of
the children in the distribution of ‘all the rest of the property’.” Also 366: “‘All the rest of the prop-
erty’ would include country houses together with their furnishings, slaves and serfs, livestock, and
land.” Brixhe with Bile (“La circulation des biens”: 86, 108–15) however assume that there were
goods (chrḗmata) that could be sold and others that could not, and that the town house could not
be sold. Land, they believe, fell into the same category, and is therefore not mentioned in the law
of inheritance.
 Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 406; Link, Das griechische Kreta: 35. Gehrke, “Gewalt und Gesetz”: 27,
is more skeptical. However, Yvon Garlan, Ronald F. Willetts, Edmond Lévy and Claude Brixhe, all
infer from this clause that the woikeís had their own right of possession.
 Proponents of the view that the land cultivated by the woikeís was included among the “other
goods” believe that the houses with inventory were reserved for the sons, whose status as members
of a common mess depended on having a house; while a daughter left her father’s house upon mar-
riage and so did not need a dwelling of her own (Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 407–8). Lewis suggests
that houses inhabited by woikeís may have been of a lower quality: “not of the same standard as
the town houses in which a free citizen would live,” and so would not have met the latter’s
expectations.
 Ephorus FgrH 70 F149 (= Strab. 10.4.20–482 C): φερνὴ δ’ ἐστίν, ἂν ἀδελφοὶ ὦσι, τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς
τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ μερίδος. Link’s assumption that a daughter received half a brother’s portion of land,
i.e. strategic property, seems highly unlikely given the term phernḗ.
belongings taken with her by a bride in addition to her dowry, such as jewelry or
clothes. In column 4.31–48, the “other chrḗmata” are juxtaposed with the house
(stéga), its contents and the livestock, as they are in the next clause: “And if there
should be no property (chrḗmata) but (only) a house (stéga), the daughters are to
receive their share as is written.”59 So chrḗmata, like dólos, can denote different
things: chrḗmata can mean goods other than the house, its content and the cattle;
or it can mean all assets.60 The next section, which deals with intestate succession
in Gortyn (col. 5.9–54), regulates who is to have the chrḗmata upon the death of a
male or female citizen. Unlike col. 4.37 and col. 4.40/42, it does not speak of “sons”
nor of “sons” and “daughters,” but of “children” (tékna), which means that the in-
heritance is to be divided according to the preceding stipulations, i.e. one part to
sons, another to sons and daughters. So in these clauses, again, the term chrḗmata
probably encompasses all assets, immobile and mobile.
Informative for the question of which assets were bequeathed and in what matter
are the provisions concerning heiresses in such cases where the deceased had no
sons, but one or several daughters. The principle was the same as in Attic law, by
which an heiress was required to marry the next male heir on her father’s side to en-
sure that all property (especially strategic property) remained in the paternal family.
However, the law of Gortyn provides for several cases in which this marriage did not
take place. Significantly, the regulations on who was to receive which shares of the
property again name “the house in the city” and “revenue,” but do not mention land
or woikeís. If both, i.e. the heiress and the nearest paternal relative, should be minors,
“if there is a house (stéga), the heiress (patroiṓkos) is to have it, and the claimant to
marry is to receive half of all the revenue (epikarpía) [from the estate]” (col. 7.29–35).
If both the groom-elect and the heiress are of age but he does not wish to marry her,
“all the property (tá krémata pánta) and the produce (karpós) are to be in the hands
of the heiress until he marries [her]” (col. 7.35–40). So if the nearest male relative
does not marry her according to the law, “the entire property” (tá krémata pánta) is
to fall to the next in line, if there is one (col. 7.47–50). But if the heiress for her part
refuses to marry the groom-elect or is unwilling to wait for him to reach his majority,
she is “to have a house (stéga), if there be one in the city, besides whatever may be in
it (κἄτι κ’ ἐνε͂ι ἐν τᾶι στέγαι), and, obtaining half a share of the rest, she is to be
 ICret IV 72 col. 4.46–48.

 For the meaning of krḗmata (= χρήματα) in the Great Code of Gortyn see Henri van Effenterre
and Françoise Ruzé, Nomima: Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et juridicques de l’archaïsme grec,
vol. 2 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1995): 180 no. 49 (stating that “other goods” did not include
the house, its contents or livestock); Brixhe with Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 86: “l’extension
du champ couvert par krḗmata est liée au context.” For the questions of whether or not chrḗmata
included land, see Link, Das griechische Kreta: 31; Maffi, “Studi recenti”: 175–80. Gagarin and Perl-
man, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 377: “Property (kremata) [. . .] refers to everything the deceased
owned, almost certainly including land.”
married to another [. . .]” (col. 7.52–8.7). So in all cases what is being discussed is the
house as a building (stéga), located in the city; and “produce” and “revenues” (kar-
pós, epikarpía), a term that probably means the proceeds of the woikía assigned to
the family, but not the woikía including the woikeís themselves. This inventory does
not exclude the house “in which a woikeús resides.” These regulations concern
daughters who at the time of their father’s death are frequently still minors. At this
point, the widow does not (yet) contemplate a second marriage with a woikeús who
will share her house. Again, chrḗmata is used in a very broad sense: in col. 7.35–40,
tá krémata pánta includes everything, the house and its contents, livestock and all
other goods, excluding only the “produce” and “revenue” subsequently mentioned
(presumably from the woikía); and in col. 7.47–50 it comprises everything, including
the “revenue.”
From the laws on inheritance we can reconstruct the following model of owner-
ship and dependency in Gortyn: the houses in the city including all of their con-
tents were the private property of citizens, who bequeathed them to their sons.
Land was not private property, but divided into land lots (klároi) and farmed by
the woikeís “living in the chṓra,” who had to pay tribute to the citizens.61 These
tributes made up a large part of the “revenues” (chrḗmata) that, upon the death
of a male or female citizen, were shared out between their sons and daughters.
Each citizen of Gortyn was allotted a kláros over which, as pástas, they exercised
the authority of a household head.62 This authority over the kláros was probably
passed on down the generations, because the heir was entitled to the “revenue”
or “produce.” But a kláros was not property, and so – like the woikeís them-
selves – could not form part of an inheritance. 63 Both land and woikeís were
 This made them literally períoikoi, “those who dwell around.” Cf. Aristot. pol. 2.10, 1271b 40–42:
ἔχει δ’ ἀνάλογον ἡ Κρητικὴ τάξις πρὸς τὴν Λακωνικήν. γεωργοῦσί τε γὰρ τοῖς μὲν εἵλωτες τοῖς δὲ
Κρησὶν οἱ περίοικοι. – “The Cretan organization is on the same lines as that of Sparta. In Sparta the
land is tilled by the helots and in Crete by the períoikoi.” For use of the term períoikoi for the Cretan
woikeís see Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 8–9; Link, Das griechische Kreta: 30–31; cf.
Avram, “Bemerkungen zu den Mariandyni”: 22–23. We know the names of settlements, póleis, of
the Mariandyni, which makes it likely that at least some of them lived in self-contained settlements
(Avram, “Bemerkungen zu den Mariandyni”: 23–24, with references).
 The word pástas is derived from páomai, “to purchase, to own” (Lewis, Greek Slave Systems:
151, n. 15). Cf. Alberto Maffi, “Droit et épigraphie dans la Grèce archaïque: A propos d’un ouvrage
recent,” Revue historique de droit français et l’étranger 75 (1997): 435–46, here 443–45.
 Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 376 suggest that “in many cases joint owner-
ship would clearly have been preferable to division. If the heirs could not agree, however, then the
property could be sold and the proceeds divided among them.” – If the chrḗmata were made up
primarily of revenues from the woikía, it is quite conceivable that a daughter with e.g. two brothers
will receive one fifth of the revenue upon her marriage. In the case of divorce, the wife is to have
“her own property” as well as “half of the produce (karpós), if there is any from her own chrḗmata”
(ICret IV 72 col. 2.45–50). Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 352–53, comment: “The
natural sense of karpos is ‘produce, fruit of the land’; [. . .] there is no good reason to deny this
public property. 64 But in order to safeguard his authority over the dependent
population, the pástas was entitled to exercise the powers of a de-facto owner
over the kláros: he made decisions on the woikeís’ marriages and on whether
their children would be accepted or exposed; if a woikéa got married he gave her
a sort of dowry, released her from his authority as household head and trans-
ferred this authority for the duration of the marriage to another citizen; and
“sold” one of “his” woikeís to any citizen on whose kláros no male children had
been born. If a fugitive woikeús sought refuge with him, he was only allowed to
“sell” him after one year had passed (and not while he was kósmos, i.e. while
holding the highest office), because only after that time would he have acquired
possession of him. 65 And because kláros has this very specific meaning, the
word for an heiress was not epíklēros but patrōiṓkos (patroúchos in Attic Greek).
So the woikeís were a dependent population group, subjugated originally in
war and forced into a state of slave-like dependency.66 They had to deliver a share
of their harvests to their master and could only get married if he agreed.67 When
she married, a woikéa came under the authority of another master, as did a woikeús
sense here or to deny that women could own land at Gortyn, although perhaps landownership
among women was not common.” To my mind, however, this clause does not allow the conclusion
that “kremata (‘things, property’) here must include land,” since it may describe a wife’s share of
the revenues from her father’s woikía, of which she may have inherited half a brother’s share. Com-
pare this with Plutarch’s statement in his life of Lycurgus that each kláros was large enough to pro-
duce seventy bushels of barley for a man and twelve for his wife, with a proportionate amount of
wine and oil (Plut. Lyc. 8.4: ὁ δὲ κλῆρος ἦν ἑκάστου τοσοῦτος ὥστε ἀποφορὰν φέρειν ἀνδρὶ μὲν
ἑβδομήκοντα κριθῶν μεδίμνους, γυναικὶ δὲ δώδεκα, καὶ τῶν ὑγρῶν καρπῶν ἀναλόγως τὸ πλῆθος).
 Claude Brixhe and Monique Bile also inferred that this was a case of a collective agricultural
economy in which the annual yield at harvest was distributed among the families: “Si était exacte
l’hypothèse – développée infra § 4.7 – d’une exploitation collective de la terre et d’une redistribu-
tion annuelle de ses produits à travers les familles nucléaires ou les branches familiales, [. . .]”
(Brixhe with Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 100); similarly 110: “Ainsi, on ne trouve dans les Lois
aucun indice permettant de supposer que la terre agricole peut être divisée ou changer de main,
ni même qu’elle était la propriété de quelqu’un. De toute évidence, il n’y a entre la terre et le cit-
oyen aucun lien patrimonial” (cf. also their Conclusion, 113; 114–15).
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 26 also concluded that woikeís could be bought and sold,
but assumed that, as a rule, they were bought or sold with the land; only in special circumstances
could a woikeús change hands without the land. In his view, however, the master owned both.
Lévy’s view is very similar, cf. Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 32.
 The same conclusion is reached by Michael Gagarin and Paula Perlman: “They were primarily
agrarian workers, who may have been working the land before chattel slaves were introduced to
Crete, and thus continued to have certain rights not available to slaves.” (Gagarin and Perlman,
The Laws of Ancient Crete: 83).
 David Lewis does not dispute that woikeís could be married, but stresses “that the servile mar-
riage relationship for which this legislation was created was not a distinctively Gortynian institu-
tion but a common arrangement that can be found in many slave systems” (Lewis, “Slave
Marriage”: 391; a similar view was expressed in Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 20–25). For
when he was “sold” to another pástas.68 As the woikeís were not the property of
their “owners,” they could not be manumitted or sold outside Gortyn.69 This was
only possible for the chrysṓnētoi, chattel slaves from elsewhere who had been
bought for money. The woikeís did not own property: if they had been capable of
ownership, we would have expected the inheritance regulations for free citizens,
male and female, to have been followed by a section on woikeís, such as in the case
with the offences of rape and adultery and the clauses on divorce.70 It follows that
woikeús and woikéa could enter into a legally protected marriage, but had no prop-
erty rights.71 Livestock that “belongs to a woikeús” remained in the possession of
the city of Gortyn, as did all of the land. If a pástas died without leaving issue or
other family members or any other persons who had a right “to the woikía,” “those
of the household composing the kláros are to have the ‘property’ (chrḗmata).”72
There is a lively discussion among scholars about whether tás woikías (τᾶς ϝοι-
κίας) in this section refer to ἐπιβάλλοντες or to οἴτινες, in other words whether
what is meant is, “if there are no claimants from the house [i.e. when there are no
further relatives], the goods are to go to those who are the kláros”; or whether what
is meant is, “if there are no claimants, those from among the woikía are to have the
the question of whether woikeís had the legal capacity to be party to a lawsuit see Lévy, “Libres et
non-libres”: 34–5, and Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 29–31, both of whom opine that they
did (Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 84). Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 390, who is of
the view that woikeís did not “hold rights,” disagrees.
 For the woikéa, see Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 23, n. 28: “After a divorce, a serf cou-
ple would have different masters [. . .], but it is possible that a serf woman would automatically
belong to her husband’s master as long as they were married, and would then revert to her former
master after the divorce.”
 There is no mention of manumission in the Great Code of Gortyn. Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at
Gortyn”: 24, however believes that manumissions did happen in the course of the adoptions of
slaves or woikeis. The freedmen settled in Latosion (apeleútheroi) may have been the woikeís manu-
mitted by the pólis of Gortyn in the context of a war (ICret IV 78).
 It would also explain why there is no mention at all of woikeís in the columns that deal with
heiresses and with adoption (cf. Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 25–26).
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 26 (also Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete:
356) assumes that the woikeís had a right of possession (excluding land), since a divorced woikéa
could take “her own things” (τὰ ϝὰ αὐτᾶς) away with her; he can however not explain why a di-
vorced woikéa – unlike a free divorced woman – is not to have half the revenues from her own
property, and half “of whatever she has woven within.” He also fails to offer an explanation for
why the Great Code of Gortyn makes no provision for woikeús inheritance. David Lewis disagrees
with the conclusions drawn by Gagarin from the fact that a divorced woikéa could take “her own
things,” and interprets this provision instead as a reference to the fair division of property between
the respective slaveowners (Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 405).
 ICret IV 72 col. 5.25–28: {palmula} αἰ δὲ μὲ εἶεν ἐπιβάλλοντες τᾶς ϝοικίας, οἴτινές κ’ ἴοντι ὀ
κλᾶρος, τούτονς ἔκεν τὰ κρέματα. vac.
goods that are the kláros.”73 I do not propose to discuss here the various solutions
proposed by scholars as to the possible meanings of woikía and kláros in this con-
text, but rather to suggest another solution, which is that τᾶς ϝοικίας should be un-
derstood as an objective genitive, i.e., “if there are no claimants to the woikía, those
who are the kláros are to have the goods.” The objective genitive makes clear that
what is meant is not the entire property of the deceased (the house in the city, its
contents, livestock and more), but only the claim to the woikía, i.e. to the yields of
the kláros.74 In concrete terms, this means that the revenues generated by the woi-
keís reverted to and were divided among them upon the death of a citizen with no
family and no descendants. As the sole issue was “entitlement to the woikía,” this
regulation does not imply that the woikeís on the kláros are to be manumitted or
even gain the citizenship.75
 For the controversial question of whether τᾶς ϝοικίας refers to ἐπιβάλλοντες or to οἴτινες, and
what precisely κλᾶρος means in this context see Link, Das griechische Kreta: 76–77, Brixhe with
Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 88, 108–10, and Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 27 (cf. Ga-
garin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 375–76), according to whom the inheritance went to
the unfree persons who made up the kláros. Like Lipsius and Kohler/Ziebarth before him, Lotze,
Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 12–14, had assumed that during the early period the klároi of the
ancestral lineages had been divided into small family estates. In his intensive discussion of the the-
ses of K. M. Kolobowa, Detlef Lotze in 1962 reaffirmed his thesis that the ἐπιβάλλοντες τᾶς ϝοικίας
would have included relatives of every degree (not only paternal ones), see Lotze, “Zu den ϝοικέες
von Gortyn”: 35; for a similar view see Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 39. In the absence of “An-
spruchsberechtigten der woikía,” Lotze believed the inheritance (n.b. only the movable property)
would have gone to the kláros.
 This would also explain why the epibállontes are named 28 times in the Great Code of Gortyn,
but never with a qualifier such as τᾶς ϝοικίας (Lotze, “Zu den ϝοικέες von Gortyn”: 33; similarly,
Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 38). It is likely that the income from the woikía was usually shared
among the heirs; cf. where it says in col. 3.24–29: “And if he [the deceased] should leave her [his
wife] childless, she is to have her own property and half of whatever she has woven within and
obtain her portion of the produce that is in the house along with [her husband’s] lawful heirs (καὶ̣
[τ]õ καρπ[õ] τ̣õ ἔνδ[ο]θεν πεδὰ τõν ἐπιβαλλόντ[ον] μοῖραν λακὲν̣) [. . .]” (cf. the similar provision at
col. 7.35–40; 8.47–50). A woikía is again mentioned in the decree honoring Dionysios (ICret IV 64;
Nomima I 8). He was granted exemption from public burdens (atéleia) and rights equal to those of
a citizen, as well as a woikía in Aulon and a house site (oikópedon). Does that mean the honorand
was given a plot of land on which to build a house (stéga) and the right to the revenue of a woikía
produced by woikeís? The honors were awarded by “all of Gortyn and those residing (woikíontes) in
Aulon.” Cf. Brixhe with Bile, “La circulation des biens”: 88 (“on concède à Dionysios ‘un terrain à
bâtir à l’extérieur des terres’”); Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws of Ancient Crete: 330–32.
 Link, Landverteilung: 110–14; Link, Das griechische Kreta: 48, 76–79 assumes a right of inheri-
tance for the woikeís in this case, in consequence of which they would be considered as freedpeople
but not as citizens. Many scholars consider it implausible that the woikeís could have inherited the
house, land and livestock of their deceased master. They argue that this would necessarily require
manumission and possibly even citizenship, and is therefore unlikely (rejected on these grounds by
Koerner, Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte: 503, Maffi, Il diritto di famiglia: 59–61 and Lévy, “Libres et
non-libres”: 38). Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 27–29 (also Gagarin and Perlman, The Laws
If in the inheritance law of Gortyn an inheritance consisted of houses, their con-

tents, and livestock, while land was excluded, the social prestige of a citizen of Gor-
tyn rested primarily on the livestock, the flocks of próbata and herds of kartaípoda,76
that he owned, perhaps also on the furnishings of the “houses in the city.” The pro-
duce from the kláros made up a large part of his chrḗmata and went towards his con-
tribution to his common mess.77 An apétairos was presumably a person who had lost
his kláros, for whatever reason.
This model, which I have developed based on the Great Code of Gortyn, is consis-
tent with our literary evidence about forms of dependency in Cretan city states:78 Cal-
listratus distinguished between Crete’s “urban slaves” (οἰκέται κατὰ πόλιν), who
were called chrysṓnētoi (“bought for gold” or “money”), and “rural slaves” (κατ’
ἀγρόν) who were locals (ἐγχώριοι) and had been enslaved in war (δουλωθέντες κατὰ
πόλεμον), and who were called a(m)phamiṓtai. These were also called klarṓtai be-
cause they are “allotted.”79 The “urban slaves,” chrysṓnētoi, were chattel slaves; they
of Ancient Crete: 376), however, believes it is possible: if a woikeús could live in a house in the city
and own livestock, why should he not, absent an heir, acquire the property not just de facto, but
also de jure, and be a free man forthwith, if only an apétairos?
 Lotze, Μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων: 10 similarly does not believe that free citizens practiced
subsistence farming to any great degree. However, ICret IV 75 (Koerner, Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte:
no. 147) lists a number of articles – very probably those that are exempt from being seized – which
includes not only the loom, wool, iron implements and plough, but also the team of oxen (δυγὸν
βοõν).
 According to Dosiades, in Lyttos in Crete every man had to contribute one tenth of his crops
(karpoí) as well as the income from the city which the magistrates divided among the individual
households; while each slave had to pay one Aeginetan stater (Athen. 4.22, p. 143a–b): οἱ δὲ Λύττιοι
συνάγουσι μὲν τὰ κοινὰ συσσίτια οὕτως. ἕκαστος τῶν γινομένων καρπῶν ἀναφέρει τὴν δεκάτην εἰς
τὴν ἑταιρίαν καὶ τὰς τῆς πόλεως προσόδους, ἃς διανέμουσιν οἱ προεστηκότες τῆς πόλεως εἰς τοὺς
ἑκάστων οἴκους. τῶν δὲ δούλων ἕκαστος Αἰγιναῖον φέρει στατῆρα κατὰ κεφαλήν. διῄρηνται δ’ οἱ
πολῖται πάντες καθ’ ἑταιρίας, καλοῦσι δὲ ταύτας ἀνδρεῖα.
 For the literary sources on slavery in Crete see Lewis, Greek Slave Systems. 148–50. Strabo gives
the most important features of the Cretan constitution as described by Ephorus: The lawgiver, says
Ephorus, appears to have regarded liberty as a city state’s greatest good, because only liberty
makes property belong to its owner, while (the goods held) in slavery belong to the rulers, not the
ruled. Does this description contain an echo of the fact that the woikeís produced their goods for
the citizens of Gortyn while being unable to own any property themselves? And is it the lack of
their own land that Ephorus refers to when he goes on to say that those who have liberty must
guard it, and that harmony ensues when dissent has been removed, dissent which grows out of
greed and luxury? “[F]or when all citizens live a self-restrained and simple life there arises neither
envy nor arrogance nor hatred towards those who are like them.” (Strab. 10.4.16–480 C; Ephorus
FgrH 70 F149).
 Callistratus FgrH 348 F4 and Ephorus FgrH 70 F29 (Athen. 6.84 p. 263e–f): καλοῦσι δὲ οἱ Κρῆτες
τοὺς μὲν κατὰ πόλιν οἰκέτας χρυσωνήτους, ἀμφαμιώτας δὲ τοὺς κατ’ ἀγρὸν ἐγχωρίους μὲν ὄντας,
δουλωθέντας δὲ κατὰ πόλεμον· διὰ τὸ κληρωθῆναι δὲ κλαρώτας. ὁ Ἔφορος δ’ ἐν γʹ ἱστοριῶν· ‘κλαρ-
ώτας, φησί, Κρῆτες καλοῦσι τοὺς δούλους ἀπὸ τοῦ γενομένου περὶ αὐτῶν κλήρου. Amerias und
Hermon in Athen. 6.93, p. 267c (the same in the epitomes): Ἀμερίας δὲ ἑρκίτας φησὶ καλεῖσθαι τοὺς
could be bought in the agora and were mentioned as such in the Great Code of Gor-
tyn.80 According to Sosikrates and Dosiades, the Cretans used the term mnoía for
communal slavery (koinḗ douleía), while private (ídia [douleía]) slavery was called
aphamiṓtai and the subjects (hypḗkooi) períoikoi.81 Those who Callistratus terms
“slaves on the land” (οἰκέται κατ’ ἀγρόν), klarṓtai and a(m)phamiṓtai, are the equiv-
alents of the woikeís in the Great Code of Gortyn. They farmed the land for the Gorty-
nians and, because they lived “in the chṓra,” were called períoikoi by Aristotle,
literally “those who live around [the pólis].” This dependent rural population had to
pay tribute: to their masters, but also to the pólis. It was from these latter shares that
the sacrifices to the gods and contributions to the common messes were financed.82
κατὰ τοὺς ἀγροὺς οἰκέτας. Ἕρμων δὲ ἐν Κρητικαῖς Γλώτταις μνώτας τοὺς εὐγενεῖς οἰκέτας. – “Ame-
rias says that rural slaves are called herkítai, Hermon in the Cretan Glossary defines mnṓtai as indig-
enous [εὐγενεῖς should be emended to ἐγγενεῖς – ‘native’] slaves (oikétai).” Eustathius, Comm. ad
Il. 15.431 (p. 752) (see n. 13). For the synonymous use of hypḗkooi, klarṓtai, mnṓtai and aphamiṓtai
see Gehrke, “Gewalt und Gesetz”: 26.
 ICret IV 72 col. 7.10–15: vac. α[ἴ] κ’ ἐκς ἀγορᾶς πρ[ι]ά̣μενος δõλον μὲ περαιόσει τᾶν ϝεκσέκοντ’
ἀμερᾶν, αἴ τινά κα πρόθ’ ἀδικέκει ἒ ὔστερον, τõι πεπαμένοι ἔνδικον ἔμεν. vac. – “If someone has
bought a slave (dólos) from the market-place (agorá) and has not terminated [the purchase] within
sixty days, if [the slave] has done wrong to anyone before or after [the purchase], litigation is to be
conducted against the one who has acquired him.” This is very likely a reference to the slaves
“bought for gold,” as the addition “in the agora” shows (so also Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gor-
tyn”: 21–22: “The answer probably lies in the fact that the dolos in 7.10–15 is bought in the agora,
and that if a woikeus could be sold, he would not be sold in the agora. This would make sense if
doloi, some of whom would be new slaves captured in war or imported from abroad, were sold in
the agora, but woikeis, as indigenous inhabitants, were only sold directly from one master to an-
other, perhaps only as part of the land they lived on”). Cf. Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”:
25: “there is no doubt that doloi could be sold [. . .], but if woikeis were attached to the land, it may
not have been possible to sell them except with the land to which they belonged.” Some scholars
concluded on the basis of this provision that woikeís could be sold (Link, “‘Dolos’ und ‘Woikeus’”:
98–100; Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 395); Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 25–26 is less positive.
 Sosicrates FgrH 461 F4; Dosiades FgrH 458 F3 apud Athen. 6.84, p. 263f–264a: Σωσικράτης δ’ ἐν
δευτέρῳ Κρητικῶν ‘τὴν μὲν κοινήν, φησί, δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν, τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν
ἀφαμιώτας, τοὺς δὲ ὑπηκόους περιοίκους.’ τὰ παραπλήσια ἱστορεῖ καὶ Δωσιάδας ἐν δʹ Κρητικῶν.
 Aristot. pol. 2.10, 1272a 16–21: ἐν δὲ Κρήτῃ κοινοτέρως· ἀπὸ πάντων γὰρ τῶν γινομένων καρπῶν
τε καὶ βοσκημάτων δημοσίων, καὶ ἐκ τῶν φόρων οὓς φέρουσιν οἱ περίοικοι, τέτακται μέρος τὸ μὲν
πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς καὶ τὰς κοινὰς λειτουργίας, τὸ δὲ τοῖς συσσιτίοις, ὥστ’ ἐκ κοινοῦ τρέφεσθαι πάν-
τας, καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ παῖδας καὶ ἄνδρας. – “[B]ut in Crete the system is more communal, for out of
all the crops and cattle produced from the public lands, and the tributes paid by the períoikoi, one
part is assigned for the worship of the gods and the maintenance of the public services, and the
other for the public mess-tables, so that all the citizens are maintained from the common funds,
women and children as well as men [. . .].” The last point is in agreement with Ephorus FgrH 70
F149 (Strab. 10.4.20–483 C): τρέφονται δὲ δημοσίᾳ. This roughly corresponds to arrangements in
Lyttos, where citizens had to contribute one tenth of their crops and slaves one Aeginetan stater
each. A law whose text is extant in an inscription might refer to this; it lists (probably barley), figs
and must and refers to the karpodaístai who are entitled to take produce that has been stolen or not
distributed. Michael Gagarin and Paula Perlman have read this law as referring to the collection of
Even Aristotle’s and Strabo’s statements that these were “public slaves” and “public
revenues” are quite true.83
3 “Between Free and Slave”

The Onomasticon is a dictionary produced in the second century AD by the lexicog-
rapher Pollux. In it, he subsumed Lacedaemonian helots, Thessalian penéstai, Cre-
tan klarṓtai or mnoítai, the Mariandynian “bringers of gifts,” the gymnḗtes of Argos
and the korynephóroi at Sicyon under the heading “between free and slave.”84
David Lewis has empathically rejected Pollux, arguing that this late source does not
provide a sufficient basis on which to argue for a specific legal or social status “be-
tween free and slave” of these populations.85 Instead, he believes that all of these
groups were slaves who were allowed to live communally; he explains the ban on
manumission or sale outside the territory as due to specific circumstances: helots
far outnumbered Spartan citizens, so that the pólis of Sparta saw itself obliged to
make this concession, which did not however grant the helots any rights. The pur-
pose of conceding de facto marriages and families was, in his view, to increase the
helots’ motivation to work, but also to ensure slave reproduction in sufficient num-
bers, since Sparta imported virtually no foreign slaves.86
But it is a curious fact that not only Pollux in the second century AD, but also
earlier authors bracketed the helots of Sparta, the penéstai of Thessaly and the klarṓ-
tai in the cities of Crete as specific, unfree groups whom they differentiated from the
slaves in other cities. This is especially true for Aristotle, who lists helots, penéstai
and klarṓtai among the perioikoi, literally “those who live around” – which is exactly
what they were if they lived in the rural environs “around” the pólis of the citizens.87
produce either for communal meals or as a fixed share for public use (Gagarin and Perlman, The
Laws of Ancient Crete: no. G77).
 Ephorus (Strab 8.5.4–365 C) uses the term δημόσιοι δοῦλοι in referring to the helots of Sparta.
David Lewis (“Slave Marriage”: 394) rejects the term on the grounds that the sources for it are late
(Strabo and Pausanias).
 Poll. 3.83; see also Eustathius, Comm. ad Il. 3, p. 537 l. 15; 3, p. 752 l. 18–p. 753 l. 2.
 Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 165: they were “not serfs or some other mysterious status ‘between
free men and slaves’.”
 Lewis, “Slave Marriage”: 409–11; Lewis, Greek Slave Systems: 160. This would however still not
explain why legally protected marriage had to be conceded to the woikeís, instead of stable concu-
binate arrangements such as existed in Athenian slavery.
 For períoikoi in the Politics see Aristot. pol. 2.9, 1269b 3 (penéstai in Thessaly, helots in Sparta
and conditions in Crete); pol. 2.10, 1271b 30 and 1272a 18 (Crete); pol. 2.10, 1272b 18 (Cretan períoikoi
and helots); pol. 2.10, 1272a 1 (Cretan períoikoi in analogy with the Spartan helots); pol. 5.3, 1303a
6–8 (Argive períoikoi); pol. 7.6, 1327b 11 (the city of Heraclaea); pol. 7.9 and 10, 1329a 26 and 1330a
29 (in Aristotle’s ideal state, those working the land [οἱ γεωργοί] ought to be slaves or “barbarian
Chattel slaves became the property of citizens through purchase: they could be
beaten and whipped, inherited, lent and pledged, sold or manumitted. In Athens,
they worked in many different sectors including agriculture, trade and commerce,
mining and banking.88 They had many different (“barbaric”) origins and cultures
and spoke different languages. By contrast, the helots, penéstai, klarṓtai and Ma-
riandyni “lived around” the pólis territory with their families in the country, the
chora, that had originally been theirs; they shared an ethnic and cultural origin,
which made them “sons of the land” or “locals” (enchṓrioi); they worked the land
and had to give up a part of their harvest to their masters or to the pólis as euphe-
mistically titled “bringers of gifts.” But they were not the property of their masters,
they could not be manumitted or sold outside the territory, and probably only
“given up” inside it. Aristotle calls them perioikoi, “those who live around,” a term
used in some ancient city states for populations who were free but did not enjoy
citizen rights. He also points out that the Cretans had put themselves on an equal
footing with their slaves (doúloi) in all respects, forbidding them only gymnastic ex-
ercises and the possession of weapons.89 Aristotle agrees, then, that these popula-
tions enjoyed a significantly better position than chattel slaves. I believe that Pollux
classified them as “between free and slave” because that was how he found these
groups depicted in his sources. It was probably due to the increasing pervasiveness
of chattel slavery that Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries were familiar only
with the extremes of either liberty or slavery, so that they equated the woikeís of
Gortyn and the helots in Laconia and Messenia with slaves (dóloi).90
períoikoi” whose nature is similar [παραπλήσιοι] to that of slaves). Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at
Gortyn”: 14, n. 1 points to an inscription that reads περιϝοι[– –] in ICret IV 65 l. 10, but admits that
several other reconstructions are possible. Cf. Ronald F. Willetts, “The Servile Interregnum at
Argos,” Hermes 87 (1959): 495–506, here 496: Aristotle “normally in the Politics uses περίοικοι to
mean serfs and not perioikoi.”
 For the components of the right of ownership and the legal definition of slavery see Lewis,
Greek Slave Systems: 25–55.
 Aristot. pol. 2.5, 1264a 20–22: ἐὰν μή τι σοφίζωνται τοιοῦτον οἷον Κρῆτες; ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ τἆλλα
ταὐτὰ τοῖς δούλοις ἐφέντες μόνον ἀπειρήκασι τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ τὴν τῶν ὅπλων κτῆσιν. See also pol.
7,10, 1329b 1–3.
 Gagarin, “Slaves and Serfs at Gortyn”: 23: “At Gortyn it is likely that all woikeis were doloi, or
could be classified as doloi for legal purposes, but not all doloi were woikeis.” He concludes (31)
that the woikeís “had a higher status and greater degree of independence than doloi, who were
probably chattel slaves introduced to Gortyn later (perhaps in the sixth century). Despites these dif-
ferences in origin, the two groups came to be treated the same for legal purposes, and woikeis ap-
pear to have been gradually assimilated to the status of doloi”; so also Gagarin and Perlman, The
Laws of Ancient Crete: 357. Gehrke, “Gewalt und Gesetz”: 27, aptly summarizes that “sie standen
zwar auf der Skala μεταξὺ ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων letzteren sehr nahe, waren aber keine reinen
Sklaven.” Lévy, “Libres et non-libres”: 40, believes that the emergence of chattel slavery reduced
the status of the woikeís.
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Martin Schermaier
Familia and Dependency in Roman Law Texts
1 Changing Concepts and Unchanging Terms?
Some terms for institutionalized forms of dependency originally developed in Roman
law still dominate today’s terminology. When we read servus, we think of a slave;
when we read dominus, we think of a slave’s owner; and when we read libertas we
think of freedom. Such terms determine our perceptions when talking about depen-
dency. But in using these terms, do we really mean the same things?
Words are indispensable for conceptualizing social phenomena. We can conceptu-
alize only what we can express in language. If we agree that a specific word depicts a
complex of meaning, we should be sure that the relationship between word and mean-
ing is stable. Otherwise, communication is impossible, or at least rather difficult. This is
even more true with legal terms. Most legal terms are abbreviations of complex social
phenomena. If we are not able to rely on their specific meaning, we are forced to nego-
tiate our assessment of such phenomena in each individual case. This is time-consum-
ing and creates uncertainty. Therefore, we should expect legal terms not to change
much over time. Of course, we do not use Latin anymore. But the English translations
of the terms that denote dependency seem to be undisputed and as stable as their Latin
counterparts. The constant use of the terms suggests their continuous meaning.
Such convictions are challenged by the fact that terminological borrowings like
the word “family” had a different meaning in Latin. Familia in Roman law texts might
also denote the slaves or freedmen in the household.1 Someone who is not aware of
that terminological difference might easily misconceive the relevant texts. On the
other hand, the term familia also tells us something about Roman conditions of slav-
ery. It does not describe an anonymous group of people oppressed by its owner but
had, even in Roman times, a somewhat personal touch. Familia, that is something
like “my people,” those living with me. This example offers two insights: Meanings
can be more ephemeral than we would suppose. However, a shift in meaning might
indicate a shift in the associated social phenomena. “Slaves as part of the family” is a
concept that challenges our modern perception of slavery. Is there, maybe, a differ-
ence between Roman slavery and that which we usually conceive of as “slavery”?
Such interrelations are familiar to all historians: Words we use today might
have had a different meaning in past centuries. Terminological continuity is an illu-
sion. Synonymous terms might conceal differences in concept. This makes it difficult
 An overview on the different meanings of familia in classical Latin is provided by Richard Paul Sal-
ler, “Familia, Domus, and the Roman Conception of the Family,” Phoenix 38 (1984): 336–55, here 4.
More detailed Rudolf Leonhard, “familia,” in Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft,
vol. 6/2, ed. August Friedrich Pauly and Georg Wissowa (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1909): 1980–84.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-005
128 Martin Schermaier
to understand past worlds. To provide an insight into the legal terminology of depen-
dency in Ancient Rome, I would like to concentrate on the term familia and explain
its legal and colloquial meaning. We have to bear in mind that Roman law did not
create terms of dependency as artificial constructs. It simply employed those which
were already in use in everyday language. Over time, though, judicial practice and
the activities of jurists, the iurisprudentes, infused these terms with particular mean-
ings. In some cases, these were further determined by set definitions. Thus, these
words became terms with clear connotations and clear limits in legal discourse. But
not every word we trace in the legal sources was a legal term. The history of words is
etymology, while the history of terms reflects social practices. And the history of law
is not a history of words but of terms with specific meanings.
2 A Classical Text on familia: D. 50.16.195

(Ulpian 46 AD edictum)
As we are told by Domitius Ulpianus, a jurist who lived around 200 AC, familia has
a threefold meaning:
D. 50.16.195.1 (Ulpian 46 AD edictum): D. 50.16.195.1 (Ulpian, Edict, book 46): Let

“Familiae” appellatio qualiter accipiatur, us consider how the designation of
videamus. et quidem varie accepta est: “household” is understood. And indeed it
nam et in res et in personas deducitur. in is understood in various ways; for it re-
res, ut puta in lege duodecim tabularum lates both to things and to persons: to
his verbis “adgnatus proximus familiam things, as, for instance, in the Law of the
habeto”. ad personas autem refertur fami- Twelve Tables in the words “let the nearest
liae significatio ita, cum de patrono et lib- agnate have the household.” The designa-
erto loquitur lex: “ex ea familia”, inquit, tion of household, however, refers to per-
“in eam familiam”: et hic de singularibus sons when the law speaks of patron and
personis legem loqui constat. freedman: “from that household” or “to
that household”; and here it is agreed that
the law is talking of individual persons.2
 All English translations of texts from the Digests are taken from Alan Watson, The Digest of
Justinian, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); this specific translation is
on page 949.
(4) Item appellatur familia plurium per- (4) Likewise, the name of household is
sonarum, quae ab eiusdem ultimi genito- also used for several people who descend
ris sanguine proficiscuntur (sicuti dicimus by blood from the same original founder,
familiam Iuliam), quasi a fonte quodam as we talk of the Julian household, going
memoriae. back as it were to the origin of records.
(Watson, vol. IV, 950)
Familia can mean the whole “property” of a pater familias, but also only the group
of slaves he holds. Furthermore, it can depict all free persons within a family –
more or less the same meaning which the word “family” has today. But if we look
to all available law texts, we find that only the first two meanings were condensed
into a specific legal concept. In those instances, we can say that familia was not
only a word, but a legal term. This is attested by various institutions which we re-
peatedly encounter in laws, legal literature, or court decisions, such as the familiae
emptor (property) or the familia publicanorum (slaves owned by publicani).3
Already Ulpian was aware of the different meanings, and he tried to separate
them by pointing to their specific applications. Some of these descriptions are set
definitions. For Ulpian and other jurists, this was neither a question of practicability
nor of aesthetics. Defining or at least describing legal terms is a prerequisite of legal
science, or of ars iuris, as Cicero4 would have called it.5 Justinian’s compilers
 Cfr. D. 50.16.195.3 (Ulp. 46 AD ed.).

 Cicero in his de oratore (1.190) announced his intention to write a book on ius civile in artem re-
digere, how knowledge and practice of civil law can be transformed to scholarship. Gellius (1.22.7)
reports about such a book written by Cicero. This book is lost. On this topic Emilio Costa, Cicerone
giureconsulto (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli Editore, 1927); Ulrich von Lübtow, “Cicero und die Meth-
ode der römischen Jurisprudenz,” in Festschrift L. Wenger, vol. 1, ed. Paul Koschaker (Munich:
Beck, 1944): 224–35.; Fritz Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946):
69; Aldo Schiavone, Nascita della giurisprudenza: cultura aristocratica e pensiero giuridico nella
Roma tardorepubblicana (Bari: Laterza, 1976): 101; Ferdinando Bona, “L’ideale retorico ciceroniano
ed il ‘ius civile in artem redigere’,” Studia et Documenta Historiae Iuris 46 (1980): 282–382; Franz
Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1989): 628–29.
 In Cic. de orat. 1.188 he writes: Sit ergo in iure civili finis hic: legitimae atque usitatae in rebus
causisque civium aequabilitatis conservatio. [189] Tum sunt notanda genera et ad certum numerum
paucitatemque revocanda. Genus autem id est, quod sui similis communione quadam, specie autem
differentis, duas aut pluris complectitur partis; partes autem sunt, quae generibus eis, ex quibus man-
ant, subiciuntur; omniaque, quae sunt vel generum vel partium nomina, definitionibus, quam vim ha-
beant, est exprimendum; est enim definitio rerum earum, quae sunt eius rei propriae, quam definire
volumus, brevis et circumscripta quaedam explicatio. (“Let the goal then of the common law be de-
fined as the preservation, in the concerns and disputes of citizens, of an impartiality founded on
statute and custom. We must next designate the general classes of cases, restricting these to a
small fixed number. Now a general class is that which embraces two or more species, resembling
one another in some common property while differing in some peculiarity. And species are subdivi-
sions, ranged under those general classes from which they spring; while all names, whether of gen-
eral classes or species, must be so defined as to show the significance of each. A definition of
inserted the text into the Digest, in title 50.16, dedicated to de verborum significa-
tione, the signification of words. The method applied by Ulpian originates in Pla-
tonic dialectics.6 It divides meanings by marking their differences (diairésis). In
identifying legal terms of dependency, we can even use the help of Roman jurists.
They themselves already reflected on the terms they were using in normative
contexts.
Having identified words as legal terms, we are able to investigate their fate,
their history. When did they emerge as terms? Which social practice or which legal
normativity do they represent? Did the terms change their meanings, or not? Inter-
estingly, many terms of dependency underwent a significant change during the
mid-Republican expansion of Roman territory. This expansion glutted the Roman
slave market and diminished the value of slaves and – as a further consequence –
their legal status. But at the same time, the legal terms preserved older social or-
ders, like the proverbial fly in amber.
3 Familia Pecuniaque: From Ulpian to the

Twelve Tables
Ulpian first refers to the XII tables in D. 50.16.195, in order to explain the meaning
of familia. Despite the quotation from the old law, Ulpian’s text has no historical
ambitions. He looks at the XII tables as an authority for the contemporary use of
familia as a legal term. His aim is to show that the ambiguity of familia is not a re-
sult of imprecise usage, but goes back to the very foundations of Roman law. Al-
ready the XII tables, he says, applied familia to things and to persons alike. In order
to uncover the original meaning, his text requires a duplex interpretatio: We have to
distinguish Ulpian’s own comprehension of familia from that of the Twelve Tables,
which were composed almost 650 years earlier.
Unfortunately, it is rather unclear what the original wording in the XII tables
really was. The categorical division between things (res) and persons (personae)
does not go back to the times of the Twelve Tables, even though it appears to be
self-evident. But the extant text is of classical origin only. Gaius in his institutiones
may have been the first jurist who used the concept of things (understood as objects
of rights) and persons (understood as entitled subjects) to establish opposite legal
course I may describe as a concise and accurate statement of the attributes belonging to the thing
we would define,” trans. Edward William Sutton, Cicero De Oratore, in Two Volumes, vol. 1, The
Loeb Classical Library (London: Harvard University Press, 1948): 131, 133).
 On this subject see Fritz Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946):
62–69.
categories.7 The texts of the Twelve Tables referred to by Ulpian do not even give a
hint of that distinction. The short rule adgnatus proximus familiam habeto to which
Ulpian refers first was part of XII Tab. 5.4. It stated that if a pater familias died with-
out having made a will and without leaving any heirs of his own, the inheritance
should go to the adgnatus proximus.8 Adgnati (agnates) are those who had the same
pater familias as the deceased. The other texts cited by Ulpian, which should refer
to liberti (freedmen) by calling them familia,9 cannot be assigned to a specific con-
text. In XII Tab. 5.4 we would translate familia as “estate,” thus describing goods
and persons alike. There is no reason to doubt that Ulpian in his 46th book ad edic-
tum (D. 50.16.195.1) quoted correctly. But it is interesting that he relates familia in
XII Tab. 5.4 to things only.
The original text of the XII tables is unknown to us. We only have some frag-
ments which have been handed down by other authors. They help to explain the
context of Ulpian’s citation in D. 50.16.195.1 and to disclose their different interpre-
tation in the history of Roman law. We start with XII Tab. 5.4–5, which is referred to
by Ulpian (twice), as well as by Cicero:
Cic. inv. 2.148: [. . .] SI PATERFAMILIAS IN- Cic. inv. 2.148: [. . .] If a head of a house-
TESTATE MORITUR, FAMILIA PECUNIAQUE EIUS hold dies intestate, his household and
AGNATUM GENTILIUMQUE ESTO. property shall go to the agnates and
gentiles.10
Coll. 16.4.1 (= Ulp. reg.): Id enim cautum Coll. 16.4.1 (= Ulp. reg.): For thus is it laid
est lege duodecim tabularum hac: SI IN- down in the following law of the Twelve
TESTATUS MORITUR, CUI SUUS HERES NEC ESCIT, Tables: “If one dies intestate and has left
AGNATUS PROXIMUS FAMILIAM HABETO. 2. Si no self-successor, let the nearest agnate
agnatus defuncti non sit, eadem lex duo- have his estate.” 2. If the deceased has no
decim tabularum gentiles ad hereditatem agnate, the same law of the Twelve Ta-
vocat his verbis: SI AGNATUS NEC ESCIT, GEN- bles calls Gentiles of the deceased to the
TILES FAMILIAM HABENTO. succession in the following terms: “If
there is no agnate, let the Gentiles have
the estate.”11
 Cf. Gai. inst. 1.8: Omne autem ius, quo utimur, vel ad personas pertinet vel ad res vel ad actiones.
(“The whole of the law observed by us relates either to persons or to things or to actions,” trans.
Francis de Zulueta, The Institutes of Gaius, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946): vol. 1, 5).
 XII Tab. 5.4 (= Coll. 16.4.1): Si intestatus moritur, cui suus heres nec escit, agnatus proximus fami-
liam habeto. (“If he dies without a testament and has no own heirs, the next agnate should have
the familia”). Slightly different is Cic. inv. 1.248.
 In D. 50.16.195.1: ex ea familia and in eam familiam.
 Harry Mortimer Hubbel, Cicero De Inventione, The Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann
London; Harvard University Press, 1949): 317.
 Moses Hyamson, Mosaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio (London: Oxford University Press,
1913): 145–47.
Ulp. 46 AD ed. (D. 50.16.195.1): [. . .] in D. 50.16.195.1 (Ulpian, Edict, book 46):

res, ut puta in lege duodecim tabularum [. . .] to things, as, for instance, in the
his verbis ADGNATUS PROXIMUS FAMILIAM Law of the Twelve Tables in the words
HABETO. “let the nearest agnate have the
household.” (Watson, vol. IV, 949)
It is again Ulpian in his book regularum (“on rules”), conserved in the Collatio
legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum,12 who handed down to us the most probable
wording. Here, too, familia designates the estate as a whole: If there is neither a
will nor an heir apparent, the nearest agnate receives the inheritance; if there is no
agnate, it goes to the gens. Cicero’s account of the same passage distinguishes be-
tween familia and pecunia. This is striking, because elsewhere Cicero tells us that in
his boyhood, he still had to learn the Twelve Tables by heart.13 But in this instance,
his excerpt from the XII tables is a summary rather than a quote. This is made clear
by the fact that he does not rank agnates and gens. The dualism of familia and pecu-
nia indicates a distinction between persons who belonged to the deceased and his
other assets. Pecunia originally meant livestock and later money, and in Cicero’s
time may already have signified tangible assets in general.14 That is a preliminary
stage of what Ulpian in D. 50.16.195.1 calls the division between res (things) and
personae. But there is a big difference: Whereas Ulpian interprets familia in that in-
stance (XII Tab. 5.4) as an entity of things, Cicero seems to make a difference be-
tween property in humans (familia) and in things (pecunia). But maybe the relation
between familia and pecunia is even more complicated.15
A similar difference might have been alluded to by another provision of the
Twelve Tables, XII Tab. 5.3:
 On this late antique collection of biblical and Roman law texts see for example Detlef Liebs, Die
Jurisprudenz im spätantiken Italien (260–640 n.Chr.) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1987): 162–74;
Giorgio Barone-Adesi, L’età della Lex Dei (Napoli: Jovene Editore, 1992); Robert M. Frakes: Compil-
ing the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
 Cic. leg. 2.59.
 In later times this is undisputed, cf. D. 50.16.178 pr. (Ulp. 49 AD Sab.): ‘Pecuniae’ verbum non
solum numeratam pecuniam complectitur, verum omnem omnino pecuniam, hoc est omnia corpora:
nam corpora quoque pecuniae appellatione contineri nemo est qui ambiget (“The designation ‘money’
does not only include coinage but absolutely every kind of money, that is, every substance; for there
is no one who doubts that substances are also included in the designation of money”; trans. Watson,
The Digest of Justinian, vol. 4, 948). Similarly D. 50.16.97 (Celsus 32 dig.); D. 50.16.222 (Hermog. 2 iur.
epit.); D. 35.2.1 pr. (Paul. sing. ad leg. Falc.); cf. e.g. Leonhard, “familia”: 1980–81.
 See below, at 4.1.
Cic. inv. 2.148: [. . .] PATERFAMILIAS UTI Cic. inv. 2.148: [. . .] In whatever way a
SUPER FAMILIA PECUNIAQUE SUA LEGASSIT, head of a household has made a will con-
ITA IUS ESTO. cerning his household and property, so
let it be.16
Ulp. reg. 11.14: Testamento quoque Ulp. reg. 11.14: That the elected tutors
nominatim tutores dati confirmantur can be confirmed by name in the testa-
eadem lege duodecim tabularum, his ver- ment is provided by the Twelve Tables in
bis: UTI LEGASSIT SUPER PECUNIA TUTELAVE this words: “As he disposed over estates
SUAE REI, ITA IUS ESTO: qui tutores dativi and tutelages of his own, so let the law
appellantur. be.” They are therefore called given
tutors.
Gai. inst. 2.224: [. . .] idque lex XII tabu- Gai. inst. 2.224: [. . .] That was thought to
larum permittere videbatur, qua cavetur, be permitted by the Twelve Tables,
ut, quod quisque de re sua testatus which provide that whatever will a man
esset, id ratum habetur, his verbis: UTI has made of his estate, it should be rati-
LEGASSIT SUAE REI, ITA IUS ESTO. fied, by its words: “As a man bequeaths
his own, so let the law be.”17
All three texts,18 reconstructed as XII Tab. 5.3,19 obviously refer to the same original, but
they are different. Only one quote can be right, or at least closer to the original wording.
Most authors20 prefer the text of Ulpians’ liber singularis regularum (Ulp. reg.),21 a text
 Harry Mortimer Hubbel, trans., Cicero De Inventione, The Loeb Classical Library (London: Hei-
nemann London; Harvard University Press, 1949): 317.
 William M. Gordon and Olivia F. Robinson, The Institutes Of Gaius (London: Duckworth, 1988): 235.
 These three texts represent the most precise quotations, but there are numerous other texts that
quote XII Tab. 5.3. A conclusive enumeration of the sources is provided by Daniela di Ottavio, Uti
legassit . . . ita ius esto. Alle radici della successione testamentaria in diritto romano (Naples: Jovene
editore, 2016): 4–5.
 See Salvatore Riccobono et al., eds., Fontes iuris romani antejustiniani in usum scholarum, part
1: leges (Florence: Barbèra, 1968): 37–38.
 An overview is given by Maria Floriana Cursi, “La mancipatio e la mancipatio familiae,” in XI
Tabulae. Testo e commento, vol. 1, ed. Maria Floriani Cursi (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane,
2018): 357–58; see also di Ottavio, Uti legassit: 60, who is not sure if the original text had suae rei or
familia. Pasquale Voci, Diritto ereditario romano, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Milano: Giuffrè, 1967): 4 insisted
on suae rei.
 Cf. Martin Avenarius, Der pseudo-ulpianische liber singularis regularum. Entstehung, Eigenart
und Überlieferung einer hochklassischen Juristenschrift (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005) and Martin Ave-
narius, ed. and trans., Die pseudo-Ulpianische Einzelschrift über die Rechtsregeln (liber singularis
regularum) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005).
handed down to us by an early medieval22 manuscript.23 Cicero’s version, as we have

already seen, is a summary of what the Twelve Tables said. According to Ulpian, the XII
tables did not mention familia but referred to pecunia and tutela. Ulpian interprets tu-
tela as pointing to the fact that the testator appoints a tutor, a legal guardian, for his
wife and children. But the genitive suae rei sounds odd. Literally translated, it would be
“guardianship over things.” Maybe the Twelve Tables had suae rei only and did not
mention either pecunia, tutela or familia. In that case, we should prefer the version in
Gai. inst. 2.224 or D. 50.15.120 (Pomp. 5 ad Quintum Mucium). As we know from other
fragments, the Twelve Tables used the term res on several occasions.24 But in most of
these cases, res signifies the object of a trial – not the wealth of a testator. On the other
hand, as di Ottavio argues, with only the phrase suae rei, the meter of the provision
would be irregular.25
Older scholars agreed26 that the expression pecunia tutelave suae rei is a bracket
term, similar to a chiasmus: In the technical sense, legare suae rei means “disposing
of one’s possessions”: cattle (or money?) and the legal guardianship are added right
in the middle of this construction in order to clarify that they are part of the overall
res sua. Behrends argued differently. According to him, tutela means the “Verwal-
tungszuständigkeit” (competence to administrate) of the pater familias in general.27
But even in that case, the occurrence of res is strange. We would expect familia only,
because this is the central term in the following provision (XII Tab. 5.4). Beyond that,
it is the mancipatio familiae which enacted the oldest form of a will (the testamentum
per aes et libram28).
 Vat. reg. lat. 1128. On that manuscript see, for example, Wolfgang Kaiser, “Review: Der pseudo-
ulpianische liber singularis regularum. Entstehung, Eigenart und Überlieferung einer hochklassi-
schen Juristenschrift, by Martin Avenarius,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte Ro-
manistische Abteilung 127 (2010): 560–607.
 The manuscript is accessible on https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1128 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Cf. di Ottavio, Uti legassit: 66–72.
 Di Ottavio, Uti legassit: 79–86. We must bear in mind that the XII tables are described as car-
men, a song (Cic. leg. 2.59). For a discussion see, for example, Marie Theres Fögen, Das Lied vom
Gesetz (Munich: Carl-Friedrich-von-Siemens-Stiftung, 2007).
 Cf. already Friedrich Adolph Schilling, Bemerkungen über römische Rechtsgeschichte: Eine Kritik
über Hugo’s Lehrbuch der Geschichte des Römischen Rechts bis auf Justinian (Leipzig: Johann Am-
brosius Barth Verlag, 1829): 97–98; Christian Friedrich von Glück, Ausführliche Erläuterung der Pan-
decten nach Hellfeld, ein Commentar, vol. 34, part 1 (Erlangen: Palm, 1830): 100, n. 17.
 Okko Behrends, “Das Vindikationsmodell als ‘grundrechtliches’ System der ältesten römischen
Siedlungsorganisation. Zugleich ein Beitrag zu den ältesten Grundlagen des römischen Personen-,
Sachen- und Obligationenrechts,” in Libertas. Grundrechtliche und rechtsstaatliche Gewährungen in
Antike und Gegenwart. Symposion aus Anlaß des 80. Geburtstages von Franz Wieacker, ed. Okko
Behrends and Malte Disselhorst (Ebelsbach: Verlag Rolf Greimer, 1991): 1–59, 42.
 On that Eduard Hölder, “Das testamentum per aes et libram,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte Romanistische Abteilung 1 (1880): 67–87.; Francesca Terranova, Ricerche sul testa-
mentum per aes et libram, vol. 1 (Turin: Giappichelli, 2011); a shorter presentation (in English) is
This is what Crawford might have had in mind when he reconstructed the pro-
vision as, uti legassit super familia pecuniave tutelave sua, ita ius esto.29 This recon-
struction sounds logical, because slaves and freedmen formed neither part of the
pecunia nor did they come under tutela. As we already mentioned, only wife and
children were in need of a tutor if the pater familias died. Cicero’s version (pecunia/
familia) excludes testamentary provisions for wife and children, unless we accept
that they were implied in the term familia. Anyway, Cicero himself seems to have
made such a division, thus including free and unfree members of the household in
the term familia. What the original wording of XII Tab. 5.3 really was will probably
remain a mystery.
4 A Change in Meaning: From the Twelve Tables

to Ulpian
The different reports on the wording of the Twelve Tables suggest that familia un-
derwent a terminological change from the early (XII Tables) to the late Republic
(Cicero) and, finally, to the late Empire (Ulpian).30 If we trust the text referred to by
Ulpian (Coll. 16.4.1 and reg. 14.11), the Twelve Tables registered persons and goods
in the household as familia, whereas Cicero classed slaves and freedmen as familia
and goods as pecunia. Most significant is XII Tab. 5.4–5 (Coll. 16.4.1): A deceased
without legal heirs has no children and no wife in his power. Thus, there was no
need to arrange for tutors but only for slaves, freedmen and goods. The Twelve Ta-
bles comprised all that under familia. Cicero distinguished between persons (fami-
lia) and goods (pecunia). Conversely, Ulpian states explicitly that familia in that
context only means goods.31 At first glance, that seems to come close to what the
Twelve Tables meant, but Cicero’s wording suggests a shift: Other than the Twelve
Tables, Cicero separates persons and goods into two different categories, and Ul-
pian’s interpretation builds on that. According to his view, the familia in XII Tab.
5.4–5 denotes res (things) only and thus, the slaves and freedmen which are part of
provided by Alan Watson, The Law of Succession in the Later Roman Republic (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971): 11.
 Michael Hewson Crawford, ed., Roman Statutes, vol. 2 (London: Institute of Classical Studies,
University of London, 1996): 637–38.
 This has already be outlined by Mayer-Maly, Theo. “familia,” in: Drei Vorträge zum Privatrecht,
ed. Franz Bydlinski, Theo Mayer-Maly, Fritz Sturm (Graz: Leykam, 2001): 25–29.
 D. 50.16.195.1: [. . .] et quidem varie accepta est: nam et in res et in personas deducitur. in res, ut
puta in lege duodecim tabularum his verbis ‘adgnatus proximus familiam habeto’ (“And indeed it is
understood in various ways; for it relates both to things and to persons: to things, as, for instance,
in the Law of the Twelve Tables in the words ‘let the nearest agnate have the household’”; tansl.
Watson, The Digest of Justinian, vol. 4: 949).
the inheritance are not personae but res. As said before, the Twelve Tables did not
distinguish between persons and goods. They focus on the power of the pater fami-
lias and not on what is subjected to this power.
4.1 Persons and Things under the Control of the Pater Familias
This meaning of familia is underpinned by some old figures or regulations which

similarly go back to the Twelve Tables, or at least to the time of the early Republic.
It is the term of pater familias itself, which – as Ulpian explains correctly – refers to
the power in the household (domus) and does not presuppose a biological “father”:
D. 50.16.195.2 (Ulp. 46 AD edictum): [. . .] D. 50.16.195.2 (Ulpian, Edict, book 46):

pater autem familias appellatur, qui in [. . .] Someone is called the head of a
domo dominium habet, recteque hoc household if he holds sway in a house,
7ominee appellatur, quamvis filium non and he is rightly called by this name
habeat: non enim solam personam eius, even if he does not have a son; for we
sed et ius demonstramus: do not only mean his person but also
his legal status. (Watson, vol. IV, 950)
Non personam sed ius demonstramus, we specify not a person, but a right when we
speak of a pater familias. It is his prerogative, his ius, to be the only person in a
household with property rights over people and things. To have dominium in domo
(“ownership on the house”) is Ulpian’s contemporary interpretation. At his time,
jurists distinguished ownership (dominium) of things including slaves from potestas
over children and manus over a wife. In order to make clear that the existence of a
wife and children are not a precondition for being pater familias, Ulpian concen-
trates on the “house” owned by him. But the original meaning was that the pater
familias owns everything in his household, things as well as persons, regardless of
their status.
This original meaning of familia is present even in the actio familiae erciscun-
dae, an action that every heir could employ in order to divide up the community of
heirs.32 This action did not aim at separating heirs but at ascribing a certain part of
the heritage to each. So familia denoted the heritage, not the group of heirs. The
same connotation is present in the familiae emptor, a fiduciary to whom the pater
familias transferred his assets in a formal way and instructed him to distribute them
 For this subject see, for example, Hein L.W. Nelson, “Zur Terminologie der römischen Erb-
schaftsteilung. Ercto non cito, familia erciscunda,” Glotta 44 (1966): 41–60; Geoffrey MacCormack,
“The actio communi dividundo in Roman and Scots law,” in The Roman Law Tradition, ed. Andrew
D.E. Lewis and David J. Ibbetson (Cambridge: University Press, 1994): 159–81.
to the nominated heirs after the pater familias’ death.33 Interestingly, the formula
which established such a trust, according to the testimony of Gaius, mentions fami-
lia and pecunia side by side:
Gai. inst. 2.104: [. . .] FAMILIAM PECUNIAM- Gai. inst. 2.104: [. . .] “I declare that
QUE TUAM ENDO MANDATELA TUA CUSTODELA- your family and property are in my ad-
QUE MEA ESSE AIO, EAQUE QUO TU IURE ministration and custody; let them be
TESTAMENTUM FACERE POSSIS SECUNDUM bought to me with this bronze and (as
LEGEM PUBLICAM, HOC AERE – et ut quidam some add) the bronze scales, so that
adiciunt – AENEAQUE LIBRA, ESTO MIHI you can lawfully make a will according
EMPTA. [.
. .] to the public statute.”34
The archaic style indicates an early period of Roman law, maybe contemporary
with the Twelve Tables or slightly later. The terms familia and pecunia seem to al-
lude to the classical contrast pair of persons v. things, but it is most likely that they
have another meaning. Scholars have suggested three explanations: Most believe
that the terms are used synonymously;35 some think that familia means the house-
hold as an entity, pecunia the single things in it.36 Others, especially in older litera-
ture, believe that familia means res mancipi only, that is slaves, cattle, Italian land,
and some easements on land, with pecunia referring to all other things.37 This
would have enormous consequences for the interpretation of the provisions of the
Twelve Tables on testaments. XII Tab. 5.3, which – according to Ulp. reg. 11.14 –
allows the writing of a will on pecunia and tutela only38 would leave the more im-
portant things (the res mancipi) to the legal heirs.
Our focal point is different: The use of familia in the formula of the emptio fam-
iliae by the executer of the will indicates that familia comprises persons and things
alike. Familia at that early stage is a collective term for the objects under the control
of the pater familias. In later times, the technical term for such objects is res. This is
 By way of the testamentum per aes et libram, cf. Hölder, “Das testamentum per aes et libram”;
Terranova, Ricerche sul testamentum per aes et libram.
 William M. Gordon and Olivia F. Robinson, The Institutes of Gaius (London: Duckworth, 1988):
171, 173.
 Cf. Max Kaser, Das Römische Privatrecht, Erster Abschnitt: Das altrömische, das vorklassische
und klassische Recht, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1971): 97 (with older literature).
 So, for example, Joseph Bonnet, Des mots familia et pecunia dans la loi des Douze Tables (Paris:
L. Larose et Forcel, 1900): 43–54, esp. 51.
 Rudolf von Jhering, Entwicklungsgeschichte des römischen Rechts (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1894): 81–91; Otto Karlowa, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Veit, 1901): 76. A somewhat
similar interpretation is given by János Zlinszky, “Familia pecuniaque,” Index 16 (1988): 31–42: The
pair of terms combined reflects the agricultural origins of Rome: Familia represents the persons
and goods involved in farming, pecunia the wealth of nomadic herders.
 On this subject see Riccobono et al., Fontes iuris romani: 37–38.
what Gaius tells us in his institutes when distinguishing between corporeal and in-
corporeal things or human and divine things.39 And Pomponius, a contemporary of
Gaius, replaces familia by res in his record on XII Tab. 5.3:
D. 50.16.120 (Pomp. 5 AD Quintum Mu- D. 50.16.120 (Pomponius, Quintus Musi-

cium): Verbis legis duodecim tabularum cus, book 5): In these words of the Law of
his “uti legassit suae rei, ita ius esto” latis- the Twelve Tables, “uti legassit suae rei,
sima potestas tributa videtur et heredis in- ita jus esto,” the widest possible power
stituendi et legata et libertates dandi, seems to be conferred of naming an heir
tutelas quoque constituendi. sed id inter- and granting legacies and establishing
pretatione coangustatum est vel legum vel tutelages; but this has been narrowed by
auctoritate iura constituentium interpretation or the authority of laws or
those who establish law. (Watson, vol.
IV, 943)
By that it becomes clear why Ulpian understood familia in XII Tab. 5.440 as res, even
though he was convinced that it should include slaves and freedmen. The division
between things and persons, unknown to the Twelve Tables, led the classical jurists
to understand familia as “things” (res) when it referred to the inheritance. I stress
this point because in other contexts some jurists insist that slaves are persons.41
4.2 Familia as Collective Name for Slaves
All these observations allow us to reconstruct different meanings of familia over the
course of time: In the old provisions which originated in the early Republic, familia
designated the household, all people living and all things existing under the power
of a pater familias. It therefore comprised free people as well as slaves and freed-
men. Later, this power of the pater familias was differentiated into manus (over a
wife) and potestas (over children and freedmen) on the one hand, and dominium on
the other. We have to bear in mind that even dominium originally had a wider con-
notation, comprising the domus and all its persons and things.42 But in legal texts
from the late Republic and the Empire, dominium is reserved for objects of property.
This implicates a clear distinction between free persons on the one hand, and slaves
and things on the other. This changed the meaning of familia as well: Already Plautus
 Gai. inst. 2.1–14 = D. 1.8.1 (Gai. 2 inst.).

 D. 50.16.195.1, as he cites: adgnatus proximus familiam habeto.
 Gai. inst. 1.9 (= D. 1.5.3): Et quidem summa divisio de iure personarum haec est, quod omnes hom-
ines aut liberi sunt aut servi (“And the most important division in the law of persons is that there all
people are either free or slaves.”).
 Saller, “‘Familia, Domus’”: 342–49.
used the word to refer to the slaves in a household,43 and this signification became
most frequent in legal texts. An infamous example is the senatus consultum Silania-
num, according to which the familia44 of a dominus who had been killed at home
could be tortured to death in order to find out who murdered him.45
But even in other and less sanguinary contexts we encounter familia as a legal
term for a group of slaves, for example in the familia publicanorum or, later on, in the
familia Caesaris. The familia publicanorum are the slaves and wage workers46 of a
group of contractors who had taken on a public task (and were therefore called publi-
cani), for example the collection of taxes.47 Such tax farming could be enormously ex-
pensive, and therefore a number of people invested together and formed a company.
Their slaves were called familia publicanorum, which hints at the modern construct of
the society itself (the societas publicanorum48) having a corporate personality;49 as
such, it was the owner of those slaves. The familia publicanorum is therefore described
 Plaut. Capt. 307–8: et quidem si, proinde ut ipse fui imperator familiae / habeam dominum, non ver-
ear ne iniuste aut graviter mi imperet (“And indeed, if I might have such a master as I myself was when
I was the head of a household, I should have no fear of being treated unjustly or harshly.” Trans. Paul
Nixon, Plautus, in Five Volumes, vol. 1, The Loeb Classical Library (London: Harvard University Press;
Heinemann London, 1956): 491); Poen. 181–86: Rogato, servos veneritne ad eum tuos. / Ille me censebit
quaeri: continuo tibi / negabit. Quid tu dubitas quin exempulo / dupli tibi, auri et hominis, fur leno siet? /
Neque is unde efficiat, habet. Ubi in ius venerit, addicet praetor familiam totam tibi (“Then you ask him if
your slave is at his house. He’ll suppose it’s me you’re after: so he’ll promptly say no. Can you doubt he
will forthwith be liable to you for twice the value of the money and the slave he stole? And he hasn’t
the wherewithal to settle. When he comes to court the praetor will adjudge his entire establishment to
you”; trans. Paul Nixon, Plautus, vol. 4: 19). For this latter text see di Ottavio, Uti legassit: 63–64.
 Cf. D. 29.5.1 pr. and 15 (Ulp. 50 AD ed.); Paul. sent. 3.5.1; for further sources see Leonhard, “fam-
ilia”: 1982.
 On the SC Silanianum see for example Danilo Dalla, Senatus consultum Silanianum (Milano:
Giuffrè, 1980); Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore and London: Hopkins University Press,
1987): 134–38; Joseph Georg Wolf, Das Senatusconsultum Silanianum und die Senatsrede des
C. Cassius Longinus aus dem Jahre 61 n. Chr. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 1988); Jill Har-
ries, “The Senatus Consultum Silanianum: Court Decisions and Judicial Severity in the Early
Roman Empire,” in New Frontiers. Law and Society in the Roman World, ed. Paul J. du Plessis (Edin-
burgh: University Press, 2013): 51–72.
 Cf. D. 39.4.1.5 (Ulp. 55 AD ed.): [. . .] sive igitur liberi sind sive servi alieni [. . .] (“[. . .] might they
be free or slaves of another [. . .]”).
 On the familia publicanorum cf. Robert Röhle, “Zum Wortlaut des Edikts ‘Quod publicanus vi
ademerit’,” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 46 (1978): 137–40; María-Eva Fernández Baquero,
“Familia publicanorum,” in Fundamenta iuris: terminología, principios e interpretatio, ed. Pedro
Resina Sola (Almería: Universidad de Almería, 2012): 101–10.
 Cf. Ulrike Malmendier, Societas publicanorum. Staatliche Wirtschaftsaktivitäten in den Händen
privater Unternehmer (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002); Ulrike Malmendier, “Roman shares,” in The Origins
of Value. The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets, ed. William Goetzmann
and Geert Rouwenhorst (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005): 31–42.
 Cf. Andreas M. Fleckner, Antike Kapitalvereinigungen. Ein Beitrag zu den konzeptionellen und
historischen Grundlagen der Aktiengesellschaft (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010): 145–215, 372–420 (esp.
as corpus servorum vectigalis causa paratorum by Ulpian (D. 50.16.195.3), “a certain

body of slaves collected for one purpose, namely in order to collect taxes.” (trans. Wat-
son). But as Ulpian himself stated elsewhere,50 the individual slaves do not belong to
the community of publicani, but to the individual members of the societas.
The familia Caesaris were the private slaves of a princeps who were engaged with
public tasks.51 The concept of private slaves working for the public did not emerge in
the Empire. We find it already in the Republican administration, sometimes even in
the shape of a familia publica,52 that is a number of slaves owned by a municipal com-
munity.53 The familia Caesaris thus imitates and replaces the Republican model – as
in so many other instances.54
In addition to these well-known examples, Ulpian mentions some actions in-
cluded in the edictum praetoris in which familia comprises the entity of slaves in a
household. In most cases, such actions amplify the responsibility of the dominus for
the behavior of their slaves. The interdictum unde vi, for example, states explicitly
that a person who has been expelled from his land by force may claim restitution
from the intruder, because he or his familia expelled him.55 Such formula makes it
391–411); Geoffrey Poitras and Frederick Willeboordse, “The societas publicanorum and corporate
personality in Roman private law,” Business History 16 (2019): 1–24.
 D. 39.4.1.5 (Ulp. 55 AD ed.): Familiae nomen hic non tantum ad servos publicanorum referemus,
verum et ad eos, qui in numero familiarium sunt publicani (“The word ‘familia’ in this context we
take as referring not only to the slaves of tax farmers but to anyone who is one of their familiars,”
trans. Watson, The Digest of Justinian, vol. 3: 405).
 On familia Caesaris Paul Richard Carey Weaver, Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emper-
or’s Freedmen and Slaves (Cambridge: University Press, 1972); Leonhard Schumacher, “Hausge-
sinde – Hofgesinde: terminologische Überlegungen zur Funktion der familia Caesaris im 1. Jh.
n. Chr.,” in Fünfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie 1950–2000,
ed. Heinz Bellen and Heinz Heinen (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001): 331–52; Sabine Müller, “Familia Cae-
saris,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, October 26, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1002/
9781444338386.wbeah22109 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Cf. D. 1.15.1 (Paul. sing. de officio praefecti vigilium).
 On servus publici cf. William Warwick Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery. The Condition of
the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian (Cambridge: University Press, 1908): 318–30;
Norbert Rouland, “A propos des ‘servi publici populi romani’,” Chiron 7 (1977): 261–78; Walter
Eder, Servitus publica. Untersuchungen zur Entstehung, Entwicklung und Funktion der öffentlichen
Sklaverei in Rom (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980); János Zlinszky, “Gemeineigentum am Beispiel der
servi publici,” in Sklaverei und Freilassung im römischen Recht. Symposium für Hans Josef Wieling
zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Finkenauer (Berlin: Springer, 2006): 317–26; Franco Luciani, “Pub-
lic Slaves in Rome and in the Cities of the Latin West: New Additions to the Epigraphic Corpus,” in
From Document to History. Epigraphic insights into the Greco-Roman World, ed. Carlos F. Noreña
and Nikolaos Papazarkadas (Leiden: Brill, 2019): 279–305.
 Cf. Aloys Winterling, Aula Caesaris. Studien zur Institutionalisierung des römischen Kaiserhofs in
der Zeit von Augustus bis Commodus (31 v. Chr. – 192 n. Chr.) (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1999).
 Cf. Otto Lenel, Das Edictum perpetuum, ein Versuch zu seiner Wiederherstellung, 3rd ed. (Leipzig:
Tauchnitz, 1927; Aalen: Scientia-Verlag, 1985): 461–69, esp. 465.
obvious that in classical legal sources, unlike those from the Republican era, familia
usually points to the group of slaves (and/or freedmen) living in the household.
D. 50.16.195.3: [. . .] alia autem parte D. 50.16.195.3: [. . .] But in another part

edicti omnes servi continentur: ut de of the edict, all slaves are included as in
hominibus coactis et vi bonorum rapto- the part dealing with gangs of men or
rum, item redhibitoria, si deterior res force used to seize property or in the ac-
reddatur emptoris opera aut familiae tion for recovery if something is re-
eius, et interdicto unde vi familiae appel- turned damaged by the activity of the
latio omnes servos comprehendit. sed et purchaser or his household and in the
filii continentur. interdict on the use of force the designa-
tion of household covers all slaves.
(Watson, vol. IV, 950)
Most interesting in this context is the short note at the end: sed et filii continentur
(“sons and daughters are as well included”). This is only true for the formula of the
actions and interdicts mentioned by Ulpian, not for the familia publicanorum or
similar contexts. As far as the responsibility of persons is concerned, law usually
does not differentiate between slaves and children: both are under control of their
master or their father, both can act or contract for the benefit of master or father,
and both can be equipped with a peculium. Therefore, free persons are responsible
both for their children and for their slaves.
4.3 Familia as “Family”
The division of familia into different forms of power relations paved the way for a
third meaning, which however failed to establish itself as a legal term in the classi-
cal texts.56 It is referred to by Ulpian in D. 50.16.195.2:
Familiae appellatio refertur et ad corpo- The designation of households relates to

ris cuiusdam significationem, quod aut any kind of body which is covered by a
iure proprio ipsorum aut communi uni- legal status peculiar to its members or
versae cognationis continetur. iure pro- common to an entire related group. We
prio familiam dicimus plures personas, talk of several persons as a household
quae sunt sub unius potestate aut na- under a peculiar legal status if they are
tura aut iure subiectae, ut puta patrem naturally or legally subjected to the power
 This is not sufficiently taken into account by Gardner who, in investigating classical family law,
departs from the agnatic familia; Jane F. Gardner, Family and familia in Roman Law and Life (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998): 1–2.
familias, matrem familias, filium familias, of a single person as in the case of a head
filiam familias quique deinceps vicem of a household, the wife of a head of a
eorum sequuntur, ut puta nepotes et household, a son-in-power, a daughter-in-
neptes et deinceps. power, and those who thereafter follow
them in turn, as, for instance, grandsons
and granddaughters, and so on. (Watson,
vol. IV, 949–950)
This part of Ulpian’s text delineates the familia of the agnates, i.e. all free persons
under the same pater familias. This designation could be classified as a vestige of the
original meaning in the Twelve Tables, where familia denoted all people and things
under the control of the pater familias. During the middle Republic two specific legal
meanings were separated: familia as inheritance, and familia as a group of slaves or
freedmen. The rest describes the power of the pater familias over his free people, i.e.
the patria potestas over his born or adopted children57 and the manus over his wife
which, in Ulpian’s text, is not mentioned anymore because by his time it had lost its
significance.58 Already in Cicero’s time, a woman who did not come under her hus-
band’s manus could be included in the term familia.59 This reflects its untechnical
and somewhat blurred meaning – at least from the late Republic onwards. The in-
creasing social and legal importance of blood ties gradually replaced the agnatic con-
cept, and thus diminished its relevance as a kinship group. Saller lists a series of
texts from the Empire which use familia in our modern connotation as group of
cognates.60
This is also reflected by the law of the early Empire: The order of legal heirs based
on agnatic relations is impaired by the praetor’s measures to favor cognates in the
legal order of succession61 and by special laws which promoted legal succession be-
tween mother and children.62 We may readily suppose that these alterations in the
 Cf. also D. 40.16.40.2 (Ulp. 56 AD ed.).

 Similar Saller, “‘Familia, Domus’”: 338–39; for a more general overview (oder perspective?) see
Gardner, Family and familia: 29–42.
 For example, in Cic. pro Caelio 33; cf. Saller, “‘Familia, Domus’”: 339.
 Saller, “‘Familia, Domus’”: 340–42, such as Fronto 1,12; Suet. Tib. 3; Tac. ann. 6,51.
 On the bonorum possessio intestati (“praetorian order of intestate succession”) and its different
ranks (i.e. unde cognati) Kaser, Das Römische Privatrecht: 697–701; Pasquale Voci, Diritto ereditario
romano, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Milano: Giuffrè, 1967): 177–201; Martin Schermaier and Helge Dedek, “Bo-
norum possessio,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, October 26, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1002/
9781444338386.wbeah13030 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Esp. the Senatusconsultum Tertullianum (from the time of Hadrian) and the Senatusconsultum
Orfitianum (around AD 178); on both Marianne Meinhart, Die Senatusconsulta Tertullianum und Orfi-
tianum in ihrer Bedeutung für das klassische römische Recht (Graz: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger,
1967); Pasquale Voci, Diritto ereditario Romano, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Milano: Giuffrè, 1963): 17–25.; Kaser,
Das Römische Privatrecht: 701–2; Kimberley Czajkowski, “Senatus consultum Tertullianum,” in Oxford
law of succession are not the cause, but the effect of the diminishing importance of
agnatic relationships in Roman society.63 Nevertheless, we have a good deal of legal
texts in which only the context decides whether familia relates to agnates or cognates.
Cod. Theod. 7.20.8, a decree of the emperors Valentinian I and Valens, concerns the
tax immunity of veterans for the land they are endowed with. If the veterans bring
their servulos familiasve (“slaves and children”) to live on the land, they are to be ex-
empt from land tax forever. The wording reflects a clear distinction between the slaves
and the free persons around the veteran, but it is unclear if familia points to those
under power of the pater familias (agnates) or to those related by blood (cognates).
But maybe this is the wrong question. From the point of view of the decree, what mat-
ters is not who is part of the family of the veteran, but who is his heir. At the time of
Valentinian, the agnatic basis of the law of succession has fallen into abeyance, so
familia means those free persons who will succeed him after his death. The servuli are
mentioned because even they, if manumitted, might become heirs.
5 The Permanence of Legal Terms . . .

If we focus on the social construct behind familia, we become aware of fundamental
changes to the meaning of the term. In the time of the Twelve Tables, familia denotes
all persons and objects under the power of the pater familias. In the course of the
middle Republic, the term develops two principal meanings: on the one hand, it is
applied to the group of slaves in a household; on the other it embraces the members
of the agnate family. And finally, during the Empire, familia is more and more often
used to delineate the cognate family and so comes close to our modern connotation.
In Ulpian’s explanatory text (D. 50.16.195) all these meanings are listed side by side,
as if they had evolved at the same time. But this interpretation is misleading: Ulpian
reports all meanings because in his time they are still present in legal concepts and
institutions. Norms and procedural instruments conserved the term in particular con-
notations. As long as these institutions are observed, the signification in question is
frozen and so survives the shifts that the living language undergoes. Therefore, fami-
lia is a good example for the permanence of legal terms. Its main significations can be
reproduced as follows (Fig. 1):
What does this mean for the study of historical forms of dependency? It will not
change our admonition not to take any terms at face value in any form of historical
inquiry. But we have to formulate an exception for legal studies: As long as certain
Classical Dictionary, February 25, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8275 [ac-

cessed 17.05.2022]; eadem, “Senatus consultum Orfitianum,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, Janu-
ary 25, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8276 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 See, as well, Gardner, Family and familia: 212–20.
Fig. 1: Meanings of familia in Ulpian, D. 50.16.195.
institutions remain valid and rules are observed, the terms to which they refer usu-
ally keep their meaning and significance. Normativity fosters relevancy and thus
stabilizes the acceptance of terms. The validity of early Republican norms and insti-
tutions was rarely challenged throughout Roman history. Many of the old rules con-
tained in the Twelve Tables (ca. 450 BC) remained valid until Justinian’s collection
(529–534 AC) of classical law. Others were overruled by new provisions but only in
a few cases64 abrogated formally. This is why legal terms covering different con-
cepts coexisted side by side and forced jurists (like Ulpian) to judge their meaning
on a case-by-case basis.
This is one side of the coin. The other shows the coherence of institutions and so-
cial settings, even in cases of social or economic disruptions. It is a striking phenome-
non that in Western societies, the same conflicts have been solved by the same – or at
least similar – rules over long stretches of time. This continuity or recurrence of
norms65 and institutions is sometimes indicated by the terminology employed, but it
goes even further. This can also be observed in the case of familia: In early Roman
times, familia was the collective term for persons and goods under the power of a
pater familias. From the point of view of the Twelve Tables, wife, children, slaves, and
cattle were his property. This implied that he could reclaim persons and things from
any other possessor. If, for example, someone robbed his slave or his children, the
pater familias could recover them just as he would an ox or a sheep when it appeared
to be in the possession of his neighbor. The action used was the so-called rei vindica-
tio, the standard action for an owner to claim his property. The ability to bring this
action determined who was the owner. In Rome, ownership was not defined as an ab-
stract power, but as possibility to claim restitution by way of rei vindicatio. From this
 As, for example, most of the old legis actiones in the lex Iulia iudiciorum privatorum (17 BC).
 Cf. Theo Mayer-Maly, “Die Wiederkehr von Rechtsfiguren,” Juristenzeitung 26, no. 1 (1971): 1–3.
perspective, the legal position of slaves and children vis à vis the pater familias was
similar or even, at least during the early period, the same.
Section 1632 of the German Civil Code provides for exactly the same thing: The
guardian (typically one or both parents) can require the return of a child from any
person who is unlawfully withholding it from the parent(s). In terms of the underly-
ing concept, this is an owner’s claim for restitution. But today, we would of course
not consider a guardian or parent the owner of their child. Regarding a child as
property would reduce it to the status of a mere thing, because according to section
903 of the German Civil Code, ownership manifests itself in the fact that one can
“deal with the object at will.” But a child is not an object, and we cannot do with it
as we will. But the legal remedy provided in an identical situation (withholding of
children) is the same in Roman and in modern civil law. Clearly, the concept of
what constitutes property has significantly changed since Roman times, as have
ideas of what parents and children are, what family is. These changes have caused
a rupture in the system of claiming restitution. One claim became many, expressed
in similar ways but conceptualized differently.
But though we now have a different idea of what property means or what family
is, we use the same remedy as the Romans to help a father or a mother to claim
back their child. From this we can draw an important lesson for evaluating Roman
law: The mere fact that Roman domini were able to reclaim their slaves with the
help of the rei vindicatio does not make them “owners of their slaves”66 in the mod-
ern sense, and says little, if anything, about their legal relationship. Therefore, the
well-known definition of slavery formulated by Moses I. Finley, which mentions
three criteria: “the slave’s property status, the totality of the power over him, and
his kinlessness,”67 is inaccurate in one point. What “property status” means de-
pends on the concept of property applied. To reclaim a person from the possession
of others does not make this person the property of the claimant. The strange conse-
quence would be that even today, because of section 1632 BGB, children would be
considered the property of their parents.68 This again shows us that when we judge
historical texts with modern terms and standards, we fall short of what these texts
really contain.
 Therefore, it is useless to say that in the time of the XII tables “slaves were fully owned by their
masters,” as Alan Watson does in Rome of the XII tables: Persons and Property (Princeton: University
Press, 1975): 85. Similarly, but with a focus on classical law, Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery:
10–38.
 Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980): 77.
 A similar example is given by Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study
with a New Preface (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018): 21–22.
6 . . . and the Conceptual Changes Behind Them

Only a contextual analysis sheds light on the meaning of familia in Roman law
texts. In Ulpian’s time, the term’s different meanings exist side by side and can
only be grasped correctly in the context in which familia is used. Our inquiry,
which analyzed the signification of familia over the course of time, suggests a fun-
damental change in the legal assessment of slaves. When Ulpian speaks of familia
as an entity of slaves, he thinks of things (res). This may be correct for his time, but
his synchronic interpretation does not do justice to the meaning of familia in the
Twelve Tables. We already mentioned the fact that the categorical distinction be-
tween persons and things arose at a later stage of Roman history. Rather, the differ-
ent provisions of the Twelve Tables hinge on whether someone is an object or a
subject of rights and powers. Slaves could be either, or both.69 In the provision on
inheritance, they are objects of the power of the pater familias, just like his wife or
children. But in the law of delict, slaves are protected like free persons. If, for exam-
ple, a slave suffers a broken bone, the offender must pay half the amount that
would be due if a free person suffered an injury.70 While an enslaved person (ser-
vus) is worth less than a free one (liber), they are equal in terms of their entitlement
to legal protection. This would significantly change about 150 years later: The lex
Aquilia, a plebiscite from 286 BC, considers a slave not in the category of persons at
all, but in the category of large livestock. In the case of injury or death of slaves or
cattle, the guilty party owes compensation to the owner who has suffered a finan-
cial loss. This rule was applied to free persons only in exceptional cases, because
libertas inaestimabilis res est – freedom cannot be valued in money.71
The different meanings of familia in Ulpian’s text not only reflect the great vari-
ety of meanings, but also the conceptual change that slavery underwent during the
Republic. The division of objects into things and persons and the development of
the status-theory, which separated the status familiae from the status libertatis,72 re-
flect the diminishing value und standing of slaves. On the other hand, we must not
 This is expressed even by Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery: 10–38 and 73–97, but using the
classic division of res and “man”; following his example Watson, Roman Slave Law: 46–66 and
67–89.
 XII Tab. 5.3 (passed down to us in Coll. 2.5.5): Manu fustive si os fregit libero CCC si servo CL
poenam subit (“If a limb is broken by the force of a hand or a club there is a penalty of 300; if it
occurs to a slave, 150”).
 D. 50.17.106 (Paulus 2 AD ed.).
 As, for example, in Gaius (D. 1.5.3 = Gai. inst. 1.9): Summa itaque de iure personarum divisio
haec est, quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt aut servi (“Certainly, the great divide in the law of per-
sons is this: all men are either free men or slaves,” trans. Watson, The Digest of Justinian, vol. 1: 16);
on that Giovanni Negri, “Libertà e status libertatis. Nozioni generali introduttive.” in Homo, caput,
persona. La costruzione giuridica dell’identià nell’esperienza romana, ed. Alessandro Corbino, Mi-
chel Humbert, and Giovanni Negri (Pavia: Pavia University Press, 2010): 115–38.
underestimate the dependency of slaves even in the law of the Twelve Tables. Chil-
dren and slaves alike, as objects under the power of the pater familias, were subject
to his ius vitae necisque – his right over their life and death.73 The divergent develop-
ments of the legal position of slaves and children respectively during the Republic is
paralleled by the diminishing importance of the ius vitae necisque. But whereas the
pater familias’ “right to kill” or at least “to sit in judgement over” his children was
already restricted during the early Republic,74 we only know of legislation to curtail a
master’s power over his slaves under the Empire.75 Obviously, dependencies within
the private sphere did not receive the same amount of public attention. This accounts
for the close correlation between the legal status of slaves and the social and political
developments of the time.
The changing meaning of familia reflects such developments. We must be careful
not to overlook them when reading texts like that of Ulpian, D. 50.16.195. He wants to
give a synchronic account of what familia might mean in special contexts. But from
the historian’s point of view, it tells us a lot about the history of Roman slavery.
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Christian M. Prager
Visualizations and Expressions
of Dependencies in Classic Maya Narratives:
A Semiotic Approach
In the Classic Period between 250–950 AD, dozens of densely populated small and
hegemonic states emerged on the territory of the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mex-
ico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Their history has been recorded in thousands
of inscriptions, which were written in the context of a courtly culture (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Hieroglyphic inscription on Stela 2 from the Maya site of Dos Pilas, Petén, Guatemala.
Photograph by Karl Herbert Mayer, 1978. CC BY 4.0. https://classicmayan.kor.de.dariah.eu/re
solve/image_no/KHM_1978_F38_R06_30 [accessed 17.05.2022].
Rulers and their families, courtiers and priests inhabited monumental palace build-
ings in the political-ceremonial center of the city states. They were surrounded by set-
tlements and residential structures of the lower nobility as well as numerous small
court groups on the peripheries, where the rural social class lived in family units and
paid taxes to the nobility in the form of labor for building projects and portions of the
agricultural produce. The emergence of these small states or kingdoms should be seen
in the context of the flourishing exchange of goods in the central lowlands, which in-
tensified from the Middle Classic period onwards and included trade in commodities,
luxury goods and other products. Control over these routes and networks prom-
ised the local nobility unrestricted access to resources and supremacy, which
were achieved through alliance strategies and military means. Maya war records
Note: I would like to thank Mallory Matsumoto and Elisabeth Wagner for productive discussions and con-
structive criticism of the text. Mallory Matsumoto also kindly corrected the English of the original draft.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-006
152 Christian M. Prager
make it clear that from the sixth century onwards, power struggles took place over
the domination of these important territories, leading to hegemonic aspirations of the
two influential city states of Calakmul and Tikal1 (Fig. 2) – however, unlike the Inca
or the Aztecs, the Maya did not engage in empire-building.2 Instead, the rulers of
around 100 documented small or city states3 competed over centuries for regional
and supra-regional supremacy and consolidated their power through marriage and
alliance policies, subsidiarity, and resource control, combined with military strength.
Fig. 2: The ceremonial-political center of the ancient Maya polity of Tikal, Petén, Guatemala
exhibiting the North Acropolis with ancestral shrines and Temple 1. Photograph by Bjørn Christian
Tørrissen, CC BY SA 3.0. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Tikal-Plaza-And-
North-Acropolis.jpg [accessed 17.05.2022].
The inscription data reveal that the macropolitical organization of the Maya low-
lands had a hegemonic character4 and, similar to the whole of Mesoamerica, was
characterized by clientelism, the exchange of goods and services for political sup-
port. It involved patron-client exchange relationships that functioned on the basis
of mutual interests and reciprocal assistance. The patron assumed responsibility for
the welfare and security of his clients, offered social affiliation, and in exchange
received food and labor in the form of tributes, harvests and military support.
Analysis of the inscriptions reveals that the entire Maya territory thus consisted of
 Simon Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 34.
 Vgl. Michael E. Smith and Maëlle Sergheraert, “The Aztec Empire,” in The Oxford Handbook of
Mesoamerican Archaeology, ed. Deborah Nichols and Christopher A. Pool (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2012): 555–69; Gordon F. McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-
CLIO, 2006).
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 395.
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 355.
Visualizations and Expressions of Dependencies in Classic Maya Narratives 153
dominant sovereign and subaltern city states, between which there were considerable
power differences and asymmetrical dependency relationships. From the texts we
learn that hegemonic kings would supervise the enthronement of new rulers of subor-
dinate city-states, expand and consolidate their political influence through exogamous
marriage, initiate the founding of settlements, and sanction religious rituals in con-
trolled areas through their on-site participation.5 Numerous warlike conflicts, however,
repeatedly led to shifts in power between patrons and clients and thus also changed
political relations in the Maya lowlands. This political order was dynamic: alliances
often disintegrated after a few years and new alliances and power blocs emerged.6 A
look at the political map of the Late Classic period shows that between the sixth and
ninth centuries, numerous polities competed for regional political supremacy and for
control of trade routes and resources, and through alliances and conquests brought
neighboring ruling dynasties into their dependency for shorter or longer stretches of
time. Particularly successful in the history of the Maya lowlands were the kings and
queens of Tikal and Calakmul, who were able to establish large spheres of influence
from the fifth century onwards and win numerous rulers of smaller kingdoms as vas-
sals.7 The latter had to pay tribute in the form of material goods and labor to the royal
court; in return, the vassal states enjoyed hegemonic protection, which also ensured
balance between the satellite states. The two superpowers avoided direct confronta-
tion, although brief but numerous proxy wars were a feature of the sixth and seventh
centuries. In the late seventh century, a direct victory of Tikal over Calakmul ended the
hegemonic stability, in the wake of which former vassal states grew stronger in the
eighth century and competed in numerous wars for influence and dominance (Fig. 3).8
At the micro-political level, the central actors were the Maya rulers and nobility.
They bore the title ajaw, which means “proclaimer” and emphasized the institu-
tional privilege of giving orders and acting as mouthpieces of the gods (Fig. 4).9
Originally used to designate leaders in village communities in the Early ClassicPre-
classic period, the term ajaw came to title the kings of the early city states in the
ClassicPreclassic and Early Classic periods with the emergence of the great centers
in northern Guatemala and in what is now the Mexican state of Campeche. The ear-
liest ajaw, however, derived their claim to rule not only by descent from ancestors
but from local deities, and from the fouth century onwards dubbed themselves k’uh
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 32, 129–32, 162, 183.

 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 344–46.
 Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, “Maya Superstates,” Archaeology 48, no. 6 (1995): 41–46.
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 218.
 David Stuart and Stephen D. Houston, “Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings: Divinity and Rulership
Among the Classic Maya,” Antiquity 70, no. 268 (1996): 295.
Fig. 3: Tikal’s victory over the king of Calakmul in 695 is recorded

in the inscription and imagery on lintel 3 of Temple 1 at Tikal.
Photograph by Peter Horner (1997), courtesy of Museum
der Kulturen Basel. Rights reserved.
ajaw, “god-king” (Fig. 4).10 This is because with the increasing population density
in the lowlands and the founding of new cities and kingdoms, a process of internal
differentiation within the ruling elites of the city states (the so called horizontal
level of the Maya society) led to a hierarchical distinction between divine and secu-
lar ajaw11 The attribute “god” in the ruler’s title not only underlined his claim to
rule, but also elevated the status of its bearer through a religious component, mark-
ing hierarchies and asymmetrical dependencies between the different ruling houses
on the vertical level of society.12 While k’uh ajaw or “god-kings” bore their divine
title with a claim to uniqueness, the inscription data reveal that several dozen k’uh
 Stephen D. Houston, Problematic Emblem Glyphs: Examples from Altar de Sacrificios, El Chorro,
Río Azul, and Xultun, Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 3 (Washington, D.C.: Center
for Maya Research, 1986).
 Stephen D. Houston and David S. Stuart, “Peopling the Classic Maya Court,” in Royal Courts of
the Ancient Maya, vol. 1, Theory, Comparison, And Synthesis, Mesoamerican Archaeology, ed. Take-
shi Inomata and Stephen D. Houston (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001): 59; Nikolai Grube, “Das
Gottkönigtum bei den Klassischen Maya,” in Herrscherkult und Heilserwartung, ed. Jan Assmann
and Harald Strohm (Munich: Fink, 2010): 21.
 Stuart and Houston, “Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings”: 295.
Fig. 4a–b: The hieroglyphs ajaw “ruler” and k’uh pa’chan ajaw “divine ruler of Pa’chan,” the
original name of the archaeological site of Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico.
ajaw were in office at the same time, expressing their respective claims to power
through locally distinctive strategies of legitimation and representation of rule.13
1 Kings and Courts

The power and authority of kings was based on politics and religion. During the
ritual inauguration, according to the religious ideas of the Classic Maya, a vital
force was transferred from the ancestors and patron deities into the blood of the en-
throned person, which in Classic Maya is called k’uh and means “divine essence.”14
According to the monistic view, it was a life essence that combined with tangible
things in the cosmos and merged with them to form a whole. While it adhered only
to kings, queens and gods, it could be transferred from them to objects, living
beings, natural phenomena, places, etc. through religious rituals.15 According to
this conception, the stela with the representation of the king or the sculpture of
a Maya deity is not only a representation, but carries the life essence and so is the
deity – as such, the image of the divine ruler is not only a representation, but the
ruler himself, whose image also possessed the divine efficacy (Fig. 5).16 K’uh im-
bued things in the world with power and vitality, but could be lost through death,
breakage, wear and tear or manipulation and had to be periodically renewed by the
 Grube, “Das Gottkönigtum bei den Klassischen Maya”: 22.

 Christian M. Prager, “A Study of the Classic Maya K’uh Concept,” in Tiempo detenido, tiempo
suficiente: ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo,
Wayeb Publication 1, ed. Harri Kettunen et al. (Belgium: European Association of Mayanists
WAYEB, 2018): 547–612.
 Stephen D. Houston, The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2014): 81.
 Stephen D. Houston, “Classic Maya Religion: Beliefs and Practices of an Ancient American Peo-
ple,” Brigham Young University Studies 38, no. 4 (1999): 53.
Fig. 5: Stela H from Copán, Departamento Copán (Honduras), with the larger-than-life-size portrait
of the king “Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil” in royal regalia; he ascended the throne in 695 and died
in war in 738. Photograph by Elisabeth Wagner.
king in cult.17 Only a king charged with this divine power and essence was able to
infuse things in the cosmos with vital energy; his divinity distinguished him from
the other ajawtaak (plural of ajaw, “ruler”) of his state. By sacrificing and so ritually
dispersing his own blood the king transferred the k’uh to the things in the cosmos,
thus maintaining the balance of the cosmos.
After the ruler’s death, male descendants of the deceased usually succeeded to
the throne; with few exceptions, women also assumed the queenly dignity and ac-
ceded to the throne.18 However, the power and authority of kings was not only
 Elisabeth Wagner, “White Earth Bundles – The Symbolic Sealing and Burial of Buildings
among the Classic Maya,” in Jaws of the Underworld: Life, Death, and Rebirth among the Ancient
Maya, Acta Mesoamericana 16, ed. Pierre R. Colas, Geneviève Le Fort, and Bodil L. Persson (Markt
Schwaben: Saurwein, 2006): 55–69.
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 76; Kathryn Reese-Taylor et al., “Warrior Queens among the Clas-
sic Maya,” in Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and
Central America, Ideas, Debates and Perspectives 4, ed. Heather S. Orr and Rex Koontz (Los An-
geles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2009): 39–72.
based on their divine lineage, but also on loyal members of the secondary nobility
on the horizontal level of the city state, which was endowed with political, administra-
tive, religious and artistic functions. Influential players in this regard were provincial
rulers, so-called sajal, literally “feared ones” (Fig. 6).19 They were nobles appointed by
the king who resided at times at the royal court as high nobility and controlled cities
and territories that were within a given kingdom’s sphere of influence. As functionar-
ies of the god-king, sajal not only negotiated political relations between the individual
city states, but also played a leading military and administrative role, for example in
collecting tribute, in which they were supported by tribute officials. Holders of the
sajal title attained autonomous status in the Late Classic, so that the office was even
passed on to descendants, albeit requiring royal sanction.20 At the local level, we
know of a number of administrative, religious and military functions at the royal
court. This was under the authority of a so-called ajk’uhuun, “guardian of the books.”
He not only administered the sacred books, but was also the overseer of scribes and
artists and in charge of the artistic design of the palaces and temples.21 In all political,
military and also private decisions, hemerology or day-selection played a leading role
among the Classic Maya. The task of the divinatory specialist, the so-called ti’sakhuun,
“speaker of the books,” was to read the fate in the calendar and to determine favorable
or unfavorable days for activities. Another royal office was that of the warrior priest
yajawk’ahk’, “lord of the fire,” whose task was to sacrifice incense to the gods and to
tend the temple fires.22
sajal ti’sakhuun yajawk’ahk’ ajk’uhuun
Fig. 6a–d: The hieroglyph sajal means “feared one” and refers to provincial princes appointed by
the king. Important officials at court were ajk’uhuun, “guardian of the writings.” They oversaw
scribes and artists. Oracle specialists were called ti’sakhuun, “speaker of the books,” and also
formed part of the royal court. Warrior priests tended the temple fires and were called yajawk’ahk’,
“lord of the fire.” Drawings by Christian Prager, 2021.
 David Stuart, “Early Thoughts on the Sajal Title,” Maya Decipherment (blog), November 19,
2013, http://decipherment.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/early-thoughts-on-the-sajal-title/ [accessed
17.05.2022].
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 87–88.
 David Stuart and Sarah Jackson, “The Aj K’uhun Title: Deciphering a Classic Maya Term of
Rank,” Ancient Mesoamerica 12, no. 2 (2001): 217–28.
 Marc Zender, “A Study of Classic Maya Priesthood” (PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2004): 210.
2 Asymmetrical Dependencies in Written

and Pictorial Sources
Maya imagery and written records are the most important sources from which re-
searchers derive knowledge and draw conclusions about cultural facts for or about a
certain period of time. With all these sources, Maya research in the past decades has
been able to explore numerous networks of inter- and intradynastic relationships and
dynamics and, combined with the interpretation of archaeological remains, to con-
struct a socio-political model of Classic Maya culture.23 Not only kings themselves,
but also the high nobility and influential members of the court mentioned in the pre-
vious section created monuments and left their mark on the history of the divine
kingdoms. The most important agent of a text or image was usually the ruler of a city
state himself, his relatives and royal cohorts. Texts and images alone had the sole
purpose of legitimizing rule and power through religion and history. The inscriptions
reflect ideas and information considered appropriate by the nobility to be recorded.
We distinguish the sources in terms of their textual and pictorial information content.
There are written, written-iconic and iconic media on monumental sculptures, archi-
tectural elements, portable objects and features of the natural environment, such as
caves or rocks. For researchers, the free-standing stelae, altars and zoomorphs, to-
gether with lintels, stairways, marker stones, painted walls, vaulted capstones, wall
panels and thrones constitute the most epistemic communicative artefacts from
which to infer coherent information about the cultural situations and the underlying
systems of thought and belief; they are also the most numerous and, compared to the
smaller and mostly portable objects, contain longer text passages with more complex
content. Unlike portable objects in tombs and deposits, the majority of the monumen-
tal and architectural image and text programs were publicly accessible, and thus ful-
filled a representative function in depicting the king and his authority.24 In terms of
content, the texts and images recorded on them focus on the ruler himself, his rela-
tives and subordinates. They reflect, very roughly, biographical details and mention
inter- and intra-dynastic relations and show actions such as war or royal visits, de-
scribe and depict ceremonies and rituals in the context of accessions, ancestor vener-
ation, calendar anniversaries, inaugurations, processions and other occasions.25
Research into the political organization of the Maya Lowlands focuses on hiero-
glyphic texts, which are still the most important sources for the reconstruction of
 Martin and Grube, “Maya Superstates.”

 David Stuart, “Kings of Stone: A Consideration of Stelae in Ancient Maya Ritual and Representa-
tion,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 29–30 (1996): 148–71.
 David Stuart, “Historical Inscriptions and the Maya Collapse,” in Lowland Maya Civilization in
the Eighth Century A.D.: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, seventh and 8th October 1989, ed. Jeremy
A. Sabloff and John S. Henderson (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collec-
tion, 1993): 321–54.
KAB IL ICHON Yajaw

“earth; to supervise” “to see; to visit” “body front; in presence of” “It is his king”
Fig. 7a–d: Expressions of asymmetrical dependency in Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Drawings by Christian Prager, 2021.
hierarchies and asymmetrical dependency relations in the political organization of

the Classic Maya Lowlands.26 The political landscape of the Classic period, as we
have seen, is characterized by regional hierarchy and resembled a patchwork of poli-
ties with local autonomy that were politically dominated by larger centers. Some
states achieved political dominance and established widely dispersed hegemonic net-
works, by which dominant kings, for example, not only confirmed the rule of the sub-
ordinate nobility of their own states, but also of the kings of other states.27 In this
context, royal rhetoric speaks of the “supervision” of accessions to the throne, the
“witnessing” and the “supervision” of religious events of a client by a patron, and
describes subaltern kings as the “property” of a superior ruler (Fig. 7).28
3 Maya Imagery and Texts as Semiotic Artefacts

This paper focuses less on the linguistic, epigraphic and paleographic features of
Maya writing and more on semiotic aspects that become apparent upon exploring
Classic Maya imagery and hieroglyphic texts. Historians are not only concerned with
the material legacies of past societies, but also with the archaeology of thoughts and
minds: using written records, historical research attempts to investigate past systems
of ideas, values and conceptions to draw conclusions about the intellectual world un-
derlying the cultural achievements of a so-called “interpretative community.”29
Methodologically, this approach primarily relies on semiotic artefacts, which were
intentionally used as instruments for directly and indirectly communicating messages.
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 344–55.

 Linda Schele, Nikolai Grube, and Simon Martin, Notebook for the 22nd Maya Hieroglyphic
Forum at Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998): 15–16.
 Martin, Ancient Maya Politics: 238–40.
 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).
Moreover, these artefacts functioned as indices that evoked stored knowledge and
experiences and established analogies with other signs. Academic research into
the intellectual achievements of a past community thus focuses on all those pub-
lic representations which, as communicative artefacts based on language or visual
codes, encode and convey knowledge.30 For Mesoamerican studies in general,
these artefacts consist primarily of linguistic, semasiographic and iconic texts, as
well as images on various media that provide insights into the beliefs, practices,
intellectual world, and conceptual systems of pre-Hispanic societies. If image and
text are used to complement each other, they constitute an overall message that is
conveyed jointly by visual and linguistic codes.31 According to the theory of semi-
otics, texts themselves become signs that communicate meaning(s) that are not
the signs themselves.32 The function and meaning of writing and texts as semiotic
artefacts thus goes beyond their phonographic and discursive properties.
Fig. 8: Maya hieroglyphs are three-dimensional objects that can intersect and overlap, as shown
here in the example of a 3D scan of a plaster cast of lintel 24 from Yaxchilan. 3D model by
Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya.
Maya hieroglyphic texts are language made visible on writing surfaces that extend
into two- and three-dimensional space (Fig. 8). Writing thus has sensual, visual and
communicative (and semiotic) potential for which there are no correspondences in
spoken language. This visual-iconographic dimension of writing is best described as
“notational iconicity,” making writing and text “a hybrid construct in which the
 Simon Martin, “On Pre-Columbian Narrative: Representations Across the Word-Image Divide,”
in A Pre-Columbian World, ed. Jeffrey Quilter and Mary E. Miller (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton
Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006): 55–105, http://www.mesoweb.com/about/martin/Mar
tin_2006_Narrative.pdf [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Dorie J. Reents-Budet, “Narrative in Classic Maya Art,” in Word and Image in Maya Culture Ex-
plorations in Language, Writing, and Representation, ed. William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice (Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989): 189–97.
 Winfried Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild,” in Linguistics of Text and Conversation,
ed. Wolfgang Heinemann and Sven F. Sager (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2000): 489–96.
discursive and the iconic intersect.”33 Maya scribes made use of this hybrid prop-
erty of writing when designing texts and introduced several semiotic modes or ve-
hicles to transport meanings beyond the text. Aspects of notational iconicity
that Maya scribes used to imbue hieroglyph texts with a further level of communi-
cative meaning included, but were not limited to, the shape and arrangement of
text fields, the varying size of inscriptions, their elevation or embedding in the
text carrier, the play of text and character sizes, the three-dimensionality and “an-
imation” of graphs, colorful accentuations, different sculpting styles within a sin-
gle text carrier, and more.34
4 Semiotics of Image and Linguistic Text

The main function of images and linguistic texts is to represent and transmit mental
representations, such as ideas, thoughts or conceptions of the environment. A fun-
damental difference between image and text is the amount of information conveyed
within the same time of perception. Since images are perceived holistically and si-
multaneously and have the potential to be associated with emotions, they are atten-
tion-grabbing and more memorable; linguistic information, on the other hand, is
conveyed successively and linearly, and the net information of a statement is there-
fore less than that which may be conveyed by a single picture.35 According to Nöth,
images and texts also possess different semiotic potentials which limit their poten-
tial use for public representation in different areas. Images are ideal for spatial-
visual representations that accurately reflect the position of objects within space;
moreover, images are static and atemporal due to their two-dimensionality and are
therefore better suited to representing a moment. Points of time, time periods and
duration, on the other hand, can be more accurately described with language ac-
cording to Nöth.
Semiotic differences between image and text also come into play in representa-
tions of the visual and the non-visual. One advantage of language is that although all
images can be represented by language, “not everything represented linguistically
can be visualized by images.”36 Whereas visual entities such as objects can be repre-
sented by both images and language, other sensory impressions are primarily repre-
sented by linguistic signs. Images and iconic symbols are used to represent complex
 Sybille Krämer, “Writing, Notational Iconicity, Calculus: On Writing as a Cultural Technique,”

MLN 118, no. 3 (2003): 519, https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2003.0059 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Christian M. Prager, “Visual Dimensions of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Meanings Beyond the
Surface,” in The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, ed. Philip J. Boyes,
Philippa M. Steele, and Natalia Elvira Astoreca (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2021): 101–24.
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild.”
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 491.
and difficult-to-process concepts with open and ambiguous interpretations, i.e. with
no limited or predictable potential for drawing conclusions.37 The semiotic fuzziness
of images is a consequence of their semantic openness, which means that images
“are potentially infinitely interpretable and thus ‘underlaid’ with an infinite number
of possible texts”38 and therefore have the character of an open message. In this
sense, an image supports the construction of knowledge and cognition. By contrast
meta-language and self-reference belong to the domain of language and are difficult
to represent pictorially. Speech acts, such as questions, requests, promises, or even
negation, affirmation and logical relationships cannot be represented visually.39
5 Understanding Text and Image

The meaning of a text or an image is its use by an interpretative community.40 Such
communities are characterized by the fact that their members share a repertoire of
agreed codes and conventions by means of which signs are “understood,” images
are “seen,” texts are “read” and messages are thus conveyed. Despite the different
semiotic potential of text and image, both types of media assume a form that, due
to its materiality, is perceived and processed before the user has grasped the in-
tended content by interpreting the signs that it contains.41 The design of images
and texts thus constitutes a further level of meaning beyond what is represented in
them; in other words, the style and layout can express an “overall message” along-
side the message conveyed by their linguistic contents. In the Classic Maya case, for
instance, the color and texture of image and text carriers (Fig. 9), as well as the pro-
portions used in designing image and text, convey an overarching idea in addition
to the linguistic contents contained in the accompanying text,42 as explained in the
following section.
Signs are multimodal objects: they ideally have a constant materialization and
fulfil the indexical function of constituting relations between present and absent ele-
ments in certain contexts (i.e. meaning).43 Symbols, icons, pictures, etc., are “occu-
pied” according to the semiotic perspective and thus represent something for someone.
 Dan Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975): 160.
 Harald Burger, Sprache der Massenmedien, Sammlung Göschen 2225 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990):
300.
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 490–91.
 Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?.
 Susanne Blazejewski, Bild und Text – Photographie in autobiographischer Literatur (Würzburg:
Könighausen & Neumann, 2002): 46.
 Martin, “On Pre-Columbian Narrative”: 58.
 Christa Dürscheid, Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2006): 223.
Fig. 9: To emphasize the calendrical content of an inscription, some glyphs are painted red. In this
way, sections of a hieroglyphic inscription are color-coded and highlighted. Photograph by Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, Public Domain. https://collections.lacma.org/node/1903414
[accessed 17.05.2022].
In order for people to be able to communicate and constitute interpretative communi-

ties by means of signs, standardizations, conventions or norms of action must be
agreed upon and learned. These codes regulate the “meaning” i.e. the application,
function and form of signs and images, and thus make them communicable and com-
municative. The shape or size of a sign or an image represents a multimodal level of
action, with whose help various associations with memory content can be established.
Not only the sign and image as an integral whole, but also its shape (design) and mode
of representation (style) evoke a perceptual experience that is linked to certain memory
contents, thus focusing the attention of the recipient and evoking the corresponding
knowledge.44
 Dürscheid, Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik: 234–38; Martin, “On Pre-Columbian Narrative”: 59.
6 Relations between Text and Image

In many writing cultures, linguistic text and image engage in a collaborative, multi-
modal coexistence that compensates for the aforementioned communicative weak-
nesses of each form of communication alone. The merging of linguistic and image
codes creates a complementary semiotic relationship; on this basis images contrib-
ute to the understanding of a text and vice versa. What cannot be expressed by the
image, such as time, non-visual sensory impressions, modes of the speech act, rela-
tions or causalities, can be elucidated by an additional, linguistic text. With the
help of this descriptive commentary, the open and ambiguous nature of the image
is channeled and transferred to the desired context of meaning.45
In principle, the image-text relation raises the question of the overall message.
Does an image with an associated linguistic text duplicate the information con-
veyed in each case – are the statements thus redundant – or do the media forms
complement each other and are understood as a coherent whole? The text-image
relationships that constitute an overall message can be classified according to their
redundancy, dominance and complementarity.46 In the case of image-text redun-
dancy, the text does not add any new information to the image or vice versa; rather,
both media forms denote and thus duplicate the same information. Nöth describes
this situation as double coding and assumes that it results in more effective reten-
tion by the viewer.47 When the image is more informative than the accompanying
text, we speak of the dominance of image over text. But the opposite case may also
occur in which the picture is subordinate to the text and only fulfils an illustrative
function. Another relation is that of complementarity. Text and image can be classi-
fied as complementary if “both sources of information are necessary to understand
the overall meaning of the text-image combination (i.e. the text has gaps which are
filled by the image and vice versa).”48
7 Mesoamerican Text-Image Relations

Compared to linguistic texts, images are semiotically more productive for represent-
ing space and objects. In a communicative act, they fulfil the function of depicting
and representing. Texts, on the other hand, are superior to pictorial representations
 Dan Sperber, On Anthropological Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985):

20–21; Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 492; Erich Straßner, Text-Bild-Kommunikation,
Bild-Text-Kommunikation (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002): 30.
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 492.
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild.”
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 493.
for expressing causality, time sequences, abstract thoughts and social facts, and
they thus assume the communicative functions of telling and reporting.49 Individu-
ally or in combination, image and linguistic text constitute narrative representa-
tions in Mesoamerican traditions. Discourses are narratives when they report on an
event or a series of events and are constituted from the components of place, time,
action and actors. Such narrative texts are forms of action that convey content
through communicative-linguistic transmission and are characterized by chrono-
logical sequences of action in which events cause changes in the situation.50 How-
ever, narrative representations are not necessarily bound to a linguistic code, i.e. to
the media of spoken or written language; they may also be conveyed through
image in the form of narrative pictographies or pictorial narratives, independent of
language.51 The message is represented by means of graphic conventions and codes
and in this way signifies something to members of an interpretative community.
Visual narratives are semasiographies and represent content without linguistic
coding (Fig. 10).52 Such systems have been attested for Mesoamerica since the Pre-
classic period (2000 BC–250 AD); they had the function of representing narrative
content pictorially or iconographically, especially in the Zapotec, Mixtec and Aztec
traditions.53 Although glottography was used to some extent among the Aztecs,
these narrative texts did not literally record a spoken narrative, but were recorded
in the form of images and episodes. In the interpretative communities mentioned
above, only personal and place names and chronological records and, in the case
of Zapotec, verbs, were denoted by linguistic signs complementing pictorial infor-
mation.54 Classic Maya writing traditions differed from these glottographic writing
systems by enabling phonetic reproduction of spoken texts. In addition to being
able to linguistically name objects, persons and places, Classic Maya writing en-
abled the public representation of narrative texts that could be recorded phoneti-
cally, word for word.
In Classic Maya traditions, linguistic text and image can each represent a mes-
sage either discretely or in combination with each other. In the latter case, text and
 Nöth, “Der Zusammenhang von Text und Bild”: 491–92.

 Martin, “On Pre-Columbian Narrative”: 61.
 Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (New York: Cor-
nell University Press, 1978): 34.
 Ignace J. Gelb, A Study of Writing: The Foundations of Grammatology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1952): 245.
 Hanns J. Prem, “Calendrics and Writing,” in Observations on the Emergence of Civilization in
Mesoamerica: Papers Presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, vol. 9,
Contributions of the University of California, Archaeological Research Facility 11 (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California, Department of Anthropology, 1971): 112–32, https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/
anthpubs/ucb/proof/pdfs/arf011-010.pdf [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Gordon Whittaker, “The Zapotec Writing System,” in Epigraphy, Supplement to The Handbook of
Middle American Indians 5, ed. Victoria R. Bricker (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992): 5–19.
Fig. 10: Example of a visual narrative found in the pre-Hispanic Mixtec Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Page
75 shows ruler “Eight Deer” standing on a canoe on a lake during the conquest of Five Caves
Island, surrounded by the calendrical dates of war campaigns and conquests. Facsimile by Zelia
Nuttall, 1902. Public Domain. https://archive.org/details/gri_33125011146541 [accessed
17.05.2022].
image on an information carrier may be spatially separated from or integrated with

each other. In either constellation, such text-image relationships can be generally
characterized according to the previously mentioned aspects of redundancy, domi-
nance and complementarity. For Maya studies, a relation of redundancy offers a
particularly important, insightful connection by allowing researchers to derive lin-
guistic or iconic interpretations if the image content is known even if the text is un-
known, and vice versa. In such cases, image and text refer to each other without
additions that could influence the interpretation of one or the other. In other instan-
ces, however, either the text or the image is in a position of dominance over the
other, or they are in a relationship of complementarity.55
 Janet C. Berlo, “Conceptual Categories for the Study of Texts and Images in Mesoamerica,” in
Text and Image in Pre-Columbian Art: Essays on the Interrelationship of the Verbal and Visual Arts,
BAR International Series 180, ed. Janet C. Berlo (Oxford: BAR, 1983): 1–39; Arthur G. Miller, “Com-
paring Maya Image and Text,” in Word and Image in Maya Culture Explorations in Language,
Generally speaking, Classic Maya images fulfil a representational and representa-

tive function. The space itself, objects placed within it, and the people or beings de-
picted, as well as their relations to each other, are represented through visual codes.
Texts, on the other hand, break the stasis of the picture and fulfil the communicative
function of reporting about time sequences, movement through space, motivations,
intentions, events or causalities. Coupling image and text allowed Maya artists to de-
pict space and simultaneously to record movement, time periods, events, causalities
and changes or to represent the persons’ status through visual language and graphic
conventions while also indicating biographical reasons for the status.
8 The Codes of Maya Scribes and Kings

The thousands of Maya monuments inscribed with texts and imagery are more than
just philological or iconographic artefacts from which we can derive culture-historical
information. Each monument, whether with or without text or imagery, fundamentally
constitutes a communicative unit and thus a semiotic artefact. In this capacity, it con-
veys linguistic and/or nonverbal conceptions, beliefs, memories, histories, ideas, corre-
spondences, ontologies, thoughts, fantasies, intentions, norms, classifications and
values; moreover, it concretizes them publicly in a space of collective experience that
is shared by an interpretative community. Drawing on culturally shared conventions
and codes, members of an interpretative community can read and interpret the mes-
sage that is expressed in these cultural representations. The task of modern researchers
is to recognize the codes and conventions entailed in these semiotic artefacts and to try
to decode them in order to reconstruct past situations, ideas and norms.
In this chapter, I present conventions that Classic Maya scribes and sculptors
used when producing stone monuments in order to convey implicit information
that was not expressed in the texts or imagery and thus require understanding of
these codes for correct interpretation. Stela 1 from the site La Amelia, a freestanding
monument which was discovered in 1937 and is currently housed in the National
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Guatemala City, serves as an introduc-
tory example (Fig. 11a). The preserved front is carved in bas-relief with two verti-
cally arranged registers; the upper register contains the image of a person and the
lower one a jaguar in repose.56
According to the hieroglyphic texts, the stela represents the king of La Amelia,
K’ahk’ Hoplaj Chan K’awiil, dancing on a platform or step with a jaguar in front of
Writing, and Representation, ed. William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice (Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press, 1989): 176–88.
 Christian M. Prager et al., Documentación Digital En 3D de Monumentos Mayas Del Museo Nacio-
nal de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala: Informe Final, Temporada Enero – Abril 2017, Proyecto
Fig. 11a–d: Stela 1 from the site of La Amelia, Petén, Guatemala, with three fields of text, carved in
different styles. Images based on 3D model by Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan.
him. The ruler’s attire indicates that he is presented as a dancing incarnation of the
deity known as the “Waterlily Serpent”: his headdress is composed of a waterlily
pad or flower and his mask represents a serpent’s snout. The king’s other items of
clothing, in particular the wide belt and the knee brace on the right leg, represent
the garments of a ball player. The connection between the Classic Maya theme of
ball games and dance in Stela 1’s iconography, as well as the jaguar and icono-
graphic and hieroglyphic references to a staircase as an architectural context in
which the scene takes place, collectively allude to a symbolic ball game field, also
known as a “false ball game field.” It is assumed that dance-dramas were per-
formed in these ritual spaces, including mythical ball games, and that during such
performances war captives were presented and ritually sacrificed.57
Three fields of hieroglyphic text, carved in different styles, surround the image
of the dancing king and provide information about the context of the recorded
event and the monument’s production (Fig. 11b–d). The most visually striking in-
scription occurs to the lower right of the figure and displays ten hieroglyphic blocks
sculpted in relief; their dimensions are noticeably bigger than the blocks in the text
fields on the upper right and lower left of the monument. Because of the blocks’
dimensions and the raised relief carving, this text is easily visible from a distance, a
feature that underscores the centrality of the information it contains. The inscrip-
tion records that the king of La Amelia made a blood sacrifice for the dedication of
his ball court on August 13, 807. The same date also occurs in the upper right-hand
«Base de Datos de Textos y Diccionario Del Maya Clásico», Universidad de Bonn, Alemania. Informe
Presentado a La Dirección General Del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Del Ministerio de Cultura y De-
portes de Guatemala (Bonn: Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya, 2019): 19–28,
http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.22690.89280 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Matthew G. Looper, To Be Like Gods: Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization, Linda Schele Series
in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009): 157–60.
text field, which has been rotated 45° counterclockwise; however, because the date
has been lightly incised on the surface, it is hardly visible to the viewer. This text
field, whose hieroglyphs are also relatively small, contains a sculptor’s signature
and proclaims that the monument was also completed on August 13, 807. This deli-
cate inscription names the sculptor, although it is now too damaged to be deci-
phered. In the lower left is another scribal signature accompanied by a declaration
that the relief was dedicated on August 13, 807. This text field has likewise been
rotated 45° counterclockwise, but because it has been carved as an inset relief, its
visibility is much better than that of the incised signature in the upper right. Both
latter text fields share the same rotation, which makes visually explicit their shared
theme of “sculptor signature.” However, the signatures differ in mode of produc-
tion, size of component hieroglyphs and position on the monumental surface. The
much more noticeable signature in the lower left is at the same vertical level on the
monument’s surface as the main inscription in the lower right. They primarily differ
in that the signature is carved in inset relief, whereas the main inscription that re-
fers to the image and names the ruler was produced in raised relief and contains
the largest hieroglyphs on the monument.
Fig. 12: Lintel 8 from the site of Yaxchilan shows the taking of two captives by the Yaxchilan king
named “Bird Jaguar” and his sajal, a vassal called K’an Tok’ Wayib. Full view and details of
Yaxchilan, Lintel 8, underside, drawing by Ian Graham © President and Fellows of Harvard College,
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2004.15.6.5.8.
The significance of varying hieroglyph size and text positioning can be derived
from studying a range of text and image carriers produced by Classic Mayas. Lintel
8 from Yaxchilan, for instance, illustrates the capture of two nobles by the king to
the right and his vassal K’an Tok Wayib, who is shown on the viewer’s left (Fig. 12).
The scene is bordered by a text whose hieroglyphs are much larger than those in
the text field between the two actors, as well as the glyphs on the captives’ bodies.
The text framing the scene records the historical event on the left and the name of
the Yaxchilan, Yaxun Balam IV, on the right. The text field between the king and
his provincial ruler gives the latter’s name and title. This field is not only smaller
than the one containing the king’s name above; it is also positioned lower in the
scene and thus communicates the dominance of king Yaxun Balam IV over his vas-
sal, K’an Tok Wayib. The smallest hieroglyphs on the lintel are positioned on the
thighs of the two noble captives whose names they record. Notably, these names
are not given their own text field; instead the captives’ bodies serve as a writing
surface, tagging the captives. In Classic Maya art, it is usually objects or artefacts
that are tagged with glosses; for instance bundles of cacao, corn, beans or tobacco
jars are marked with their contents, or playing balls are measured at a particular
size. By directly incising the captives’ names onto their bodies, they are ontologi-
cally transformed from humans to (possessable) things.58
In the first example from La Amelia, we established that inset relief, which is
framed and carved into the monumental surface, is significantly more visible than
incised text. Visibility is a semiotic index for making visually perceptible or encod-
ing high value, great significance or importance. In order to give different values to
different components of a carved monument, for instance, the sculptor deployed
varying styles, including incision, high and bas-relief or inset relief. Additionally,
these nonverbal forms of (de)valuation could be expressed through other aspects
such as dimension, position, layout relief style, sign font or color. These features
are elements of image and text composition that transport meaning, communicate
ideas, norms, conventions, beliefs, status, roles, themes, etc., that are not made ver-
bally explicit on public monuments. Together with imagery and text, these artistic
modes of expression constitute a level of messaging at which values, meaning, rela-
tionships and hierarchies can be expressed through semiotic signs. Even the text or
image carrier and its context become signs themselves, as in the case of stairways
illustrating captives and hieroglyphically documenting war, conquest and destruc-
tion, for example.
The potential extent of this semiotic interplay of dimension, position, layout,
style, etc., with all their facets and nuances, is especially apparent on Stela 12 from
Piedras Negras (Fig. 13). The monument, which stands at over 3 m tall, is sculpted
on one broad and two narrow sides with illustrated scenes and hieroglyphic texts.59
 Catherine E. Burdick, “Held Captive by Script: Interpreting ‘Tagged’ Prisoners in Late Classic
Maya Sculpture,” Ancient Mesoamerica 27, no. 1 (2016): 31–48, https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0956536116000031 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Sylvanus G. Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén, vol. 5, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publi-
cation 437 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937): III: 262–71, https://hdl.
handle.net/2027/mdp.39015029403725 [accessed 17.05.2022]; David S. Stuart and Ian Graham, Cor-
pus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, part 1, Piedras Negras (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Mu-
seum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2003): 60–63.
Fig. 13: Stela 12 from Piedras Negras, Petén, Guatemala exhibits a

complex scene depicting victory, headed by Ruler 7 from Piedras
Negras. Piedras Negras, Stela 12, front, drawing by David Stuart
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology, 2004.15.6.19.38.
The monument belongs to a cohort of stelae that were erected at Structure O-13 dur-
ing the reign of Ruler 7 (AD 771–808) and constitute public memorials of that king.60
Dedicated in 795, Stela 12 commemorates Ruler 7’s victories over Pomona, Piedras
Negras’ antagonistic neighbor, in 792 and 794, feats which he achieved with support
from his vassals from nearby La Mar. The military events, participating actors and
relevant places are documented in the long texts on both narrow sides and repre-
sented in part on the broad front. This latter face shows a complex scene of conquest
with the king in the middle, as well as his two noble vassals and conquered members
of the royal court at Pomona.
Among and on the twelve figures illustrated on the front are scattered twenty
text fields of varying size, execution, orientation and position (Fig. 14). Two fields
represent glosses in micro-writing that refer to objects that are being presented to
the king. Eight fields feature signatures from sculptors and polishers, and another
ten contain the personal names and roles of the depicted figures, except for the
king. Status, hierarchy, social differentiation or moral concepts are visualized on
this monument using iconographic conventions and semiotic codes, especially fig-
ure composition. The proudly posing victors appear gigantic in comparison to the
 Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dy-
nasties of the Ancient Maya, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008): 152–53.
Fig. 14: The distribution of text and iconography on Stela 12, Piedras Negras. Piedras Negras, Stela
12, front, drawing by David Stuart © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology, 2004.15.6.19.38. Piedras Negras, Stela 12, details of glyphs on front,
drawing by David Stuart © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology. 2004.15.6.19.41.
captives cowering at their feet at the bottom of the platform. The Piedras Negras
king, dressed as a warrior and seated at ease atop the social pyramid, dominates
the proceedings below him. His triumphant position at the top of the platform, with
his imposing headdress of numerous elongated macaw and quetzal feathers, his
body language and the three-quarter view of his front render him the most domi-
nant figure in the image. He is the only person on the front who needs no label with
a hieroglyphic name. Instead, his name concludes the historical narrative on the
right-hand side, before the text continues on the narrow left-hand side with a listing
of the military victories achieved during his reign. His vassals from La Mar stand a
level below him on the platform, wearing insignias of their rank and presenting to
the sovereign their important captives from the enemy court. A defeated local ruler
seated between them is named in the inscription on the narrow side as an ally of
the king of Pomona; he sits reverently before the Piedras Negras king and demon-
strates deference with his folded arms. Unlike the captives cowering below him,
however, he still wears his headdress and ornaments, which attest to his status as
an important member of a royal court.
A visibly chaotic and disheveled group of eight bound captives sits on the low-
est level, all stripped of their headdresses, ear ornaments and other accoutrements,
in contrast to the subjugated noble ally. Name glyphs or titles are incised on their
shoulders, backs and thighs that allude to their royal activities as scribes, musi-
cians, local rulers and other persons who must have played important roles in the
court of the defeated vassal. The sculptors again followed the convention of incising
the captives’ personal names on their bodies. Nonetheless, two captives stand out
among the group: their names are placed not on their bodies, but on the blank sur-
face in front of their heads. According to these labels, both men were so-called sajal
or local rulers over smaller settlements in the periphery of city states, who in these
settlements represented the political and economic interests of the king and sup-
ported him in war. Their position in society must have been higher than that of the
other captives portrayed farther down the stela, given their prominence within the
group and their position above the very bottom of the depicted hierarchy.
Fig. 15: Possible evidence of textual style and social status expressed in the iconography of Stela
12 of Piedras Negras. Details of Piedras Negras, Stela 12, front, drawing by David Stuart
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
2004.15.6.19.38. Piedras Negras, Stela 12, details of glyphs on front, drawing by David Stuart
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
2004.15.6.19.41.
At the level of these two men’s portraits, additional text fields are either carved in
inset relief or incised in the background, all with different glyph sizes (Fig. 15).
These fields contain the names of sculptors who participated in the monument’s
production. It is notable that two names were carved in an inset field and two were
incised on the stone surface. The dimensions of the incised hieroglyphs are smaller
than those in the inset fields. Variable glyph sizes can encode differences in value
and meaning on text and image carriers, so we can assume in this case that a hier-
archy differentiated the various scribes and sculptors, one that was expressed in
the style, composition and form of their individual text fields. Stephen Houston
suggested that the distribution of signatures on this monument not only exhibits
the hierarchy among the artists, but also their different tasks in preparing and proc-
essing the monument.61
The examples presented here suggest in particular that the incised text fields
contain the names and titles of persons who were positioned lower in the social order
(Fig. 15). In addition, lower status was semiotically indicated by varying sizes of
glyph blocks and positioning of the text fields, a phenomenon also exemplified by
Piedras Negras, Stela 12. Three text fields with sculptors’ names are carved in inset
relief at the level of the portraits of the La Mar vassals. According to the inscription,
all three sculptors originated from the place Bik’al. Their social status must have
been high enough that they were permitted to place their signatures at the eye level
of the La Mar nobles, memorializing their names below the seated king.
Framing inscriptions and carving them in inset relief made the hieroglyphs
clearer and more visible, thereby directing the viewer’s attention to the text pas-
sage. Significance, meaning, and hierarchies are thus expressed not only through
visual language, but also through the execution, elaboration and position of text
fields, as well as their composition. Systematic examination of all text fields on the
front of Piedras Negras Stela 12 underscores how layout, form, size, position and
carving style scaled and projected implied values that Classic Maya elite culture as-
cribed to particular persons, objects or themes. No text field was executed at the
level of the seated Piedras Negras ruler. As the main protagonist of text and imag-
ery, the king alone claimed this position on the stela itself. One step below are the
images of the La Mar vassals with their names carved in hieroglyphs in inset relief.
At the same level, three sculptors also signed their names and titles, likewise using
inset relief to publicly represent their equal standing with the depicted persons.
Just below them is the image of the captured local noble, whose personal name is
also carved in an inset field, although this field has been rotated 45° clockwise and
smaller-scale hieroglyphs are used. Various sculptors signed their names at the
level of his name and portrait; their glyphs are noticeably smaller, however. Farther
down are more signatures from sculptors who, instead of carving their names in
 Stephen D. Houston, “Crafting Credit: Authorship among Classic Maya Painters and Sculptors,”
in Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, Dumbarton Oaks Pre-
Columbian Symposia and Colloquia, ed. Cathy L. Costin (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Re-
search Library and Collection, 2016): 391–431.
Fig. 16: Execution and style of the text reflects the social status of the person associated with it as
depicted on Stela 12, Piedras Negras. Details of Piedras Negras, Stela 12, front, drawing by David
Stuart © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, 2004.15.6.19.38. Piedras Negras, Stela 12, details of glyphs on front, drawing by David
Stuart © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology. 2004.15.6.19.41.
inset relief, incised them on the surface next to or above the figures. The name
glyphs of two captured local nobles who stand out among the captives have also
been incised at this level, on the surface next to their portraits. Notable here is how
only incised glyphs, rather than inset text fields, were executed here and in the low-
est visual register (Fig. 16).
The lowest level of the scene shows the group of beaten and humiliated captives
who are visually positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy represented on this
monument. Their names and titles are incised on their bodies, in contrast to the situ-
ation of the other figures. Previously, we saw how captives lost their ontological sta-
tus as people through this “tagging” and in such cases functioned only as property
or, more generally, “things.” The fact that they really do represent the lowest level of
the depicted social ranking or hierarchy is also expressed by the absence of sculptor
signatures from this register. One could speculate that no sculptor wanted to associ-
ate his name with the disgraced captives. In sum, the example of Stela 12 from Pied-
ras Negras clearly highlights that not only visual language, i.e. the composition of
visual elements, can express hierarchies, values and status. In addition, layout, form,
size and execution of inscriptions or text fields were semiotically charged to visually
manifest these social phenomena. There is much evidence to suggest that these semi-
otic codes to indicate hierarchy were intentionally deployed to this end.
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Anna Kollatz
How to Approach Emic Semantics
of Dependency in Islamic Legal Texts:
Reflections on the Ḥanafī Legal Commentary
al-Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī and its
British-Colonial Translation
1 Introduction
Historical semantics as a method of study has yet to be applied to Islamicate concepts
of strong asymmetrical dependency.1 A major reason for this is simply a lack of tech-
nology: a constitutive part of historical-semantic studies is the evaluation of large
source corpora by means of digital quantitative methods, to identify and count, for
example, certain conceptual terms or Schlüsselbegriffe in a body of source material.2
But we still lack the technical means to search digitally manuscript material or even
 The study of historical semantics still lacks a pronounced theoretical foundation in other disci-
plines, since the amount of data provided by case studies is as yet too small, as Simone Schultz-
Balluff notes for German Studies. Cf. Simone Schultz-Balluff, Wissenswelt ‘triuwe’: Kollokationen –
Semantisierung – Konzeptualiserung (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2018): e.g. 13. Schultz-
Balluff’s study shows the possibilities inherent in digitally supported historical-semantic research.
In the field of Islamic studies, Ulrich Haarmann has pointed to the connection of jurisprudence and
morphology; cf. Ulrich Haarmann, “Religiöses Recht und Grammatik im klassischen Islam,” Zeit-
schrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Supplement 2 (1974): 149–69. Kurt Franz’ semi-
nal article, “Slavery in Islam: Legal Norm and Social Practice,” in Slavery and the Slave Trade in the
Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500 CE), ed. Reuven Amitai and Christoph Cluse (Turnhout: Bre-
pols, 2017): 51–141 is an excellent starting point for the study of conceptual terms in the context of
Islamic slavery, especially for the use of conceptual terms in the Qurʾān and his detailed discussion
of the current state of research. Another 2017 publication, Das islamische Sklavenrecht by Rainer
Oßwald, gives detailed insight into concepts of strong asymmetrical dependency in Mālikī law:
Rainer Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2017).
 The present essay does not seek to expand the discussion of the concepts and theory of historical
semantics, but translates certain concepts from neighboring disciplines in a heuristic manner, to
test their applicability on the text corpus in question. As there is to date no substantial literature on
historical semantics in the field of Islamicate History, I rely on recent publications from German
and Asian studies. For a discussion of the concept Begriff see Dietrich Busse, “Begriffsstrukturen
und die Beschreibung von Begriffswissen: Analysemodelle und -verfahren einer wissensanalytisch
ausgerichteten Semantik (am Beispiel von Begriffen aus der Domäne Recht),” Archiv Für Begriffsge-
schichte 56 (2014): 153–95. In a similar way, Christian Schwermann uses the term Schlüsselwort, cf.
Christian Schwermann, ‘Dummheit’ in altchinesischen Texten: Eine Begriffsgeschichte, Veröffentli-
chungen des Ostasien-Instituts der Ruhr-Universität Bochum 62 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011):
32. His analysis of the word field “stupidity” is, in addition to Schultz-Balluff’s study (see n. 1),
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-007
180 Anna Kollatz
editions written in the Arabic alphabet, which makes it virtually impossible to base
research on large source corpora in Arabic, Persian or Urdu.3
The first part of this essay therefore discusses the experimental workaround mode
I tried to apply in order to generate a set of data that would give me initial insights
into the historical semantics of strong asymmetrical dependency in Indian Ḥanafī
legal texts. A crucial part of this workaround mode is the use of English translations
of the texts in question, because these are digitally searchable. My aim was not to use
the English version as a basis for my analysis, but merely to help me identify relevant
passages in the original text. However, this approach proved to be problematic for
reasons which I will discuss below. The most challenging part was the textual history
of the English translation itself, which is a product of British colonial appropriation
and the transformation of what colonial officials found in their new realm. Due to
this particular genesis, the English translation is of limited use as a reference text for
research into the emic semantics inherent in the original text. However, the special
setting of this case offers the opportunity to investigate changes in the semantics of
the translation process. The Hidāya actually has a long history of translation, in
which the original Arabic text was translated into Persian and then into English.
The main part of this article consists of a qualitative analysis of key words in the
original Arabic source text. It will focus on the Kitāb al-ʿitāq, the Book on Manumis-
sion from the Ḥanafī legal commentary al-Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī, which
served as a reference text for Islamic jurisprudence for British Colonial officials; a
function it had already previously fulfilled during Islamicate rule in northern India.
My analysis suggests that forms of strong asymmetrical dependency are not limited
to slavery: not only in the Hidāya, but in Islamic law in general. The practice of re-
leasing and partially or gradually manumitting enslaved persons over a longer pe-
riod of time results in gradations of strong asymmetrical dependency, for which
Islamic law has special terms. I will trace these terms in a part of the text and will
localize them on a continuum of dependency, following the concept developed by
David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman.4 In a final step, I will compare the results of
this analysis with the method employed by the English translator. For future interest
in the development of historical semantic fields, it would be most helpful to study
another example of the manifold and fruitful use of digital searches of text corpora in the research
of historical-semantic questions.
 Initial promising results have recently been announced by “The Digital Orientalist,” see e.g. https://
digitalorientalist.com/2020/03/04/some-thoughts-about-arabic-script-ocr/ [accessed 17.05.2022], and
the JEDLI toolbox developed at Hamburg University that allows indexing an context searches in digi-
tized texts, see https://www.islamic-empire.uni-hamburg.de/publications-tools/digital-tools/jedli.html
[accessed 17.05.2022]. However, until the launch of a software that allows OCR’ing manuscripts and
editions, digitally assisted research will be restricted to a small corpus of recent editions.
 David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, “Dependence, Servility and Coerced Labor in Time and
Space,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3: AD 1420–1804, ed. David Eltis et al.
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 1–21.
How to Approach Emic Semantics of Dependency in Islamic Legal Texts 181
the full translation process of the Hidāya from the Arabic original into Persian trans-
lations that were used by both the Mughal and the British authorities in India, with
the subsequent British-colonial rendering. As the Persian versions are available only
in manuscript, and thus require much preliminary work in Indian archives, this as-
pect cannot be considered until further studies have been carried out.
2 The al-Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī

This article concentrates on a normative text from the Ḥanafī legal school. The selected
source implies that the study will initially only allow conclusions to be drawn about
the historical semantics of normative perceptions of strong asymmetrical dependencies
in this particular madhhab (legal school). This complements Veruschka Wagner’s
essay in this volume, which focuses on historical-semantic studies of praxeological
texts, namely archive material from Ottoman court registers.5 The al-Hidāya fī sharḥ
bidāya al-mubtadī (commonly known as Hidāya, “The Guidance”) is a twelfth-century
legal commentary by the Ḥanafī scholar Burhān al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Marghīnānī
(1135–1197), a native from the region of Farghana (modern Uzbekistan).6 The multi-
volume Arabic text is a concise commentary (mukhtaṣar)7 on al-Marghīnānī’s own
compendium al-Bidaya al-mubtadī (hence the title Guidance through al-Bidaya al-
mubtadī), which was in turn based on two renowned legal treatises, the Mukhtaṣar by
al-Qudūrī and al-Shaybānī’s al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr. It belongs to the corpus of Ḥanafī nor-
mative literature and is considered one of the most influential compendia in Ḥanafī
law to this day. There are numerous super- and supra-commentaries and additions by
contemporary and later scholars.8 This rich hypertextual tradition linked to our basic
text would invite further investigation into how historical-semantic notions of strong
asymmetrical dependencies developed over centuries of discussion among Islamic ju-
rists, and – an aspect that makes this source genre especially interesting – in different
geographical contexts of the Islamic and Islamicate world. While the Hidāya was writ-
ten by an author from Transoxania, i.e. the eastern parts of the Islamic world, it spread
 The Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire both count among the predominantly Ḥanafī Is-
lamic realms.
 He is regarded as the most important member of a well-established family of Ḥanafī legal schol-
ars, cf. Willi Heffening, “al-Marg̲h̲īnānī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. Pery Bear-
man et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0685 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 The genre flourished in the field of Islamic jurisprudence, among many others. See Albert Arazi
and Haggai Ben-S̲h̲ammay, “Muk̲h̲taṣar,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. Pery Bear-
man et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0792 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Cf. Willi Heffering, “al-Marg̲h̲īnānī”; for the transmission of the main text and of many of the
related commentaries see Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols., 2nd ed.
(Leiden: Brill, 1943–49): vol. 2: 466–69 and vol. 1: 644–49.
182 Anna Kollatz
quickly over all regions inhabited by Ḥanafī Muslims, among those the Islamicate
realms on the Indian subcontinent.9 It would be an intriguing task to compare the his-
torical-semantic notions of strong asymmetrical dependency in the two hypotexts men-
tioned above with those in the Hidāya itself and several super-commentaries from
beyond the region.
The Hidāya covers, in a total of eight volumes,10 all aspects of Islamic law. This
includes both provisions concerning the relationship between God and human beings
(ʿibāda), such as prerequisites for the proper conduct of worship and other religious
duties of Muslims, and juridical regulations for the social life in Muslim societies
(muʿāmalāt), including marital or criminal law, among others.11 For example, vol-
ume one of the 1791 English translation contains Book 1 on zakāt (i.e. the obligation
of giving alms, which as a religious duty for Muslims comes directly after the obliga-
tion of five prayers a day), Book 2 on marriage, Book 3 on fosterage, Book 4 on di-
vorce, Book 5 on the manumission of slaves, and Book 6 on vows.12 The Hidāya has
no separate chapter or book dedicated to slave law exclusively, a fact that seems as-
tonishing only at first glance. As slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical de-
pendency formed an integral part of Islamicate societies,13 special legal provisions
 Other regions with a majority on Ḥanafī Sunni Muslims are the Levant, Egypt and Turkey, parts of
the Balkans and Central Asia. Ḥanafī minorities lived and still live in most other regions of the Is-
lamic umma.
 The edition I used for this article is Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Marghīnānī, al-
Hidāya fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Luknawī (Karachi: Maktaba al-Bushra, 2011).
All quotations from the Arabic texts in this article are based on this edition. All translations, except
otherwise stated, are mine. I will refer to the Arabic text as Hidāya, with the volume number given
in Latin numerals.
 On the architecture and development of Islamic jurisprudence, see e.g. Gotthelf G. Bergsträsser,
Bergsträsser’s Grundzüge des islamischen Rechts, ed. Joseph Schacht, Lehrbücher des Seminars für
Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin 35 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1935); Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Mu-
hammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950); Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic
Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunnī uṣūl al-fiqh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
A French translation of one of the Hidāya’s sources, together with an analysis of the regulations on
personal status, is available in Georges Henri Bousquet and Léon Bercher, eds., Le statut personnel
en droit musulman hanéfite: Texte et traduction annotée du Muḫtaṣar d’al-Qudûri, Institut des
hautes études de Tunis: Bibliothèque juridique et economique 3 (Paris: Recueil Sirey, [1952?]).
 Cf. Charles Hamilton, trans., The Hedàya, or Guide. A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws
Translated by the order of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal by Charles Hamilton, 4 vols.
(London: Bensley, 1791): vol. 4, without a table of contents in the original edition. For a table of
contents, see the second edition, which however omitted the text of “Book V on Manumission,” cf.
Charles Hamilton, trans., The Hedàya, or Guide. A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws Translated
by the order of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal by Charles Hamilton, 2nd ed. (Lahore:
Premier Book House, 1957).
 Franz, “Slavery in Islam”; see also Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht. On the development of
concepts of freedom in Islamic law, see Irene Schneider, “Freedom and Slavery in Early Islamic Time
(1st/7th and 2nd/8th Centuries),” Al-Qanṭara 28 (2007): 353–82 and the classic Franz Rosenthal, The
concerning the legal position and treatment of dependent people form part of all sec-
tions of the commentary. It might thus be misleading to use a term like Islamic slave
law, because this would imply the notion of a separate body of provisions relating to
slaves or other dependents. Moreover, as the analysis of emic conceptual terms in
this article will show, the Hidāya knows far more variations of strong asymmetrical
dependency than slavery alone. It is worth pointing out in passing that slavery and
forms of strong asymmetrical dependency directly derived from it are always dis-
cussed in this legal commentary, as they are in other Islamic legal writings, in close
conjunction with legal statuses of, for example, a minor child, a married woman or a
not wholly sane person.14
The structure and argumentation in all books and chapters correspond to the
genre characteristics of Islamic legal commentaries: they are based on the citation
of Qurʾānic verses and/or material from the sunna (the tradition) of the Prophet Mu-
ḥammad. In a second step, the author refers to relevant Ḥanafī teachings, including
discussions or controversies, occasionally also differences to other Islamic schools
of law, without bringing forward a definite answer to the questions raised.15 The
commentary is obviously intended for a specialist readership, as it neither explains
nor defines the legal vocabulary used. So to approach the semantic fields of our in-
terest, we need to scrutinize the argumentation related to the defined keywords.
This approach via qualitative analysis includes the search for definitions by oppos-
ing terms and by indirect definitions, e.g. in the context of exemplifying passages.16
As an important Ḥanafī legal text, the Hidāya was held in high regard in the
Mughal Empire as well; some volumes of the text, formerly in the library of Mughal
emperor Farrūkh Siyār (r. 1713–1719), have been preserved in the British Library,17
and numerous copies are in Indian manuscript libraries.18 Given the discursive
character of Islamic jurisprudence, we may imagine that al-Marghīnānī’s twelfth-
Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1960); and on a more general
level Hans Müller, “Sklaven,” in Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 1, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Vorderen
Orients in islamischer Zeit, ed. Bertold Spuler (Leiden: Brill, 1977): 53–83.
 Similarly Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht: 113 and especially esp. 123.
 Such a form of open argumentation that allows different conclusions is also typical for the
genre and stands witness to the degree of tolerance towards ambiguous positions in Islamicate cul-
ture. Cf. Thomas Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität: Eine andere Geschichte des Islams (Frankfurt am
Main: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011).
 The detection of emic definitions and related keywords, moreover, is a prerequisite for future
qualitative analysis.
 For example, MS London, British Library, RSPA 85, a manuscript of the first volume of the Hi-
dāya bearing seals from the courts of the Mughal emperors Muḥammad Muʿaẓẓam Bahādur Shāh
(r. 1708–1712) and Farrukh Siyar (r.1713–1719), and a further one of the British governor Henry Van-
sittart, dated 1164/1750, and RSPA 86, the second part of the text, which bears a possession mark of
Sir William Jones (1746–1794), who presented the copy to the Royal Society in 1792.
 E.g. Khudā Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, 1970. Catalogue of the Arabic and Persian manuscripts
in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library. 2nd ed. Patna: The Library, vol. 39, Jurisprudence,
184 Anna Kollatz
century compendium still served as a standard reference work during late Mughal
rule in India, together with commentaries and supra-commentaries by later genera-
tions. It was an established practice of the Mughals to translate works from Arabic as
well as Sanskrit or Hindi into Persian, the lingua franca of the empire.19 The British
could draw on the experience of specialists trained in Mughal service when they in
their turn had the Hidāya translated into Persian. Finally, in 1791, Charles Hamilton
published an English translation of the commentary in London. This text has an ex-
tensive preface, which, incidentally, would offer interesting material for the study of
colonial governance and scholarship, and the positionality of scholars in this context.
The preface also contains a short outline of sources, functions and institutions of the
“Mussulman Law,”20 written to introduce British colonial officials to the basics of In-
dian society and the evolution of Islamic law. Prepared on behalf of the British gover-
nor in Bengal, the translation formed part of British efforts to structure the law of their
colonial subjects according to British standards21 and thus stands witness to “a West-
ern style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”22
Clearly observing the topic with an “imperial gaze,” it “defines the identity of the sub-
ject, objectifies it within the identifying system of power relations and confirms its
subalternity and powerlessness,”23 and therefore cannot serve as a reliable basis for
any research on the Arabic or Persian source texts, but must be recognized as a
highly problematic adaption.24 This is precisely the reason why this text is suitable
for exemplifying translation problems from a historical-semantic point of view.
No. 2352/ HLÖ No. 4079, Hudayah Farsi is a manuscript of the Persian translation of the Hidāyā pre-
pared on behalf of the British governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings (1732–1818), by the Indian Muslim
scholars Ghulām Yaḥyā Khān Biharī (d. after 1776), Maulavī Tājuddīn Bangālī (d. unknown), Mīr Mu-
ḥammad Ḥusain Irānī (d. unknown) and Sharīʿatullāh Sanbhalī (d. unknown), later revised by Mu-
ḥammad Rashīd b. Ziyāuddīn Bardawānī (d. unknown).
 On translation as a cultural technique in the Mughal empire, see e.g. Carl W. Ernst, “Muslim
Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Lan-
guages,” Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (2003): 173–95; for the impact of translations from Indic lan-
guages see Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016). The ANR/GRF funded project PersoIndica has prepared an exten-
sive list of translated manuscripts, see http://www.perso-indica.net/ [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Taken from the title of the English translation by Hamilton, The Hedàya, or Guide. Other Colo-
nial paraphrases use Moohummudan as a reference to Islamic law, cf. Neil Benjamin Edmonstone
Baillie, A Digest of Moohummudan Law (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875).
 As Hamilton, The Hedàya, or Guide writes in his translator’s preliminary discourse, cf. vol. 1,
especially v–vii.
 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003): 3.
 Bill Ashcroft et al., Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge,
2007): 19, 207.
 Even more problematic are digests prepared from a number of Islamic sources, like e.g. digests
of Islamic juridical texts. See for example Baillie, A Digest of Moohummudan Law.
3 Workaround Mode and Problems

But before we start the actual semantic analysis, I will briefly turn to the workaround
mode for texts that cannot be searched digitally. A simple search for “slave” in the
first volume of the English translation brought a total of 514 results on 676 pages.
The hits are evenly distributed over all chapters. This confirms one of the central
findings of Rainer Oßwald’s study on Mālikī law25 where he showed that Islamic
legal provisions on slavery are much more than just a distinct legal corpus dedicated
to slavery-specific issues such as enslavement, sale, etc. Oßwald’s impressive collec-
tion of evidence suggests that slavery was a factor firmly embedded in the social
order of Mālikī societies in North Africa. This implies that practically all aspects of
legal regulation of human life include distinct provisions for free, enslaved and
partly dependent people. Legal provisions for enslaved persons thus do not form a
separate body of slave law, but instead are integrated in all areas covered by Islamic
law. Due to this situation, searching for a single translated keyword can only reveal a
fraction of the relevant text passages,26 so further searches for possible keywords
were necessary. I then manually traced the relevant passages and the emic Arabic
terms, in the Arabic text. A multitude of Arabic emic terms are represented in the En-
glish translation as “slave(ry),” “manumitted/manumission” and “free(dom)/freed.”
Figure 1 shows that the translation has often been transverse to emic semantic fields.
The emic terms ʿabd,27 ama, mamlūk28 and riqq, which originate from different seman-
tic fields and can therefore refer to different legal statuses, are synonymously trans-
lated as “slave,” “slavery” and “bondage.” In a similar way, words belonging to the
different emic semantic fields of ḥ-r-r (related to “freedom”)29 and ʿayn-t-q (related to
“manumission”) were translated crosswise into the English words “manumitted” and
“free(dom),” respectively (see Fig. 1).
In relation to the historical semantics of the English terms chosen by the trans-
lator, this transversal translation practice may have produced feasible renditions of
the emic concepts in individual cases. In the overall picture, however, it has re-
sulted in terminological obscurities that can only be clarified by semantic analysis
of the original source text. That the crosswise translation into a single semantic
 Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht.

 The same would hold true for quantitative searches based on a limited set of keywords in Arabic
or Persian texts.
 The Arabic root ʿ–b–d is of common Semitic origin and refers both to the semantic fields of wor-
ship (of God) and to the semantic field of work (in Hebrew), service and slavery. Cf. Arthur Jeffrey,
The Foreign Vocabulary of The Qur’ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938): 209–10.
 See below.
 Translations of Arabic terms in brackets serve exclusively to make the terms comprehensible to
readers who do not read Arabic. They do not represent the result of a semantic analysis, but are
merely approximations. I denote the semantic fields associated to Arabic verbal roots as related to
an English translation of the emic concept the root is connected to.
186 Anna Kollatz
Fig. 1: Translation across emic semantic fields. Graphic by A. Kollatz.
field in English is problematic can also be seen from Kurt Franz’s analysis, who
found, for example, that the different terms in the Qurʾānic terminology of manu-
mission were not interchangeable.30 In what follows, I will concentrate on the first
step of this clarification, namely the examination of the Arabic source terms. This is
where the possibilities of digitally supported search in the translated text end. Until
such times as suitable applications for Arabic are available, it is therefore advisable
to resort to a qualitative analysis for clarifying emic semantic fields. Due to the
sheer volume of text, such analyses can only be carried out as individual case
studies.
4 Emic Semantic Fields

The analysis in this article concentrates on the fifth book of the Hidāya, following
the British count, the Kitāb al-ʿitāq (Book on Manumission),31 which discusses the
manumission of dependent people. As this chapter deals with the conceptual terms
for different states or grades of dependency separately, it is the ideal starting point
for an investigation into the emic definitions of these concepts. By studying the dif-
ferent ways of manumission and the legal states a former dependent could reach, it
is possible to delineate the different states and their position on a continuum of
dependency.
Figure 2 illustrates the Arabic roots, each defining its own semantic field, and
several selected keywords that derive from the respective root.32 The following
 Franz, “Slavery in Islam”: 66.

 The Arabic edition has no chapter numbering; the Kitāb al-ʿitāq is part of the third volume of
the Karachi edition, cf. Hidāya III, 346–414.
 For better readability, instead of referring to the semantic fields by their root structure, I will
choose one of the derived terms, e.g. for the semantic fields ḥ-r-r (related to “freedom”) and m-l-k
(related to “possession”), I will use the keywords ḥurriyya (“freedom”) and milk/mamlūk (“posses-
sion/a person possessed by another”) respectively. To distinguish the naming of a semantic field
from the reference to a specific source term, I will refer to Arabic terms as used in the Hidāya with
discussion will focus on three semantic fields: ḥurriyya (related to “freedom”) and
milk (related to “possession”) appear in the chapter on manumission as two impor-
tant, but clearly distinct, pillars of the definitions of dependence and manumission
respectively. A third semantic field is ʿitāq (related to “manumission”), which fea-
tures in the title of the fifth book of the Hidāya, the Kitāb al-iʿtāq, the Book on Man-
umission. Finally, I will also look at the emic semantic fields of three central Arabic
terms denoting enslaved people, ʿabd (translates both as “servant” and “slave,”
from the root ʿayn-b-d, related to ʿubudiyya “service”), ama (from the old Semitic
root a-m-m, translates as “female slave”) and riqq (the most common term used to
denote enslaved people in the Hidāya, from the root r-q-q, related to “being en-
slaved”). The text part under consideration here did not contain translations of
terms belonging to the Arabic root kh-d-m, which is related to the semantic field of
“service,” e.g. khādim, which may denote both free and enslaved servants.
Fig. 2: Semantic fields and related conceptual terms. Graphic by A. Kollatz.
Before commencing with my semantic analysis of terms used in the Arabic original
of the Hidāya, we need to take a brief look at the two semantic fields of ʿubudiyya/
riqq (“slavery”) and ḥurriyya (“freedom”). There is no exclusive semantic field or
conceptual term in Arabic that would equal “slavery.” Instead, several terms from
at least two semantic fields are usually translated as “slavery” or “slave.” Kurt
Franz has discussed the individual conceptual terms to be found in the Qurʾān and
the ḥadīth, the tradition of prophet Muḥammad’s sayings and deeds, which form
the main normative basis for Islamic legislation.33 Among the most common terms
an approximate English translation and the Arabic source term in brackets, e.g. manumission
(iʿtiqād).
 For the terminology of slavery and related concepts in Qurʾān and ḥadīth, see Franz, “Slavery
in Islam”: 59–69, 73–81. For the ambiguity and emic discussions of the conceptual term ḥurriyya,
see also Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht: 23.
188 Anna Kollatz
translated as “slavery” are ʿubūdiyya and riqq, while terms derived from the semantic
field ḥurriyya exclusively refer to the state of freedom. The Kitāb al-iʿtāq does not con-
tain a discussion of the binary opposition of “slavery” and “freedom,” which however
underlies legal concepts of strong asymmetrical dependency in Islamic law. Islamic
jurisprudence as well as research on the topic usually refer to two quotations that ex-
press the Islamic principle of understanding human beings as free, owing to their sta-
tus as God’s creatures:
The general doctrine reads al-nās aḥrār fī l-aṣl, ‘people are freemen in principle (or: by origin),’
or al-aṣl huwa al-ḥurriyya, ‘the basic principle (or: the original state) is freedom.’ Slavery is
thus an exceptional state, sharply distinguished from the original.34
However, given the discursive character of Islamic law, there is no constitutional

definition of either ḥurriyya or the different terms for strong asymmetrical depen-
dencies that would apply across all schools of law. Law books and commentaries
usually derive their individual definitions from Qurʾānic quotations, or abstain
from sharp definitions, relying on the recipients’ knowledge. The Hidāya discusses
definitions of terminology only in such passages where a more precise description
is necessary for clarifying the context: for example when it is a matter of presenting
different views in different schools of law. The divergence between semantic fields,
mentioned above, becomes obvious when al-Marghinānī compares the definition of
manumission from a Shāfiʿī and a Ḥanafī perspective. In this case, manumission
(iʿtiqād) is defined by contrasting it with characteristics of its opposing legal status,
namely riqq (slavery). The first definition explains the Shāfiʿī opinion, according to
which it is impossible to manumit a slave partially. Manumission, or the legal status
of being manumitted (ʿitq) is contrasted with slavery (riqq), which is defined as a
legal status as well, namely as the absence of legal capacity:
Manumission (iʿtāq) is the establishment of the status of being manumitted (ʿitq), which
means the capacity of taking decisions (quwwa ḥukumiyya). It is established by the removal
(izāla) of its opposite (ḍidduhā), which is slavery (riqq), and which means the absence of the
capacity of taking decisions (ḍaʿf ḥukumī). Both criteria cannot be separated from each other,
like (the criterion of being married) in the case of divorce.35
As long as both manumission and slavery are defined as legal statuses, both are
regarded as inseparable entities. The second definition, however, explaining the
Ḥanafī point of view, establishes a differentiation between the personal right of pos-
session (milk), to which the slave owner is entitled, and the legal status of slavery
(riqq). According to the Ḥanafī definition, manumission does not affect the legal
status of the slave in question, but only removes the owner’s right of possession,
 Franz, “Slavery in Islam”: 81–82. The quotation is followed by an extensive discussion of the
question whether this principle is to be acknowledged as generally valid.
 Hidāya III, 363. All translations from the Arabic, unless otherwise stated, are mine.
because the owner can make decisions only for such items as they possess.36 In a case
of shared ownership, a slave cannot become fully manumitted if only one owner gives
up their right of possession, because the owner is not entitled to decide on possessions
owned by others:
Manumission (iʿtāq) is the establishment of the status of being manumitted (ʿitq). It is estab-
lished by the removal (izāla) of possession (milk). Possession is (a person’s) right, while slav-
ery (riqq) is a legal status. [. . .] This means that (the owner) can remove (a part) of his right,
without touching upon any other.37
This definition suggests that slave owners cannot affect the legal status of an en-
slaved person, but it does not explain which person or institution is entitled to do so.
So the commentary does not present an absolute definition of either term, nor does
the text mark one of the definitions as preferable. However, in the case of partially
manumitted slaves, the Hidāya recommends that the remaining owners should either
release them as well, or at least grant them the right to ransom themselves, for exam-
ple in the context of a kitāba contract (see below).
It is also important to note that the Hidāya regards the conceptual terms it dis-
cusses as having different qualities. For example, al-Marghīnānī defines a phrase a
slave-owner can use to manumit an enslaved person as “clear and well understood
both in the legal terminology and in common use” (ṣarīḥa fihi and mustaʿammila
fīhi sharʿan wa ʿurfan).38 If a slave owner uses such a phrase in front of a slave, they
will be manumitted fully and immediately, even if the owner did not intend to set
them free. Such phrases operate with the two sematic fields ḥurriyya (“freedom”)
and ʿitāq (“manumission”), which may contain either a verbal construction or con-
structions with different active or passive participles of the verbs in question.39 The
text lists examples for synonym formulations: “‘You are free,’ or ‘a manumitted per-
son,’ or ‘manumitted,’ or ‘a freed person,’ or ‘I have set you free,’ or ‘I have manu-
mitted you’” (Anta ḥurr, au muʿattaq, au ʿatīq, au muḥarrar, au qad ḥarrartuka, au
 In the general remarks on manumission (ʿitāq) at the beginning of the kitāb al-ʿitāq, al-
Marghinānī notes that a slave can only be legally released if the person releasing them has full
legal capacity and the slave is in their possession, cf. Hidāya III, 346–47. For the definition of en-
slaved persons as milk in Mālikī law, see Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht: 59–61.
 Hidāya III, 363–64.
 Hidāya III, 347.
 As a Semitic language, Arabic is based on a system of so-called verbal roots, which are formed
of a combination of three, sometimes four, basal consonants that each define a semantic field, from
which further verbs and nouns can be derived by the use of fixed morphological patterns. For a
discussion of the semantic field ḥurriyya, see below. For an introduction into traditional Arabic
grammar and morphology, see Jonathan Owens, “Traditional Arabic Grammar,” in Morphology. An
International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation, vol. 1, ed. Geert Booij, Chrisitian Leh-
mann and Joachim Mugdan (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2000): 67–75.
190 Anna Kollatz
qad iʿtaqadtuka).40 As al-Marghīnānī describes these phrases as equally effective in

leading to full and immediate manumission, we may conclude that the verbal roots
ḥurriyya and ʿitāq relate to the same concept of freedom, the first describing the
legal status of being free and enjoying full legal capacity, the second the legal pro-
cess of becoming free. Other terms are regarded to have a certain ambiguity, for ex-
ample phrases that use verbs or nouns from the semantic field milk. This semantic
field relates to ownership, chiefly from the slave-owners’ perspective in the context
of manumission. According to al-Marghinānī, phrases such as “I no longer have
any ownership rights over you” (lā milkun lī ʿalaika)41 are considered ambiguous
and therefore only effect a manumission if that is the owner’s intention.42 Ambigu-
ity may also result from the use of different languages, as al-Marghīnānī explains.
Both the Arabic and Persian form of address “oh free one” (arab. yā ḥurr/yā ḥurra,
pers. yā āzād) to an enslaved person by their owner are regarded as clear and thus
sufficient to manumit a slave immediately, even if this was not the intention of the
slave-owner. So the Arabic and Persian terms seem to be regarded as synonymous.
However, al-Marghīnānī mentions an exceptional case: if āzād happens to be the
slave’s personal name, the address yā āzād from an Arabic-speaking owner would
not effect an immediate manumission against the owner’s intentions. To clarify the
intention of setting such a slave free, it would however suffice to use the Arabic
formulation yā ḥurr, which cannot be mistaken for the slave’s personal name.43
5 Semantics of Manumissions and the Continuum

of Dependency
The Kitāb al-ʿitāq discusses a great variety of possible ways of manumitting a slave,
all of which are commonly found in Islamic legal treatises.44 There are several ways
of manumitting a slave or granting them the possibility to ransom themselves. Sev-
eral of these legal procedures result in (temporal) statuses of partial enslavement,
or partial manumission. As mentioned above, partial manumission can occur when
one of several joint owners of an enslaved person decides to release their share of
 Hidāya III, 347. Arabic is a consonant script, so it is frequently not clear from the written text
whether the female or male – or both – grammatical forms are referred to. In the transliterations
given here, I only display the male forms for ease of reading.
 Hidāya III, 348.
 Hidāya III, 348–49.
 Hidāya III, 348. For the semantics of the Persian āzād in Ottoman Ḥanafī documents, see the
article by Veruschka Wagner in this volume.
 For a general overview, see Franz, “Slavery in Islam.” For a case study on Mālikī law see
Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht.
the slave. Other procedures involve contractually guaranteed manumission at a

specified time in the future; or they may grant the enslaved person certain rights,
for example the right to accumulate possessions and dispose freely of them. These
forms of partial enslavement still feature characteristics of strong asymmetrical de-
pendency: while some cases include a contractual agreement between owner and
slave, others leave the slave without any written guarantee and can easily be re-
tracted by the owner or their heirs. The aim of the following discussion is to locate
the different forms of partial manumission on a continuum of dependency45 in
order to gain better insights into the architecture of concepts of strong asymmetrical
dependency in Ḥanafī law, and the emic classification of legal statuses between the
two extremes of ʿubudiyya, riqq (“slavery”) and ḥurriyya (“freedom”). They repre-
sent the extreme ends of the continuum of dependency sketched here. My criteria
are as follows: 1) The binding character of the contract or agreement between
owner and enslaved; 2) the differentiation of legal capacity: partially enslaved peo-
ple with the prospect of manumission may gain limited legal capacity either on
their own account, or as deputies of their owners. Depending on the form of partial
manumission, some partially enslaved persons thus enjoy more, or different, capac-
ities than others; 3) the semantic relations established between the different sta-
tuses in their definition by al-Marghīnānī. This is a tentative first approach to
classifying the semantics of dependency on the basis of a relatively small text basis.
It should not be understood in any shape or form as an attempt at an overall con-
cept for Ḥanafī law on the subcontinent, nor of Islamic law at large.
A pressing question that arises from reading the Kitāb al-ʿitāq concerns the status
of a formerly enslaved person. Where on the continuum between their former status
and that of a freeborn Muslim do they fall? To put it plainly: is the status of a muʿat-
taq (“manumitted one”) equal to the status of ḥurr (“free”), i.e. are they equal in sta-
tus to a freeborn Muslim? My earlier comparison of different phrases for manumitting
a slave suggested that the semantic fields ḥurriyya and ʿitāq were considered synony-
mous,46 but the way the two terms muʿattaq and ḥurr are used in the present text
sample indicate different connotations. In the Kitāb al-ʿitāq, al-Marghīnānī uses only
the term muʿattaq (or other derivates from the root) to describe the status of manu-
mitted slaves, which suggests a differentiation between this semantic field and the
field of ḥurriyya. So muʿattaq should be placed slightly below ḥurr on the continuum
of dependency. This assumption is supported by the fact that after the dissolution of
their legal bond to their former master, manumitted slaves enter into a new form of
social dependence towards them. This social status of walāʾ (al-ʿitq), “the enduring
 Eltis and Engerman, “Dependency, Servility and Coerced Labor in Time and Space.”
 Jeffrey gives “to be free” as the original meaning of the root in ancient Arabic poetry, cf. Jeffrey,
The Foreign Vocabulary of The Qur’ān: 211.
192 Anna Kollatz
attachment of the manumitted to the liberator,”47 keeps a manumitted slave in a life-

long social connection to their former master or the latter’s heirs, which includes cer-
tain obligations such as asking for permission to marry.48 Even full manumission
thus keeps the formerly enslaved in a form of dependence and thus cannot be under-
stood as equal to the status of a freeborn person (ḥurr). On the continuum of depen-
dency, I therefore placed the status of full manumission in the same range as walāʾ/
mawlā close to ḥurr, but slightly further down.
Muʿattaq (“manumitted”) works as an umbrella term for all fully manumitted for-
mer slaves. This legal status can be achieved directly and without preconditions,49
for example when the sole owner manumits by using an unambiguous formula, as
discussed above. Manumission can also come about under certain preconditions,
such as a vow by the owner (al-khilf bi-l-ʿitāq);50 or by self-ransom either with a con-
tract (kitāba) or without (ʿitāq ʿalā juʿl).51 Lastly, manumission may be contractually
deferred to a specified date, or enacted after the master’s death (tadbīr).52
In the case of both contractual and non-contractual self-ransom, the fulfilment
of the conditions depends on the actions of the slaves: they have to pay a certain
amount of money or provide a service to achieve manumission, in some cases within
a set period of time. Once the contract has been concluded, the (at this point still
enslaved) holders obtain certain rights that are denied to fully enslaved people. If
they do not manage to meet the conditions, they fall back into full enslavement.
However, if the conditions for a manumission set at a later date are independent of
the actions of the slave, such as when the master fixes a specific date of release, the
legal status of a slave with the prospect of conditional manumission changes from
the moment these conditions have been fixed and they cannot fall back into full en-
slavement. In both cases, the slave thus enters one of a number of legal statuses be-
tween slavery and full manumission. Each of these legal statuses is named according
 Franz, “Slavery in Islam”: 78. See also Daniel Pipes, “Mawlas: Freed Slaves and Converts in
Early Islam,” in Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980): 132–77. Reprinted in Robert Hoyland, ed., Muslims
and Others in Early Islamic Society, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 18 (Farnham:
Routledge, 2004): 277–322, 37 and Ulrike Mitter, Das frühislamische Patronat: Eine Studie zu den An-
fängen des islamischen Rechts, Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften 8 (Würz-
burg: Ergon, 2006).
 On the different conceptualizations of walāʾ, see e.g. Arent Jan Wensinck and Patricia Crone,
“Mawlā,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. Pery Bearman et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.
1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0714 [accessed 17.05.2022], and Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and
Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); as well as Pipes, “Mawlas.”
 For unconditional manumission in early Islamic law see Ulrike Mitter, “Unconditional Manu-
mission of Slaves in Early Islamic Law: A Ḥadīth Analysis,” in Der Islam 78 (2001): 35–72.
 See the relevant chapter, Hidāya III, 389–91.
 Hidāya III, 392–99; Hidāya IV, 338–400.
 Hidāya III, 400–402.
to the manner of conditional manumission decided by the owner or agreed with the
slave. Another form of conditional manumission concerns a female slave who bears
her owner’s child. Once the owner recognizes the child (who is then born free), the
woman enters the legal status of umm walad (“mother of the child”)53 and is auto-
matically manumitted upon his death.
In his analysis of Mālikī law, Rainer Oßwald proposed to unite all forms of partial
manumission (or enslavement) under the umbrella term “Hybridsklave” (hybrid
slave); he defines the shared feature of all these forms as a “Beimengung” (an admix-
ture) of freedom to the enslaved status.54 But the different forms of partial manumis-
sion result in very different sets of hybrid legal statuses and differently restricted
forms of legal capacity. In the following analysis of four terms used to denote varia-
tions of hybrid enslavement, I propose to evaluate these differentiations as criteria for
placing the different hybrid forms on the continuum of dependency (Figs. 3 and 4).
Fig. 3: Outline of the continuum of dependency. Graphic by A. Kollatz.
5.1 Contractual Conditional Manumission: kitāba / mukātab
While Islamic law does not provide for contract-based enslavement, e.g. of debtors, it
does allow contractually agreed self-ransom. From a legal point of view this is a con-
tract (kitāba) which regulates the manumission of an enslaved person upon the pay-
ment of a certain sum. For this reason the Hidāya does not discuss the kitāba in the
Book on Manumission. Instead, there is a separate Kitāb al-mukātab (“Book on the
holder of a kitāba contract”) with six chapters which discuss, for example, how a ki-
tāba contract needs to be worded to be considered valid, the rights and obligations of
 Hidāya III, 403–14.l.

 Oßwald, Das islamische Sklavenrecht: 207–8.
194 Anna Kollatz
a mukātab, and special cases like the kitāba for a slave in shared ownership, or the
question which legal status the child born by a mukātaba to her owner will have.55
The Hidāya interprets holders of such a kitāba as slaves who for a number of reasons
are no longer completely dependent on their owners. As soon as the contract is
drawn up, a mukātab has the right to acquire property (which is a prerequisite for the
self-ransom) and to dispose freely of their possessions. This is very different from a
fully enslaved person, who is not allowed to own property (lā milk li-l-mamlūk, “the
owned one has no possession”).56 Interestingly, the right of accumulating possessions
includes the right to buy slaves, a legally complicated constellation on which the Hi-
dāya has a separate chapter.57 However, the mukātab still remains in a state of full
enslavement with respect to the work they owe their owner.58 The Book on Manumis-
sion does, however, briefly discuss kitāba in the context of the manumission of a slave
owned by more than one owner. Once more, we clearly see the high degree of ambigu-
ity that results from the variable definitions of manumission. A mukātab who agreed a
kitāba with their single owner will eventually fall back into the status of full enslave-
ment if they cannot pay the ransom within the time agreed and so fails to fulfill their
part of the contract. But a mukātab who contracts a kitāba with just one of their several
owners will never fall back into full enslavement. In this case, the process of self-
ransom is interpreted as only affecting the property rights (milk) of the owner with
whom the contract was agreed. The mukātab cannot lose the property rights that have
come to them even upon incomplete payment, and so cannot revert into full enslave-
ment.59 Such subtleties ultimately make it impossible to determine the status of the ki-
tāba at a fixed point in the continuum of dependency. We should instead expect a
number of very different combinations of, on the one hand, a mukātab’s capacity to
act, and on the other their continuing dependency.
5.2 Non-Contractual Manumission Upon Payment: ʿitāq ʿalā juʿl

and maʾdhūn
In contrast to the mukātab, who may revert to a fully enslaved status if they fail to
fulfil their contractual obligations, and who in any case remains a slave in terms of
their tasks, the Hidāya states that a slave to whom the owner promises release for a
certain price (juʿl) is subject to immediate manumission. The first paragraph of the
“chapter on manumission for a certain price” (bāb al-ʿitq ʿalā juʿl) compares this
 Hidāya VI, 338–400.

 Hidāya III, 346.
 Hidāya VI, 360–66.
 Hidāya III, 364–65.
 Hidāya III, 365.
process to a contract of sale, by which the buyer receives the merchandise immedi-
ately but has to pay off their debts subsequently.
If someone releases his slave (ʿabd) for money and the slave accepts, he is (immediately) free
(ḥurr). For example, if someone says ‘For a thousand dirhams you are free’, the slave is re-
leased at the moment this is spoken (bi-qaulihi), because this is an exchange of property for a
different kind of property (muʿāwaḍa al-māl bi-ghair al-māl) [. . .] As in a contract of sale, he is
free (ḥurr) at the moment he agrees to the contract. The price he has to pay is a debt upon his
person. This differs from kitāba, because the latter comes into force only upon full payment
and concerns the termination (qiyām) of enslavement (riqq).60
Again, the defining criterion is the nature of the item involved: while ʿitāq ʿalā juʿl
refers solely to property rights (milk), kitāba is about a contract that changes the legal
status of the slave. Ultimately, therefore, ʿitāq ʿalā juʿl comprises two logical steps:
first, the enslaved buys the title to themselves. From the legal point of view, this is a
sales contract by which the property right is transferred to the buyer with immediate
effect, even before full payment of the contracted price has been made. As such, it
does not affect the legal status of the enslaved. But since no human being can own
themselves, they are automatically declared free (ḥurr) in a second step. This form of
sales contract, by which an enslaved person is immediately and fully freed but may
still have to pay off a debt, is probably the most direct and safest way to leave the
slave status. This also explains why there is no specific term for slaves released in
this way: the process turns them directly into muʿattaqs. However, even if they are no
longer threatened by re-enslavement, a debtor continues to be in a strong asymmetri-
cal relationship of dependency to their former owner. They also lose their entitlement
to the care (however limited) which slave owners were required to provide to both
slaves and mukātabs.
The owner can also make full payment of the price a condition, in which case the
slave is manumitted only upon such payment. In the meantime, the Hidāya tells us,
they count as maʾdhūn, because they are neither completely released nor in possession
of a written guarantee for their right to be freed by a kitāba contract.61 By demanding a
compensation for manumission from the maʾdhūn, the owner implicitly grants them
the right to accumulate property, similar to the case of the mukātab. However, accord-
ing to the Hidāya there is no legal consensus on the question of whether the owner’s
promise is to be regarded as legally binding. In the case of a contractual kitāba the
owner must completely manumit his mukātab after full payment, but a maʾdhūn re-
mains dependent on their owner’s willingness to keep to the verbal agreement – or on
 The text goes on to explain that this form of contract resembles marriage and divorce contracts,
because in all three cases, property is used to “buy” something that is not property. Cf. Hidāya III, 393.
 Hidāya III, 393.
196 Anna Kollatz
a judge’s willingness to interpret it as a binding contract.62 As maʾdhūns can still be

sold and remain under their owner’s authority until full payment,63 I placed this sta-
tus of dependency next to full enslavement at the lowest point of the continuum of
dependency.
5.3 Unilateral Manumission Practices: Vows, tadbīr/mudabbar

and istilād/umm walad
Finally, it is also possible for the owner to make the manumission of a slave subject
to conditions that cannot be influenced by the slave. Nur Sobers Khan proposed a
classification of manumission practices according to the criterion of whether manu-
mission was effected solely by the owner (unilateral manumission), or with the con-
sent or cooperation of the enslaved person, which we might describe as bilateral
manumission, though she does not use this term.64 None of the types of manumis-
sion discussed in this last section can be influenced by the enslaved person, and
we might therefore describe them as unilateral, thereby distinguishing them from
the practices discussed earlier. However, even these manumission types result in a
gradual upward shift of the enslaved person’s legal status on the continuum of de-
pendency, even though they do not necessarily lead to full manumission.
The Hidāya mentions vows by the owner and discusses several examples of le-
gally binding or invalid wordings.65 Since such vows do not result in special legal sta-
tuses between full enslavement and freedom I will not discuss them here. A special
case is the owner’s commitment to grant the slave manumission upon their death,
the guarantee being called tadbīr.66 Slaves whose status is tied to such a promise or
oath enter the status of mudabbar. The Hidāya defines the promise of tadbīr as a
“clear” (ṣarīḥ) statement of manumission planned for the future (ithbāt al-ʿitq ʿan
dabr); therefore, a mudabbar may not be sold or otherwise transferred to another
 Hidāya III, 393–95.

 Hidāya III, 395.
 Nur Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles. Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court
Registers, 1560–1572 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2014): 70, where she defines the Ottoman prac-
tice of ʿitāq as “unilateral.” It must be noted that the Ottoman practice of ʿitāq as described by So-
bers-Khan differs from the rather general designation of the word in the Hidāya, where it serves as
an umbrella term for the various manumission practices discussed in it.
 Hidāya III, 389–91, bāb al-ḥilf bi-l-ʿitāq.
 Cf. Hidāya III, 400–402, bāb al-tadbīr (chapter on tadbīr). In its original sense, tadbīr means “to
plan” or “to look forward to some action to be implemented in the future.” Cf. Hans Wehr, s. v.
“dabara,” in A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic: Arabic-English, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Urbana IL:
Spoken Language Services, 1994).
owner. In this aspect, the status of mudabbar resembles that of the mukātab in Ḥanafī
doctrine.67 Tadbīr is defined first as a gift, but later, the Hidāya prefers to define tadbīr
as an inheritance (waṣīya). If one were to understand tadbīr as a gift, the mudabbar
would receive full freedom upon the death of the owner. Yet if tadbīr is defined as an
inheritance, the Hidāya again interprets enslaved persons including mudabbars as
property. So the mudabbar paradoxically is both part of the estate and an heir at the
same time. Since all property must be divided among the heirs, the mudabbar only re-
ceives the title to one third of himself, while the other two thirds go to the other heirs
or to the treasury. He will have to ransom the remaining two thirds from the owner’s
heirs, if they agree, and otherwise remains partly dependent.68 So a mudabbar does
not directly advance to the status of a manumitted person (muʿattaq), but rather into
that of a partially released person; their status seems to lie somewhere between the
contractually secured mukātab and the maʾdhūn. Since the promise of manumission is
linked to the death of the owner, a mudabbar may not be sold69 – this would violate
the conditions. They do, however, remain completely dependent on their owner in all
other ways, and do not obtain any further rights, such as the right to acquire property,
because the right of ownership remains untouched.70
Finally, the Hidāya also discusses a form of conditional manumission that re-
sults in a temporal intermediary status of dependency achievable for female slaves.
If a female slave bears the child of her owner, and the owner recognizes this child
as his own, the female slave (ama) will gain the status of umm walad (“mother of
the child”) upon the birth of the child.71 There has been some debate on whether a
woman can also achieve this status in the case of a miscarriage, but that is not of
interest for the purpose of this article. The status of umm walad safeguards the liv-
ing conditions of the woman to a degree that might even appear favorable com-
pared to the status of a married woman. An umm walad cannot be sold (like the
mukātab and the mudabbar), nor can she be coerced into concubinage or given to
other men for that purpose.72 Her owner has to offer her a decent standard of living,
as he would to a wife from a lower class family; but he cannot end the relationship
by divorce as he can a marriage. As such, he is obliged to look after the umm walad
until his death, unless he marries her off to another man. Apart from sexual serv-
ices, an umm walad however is required to render the same sorts of services as an
enslaved person and so retains the status on an enslaved person in this respect.
 Hidāya III, 400.

 Hidāya III, 402.
 Hidāya III, 400.
 Hidāya III, 402.
 Hidāya III, 403–14, bāb al-istilād (“chapter on the [manumission following] the birth of a
child”).
 Hidāya III, 403.
198
Anna Kollatz
Fig. 4: Hybrid statuses on the continuum of dependency (tentative order). Graphic by A. Kollatz.
She is only manumitted fully upon the death of her owner. Unlike the mudabbar,
she does not form part of the deceased owner’s estate.73
6 Conclusion
The Hidāya describes a number of ways of achieving partial of full manumission. Sim-
ilar manumission practices are also described in other Islamic madhhabs, and have
been analyzed e.g. by Rainer Oßwald for the Mālikī school of law; and by Nur Sobers-
Khan for Ḥanafī manumission documents from the Ottoman Empire.74 While Rainer
Oßwald suggested that the manumission practices in question should be described as
hybrid enslavement (“Hybridsklaven”), Nur Sobers Khan proposed to distinguish uni-
lateral – and thus, implicitly, also bilateral – forms of manumission. As a result of my
historical-semantic analysis in this article, I would suggest the duration of the process
as a third criterion of definition. While some rare forms of manumission discussed in
the Hidāya lead to immediate and full manumission in the legal sense (e.g. the manu-
mission without condition, the ʿitāq ʿalā juʿl), most other practices might be described
as gradual. These forms cause a slow upwards movement on the continuum of depen-
dency, which may lead only to partial manumission – and, as such, to temporal or
on-going hybrid legal statuses that constitute a stronger or lesser form of asymmetrical
dependency. The different manumission practices discussed in this article are re-
garded as distinct legal procedures (contract, oral promise, contract of sale, etc.) by
the Hidāya and therefore result in very different combinations, e.g. of legal capacity in
certain areas with absolute dependency in others. Some forms of manumission that
proceed via intermediate legal statuses protect the formerly fully enslaved person
from a relapse into full enslavement, while others may preserve the intermediate sta-
tus or even lead to a relapse into full enslavement, as in the case of mukātab. In some
cases, even complete manumission intended by the owner, as in the case of tadbīr,
may result in a partially enslaved status which can only be resolved through new
agreements, e.g. kitāba. From the normative perspective of the Hidāya, partial manu-
missions are limited either temporally or by certain conditions, or by a combination of
the two. The application of these normative standards results in a great variability in
practice. We should therefore assume the existence of a large number of gradations of
different legal and social dependencies between the absolute opposites of full enslave-
ment and freedom or manumission, some of which in their practical implementation
may have diverged considerably from the norms.
If we turn away from a clear dichotomy of enslaved and free (which, however,
is also present in the historical semantics of Islamic legal texts) it becomes evident
 Hidāya III, 406–7.

 Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles.
200 Anna Kollatz
that the normative legal texts not only discuss a number of different forms of strong
asymmetrical dependency, but also distinguish them in semantic terms. The high
degree of ambiguity and discursivity of the Hidāya bears witness to how difficult to
grasp these legal statuses must have been for legal theorists. Clearly, this is not an
a priori defined normative system, but rather an attempt at legal containment of
practices that evolved, and continued to evolve, over time. The fact that the Hidāya
puts a strong emphasis on discussing legally valid, clear or ambiguous wordings
also shows that the negotiation and definition of legal status in the context of strong
asymmetrical dependency must always have been a complex undertaking, and diffi-
cult to implement for both legal theorists and practitioners. Marc Bloch’s dictum
about historians and their struggle with emic semantics probably applies just as
much to the historical Ḥanafī legal theorists in Transoxania and India as it does to
us who, from the perspective of slavery and dependency studies, are today trying to
clarify historical semantics: “To the great despair of historians, men fail to change
their vocabulary every time they change their customs.”75
Obviously, this effect is amplified when the texts and their underlying semantic
connections are translated into another language, as a comparison of the semantic
attributions between the Arabic original and the English translation by Charles Hamil-
ton has shown. In the discussion of the various hybrid forms, I purposely refrained
from quoting the Arabic original text together with Hamilton’s translation. The latter
is in fact not so much a translation as a paraphrase of the original which intervenes in
the text, in sometimes heavily interpretative ways. His translation across emic seman-
tic fields deserves particular mention. This technique enables the translator to bring
the text statements closer to the etic historical semantics of strong asymmetrical de-
pendency in his target language, i.e. English. This leads to the impression that many
of the legal statuses that arise from the various forms of manumission are not directly
related to slavery. The actual variety of strong asymmetrical dependency relationships
described in the legal commentary is obscured by this technique, though they were
not only a constitutive element of Muslim society in India, but also in all other parts
of the Islamicate world. The two extremes of slavery and freedom, as they are established
by the translation, seem to be a clear dichotomy, behind which the gradations of
forms of strong asymmetrical dependency determined by legal theory fade away. For
the historical recipients of the colonial translation, this impression must have been
reinforced when, after the formal abolition of slavery, the Book on Manumission was
omitted from the second edition of the translation. However, we may assume that the
hybrid and ambiguous forms of strong asymmetrical dependency, and especially the
social dependency of muʿattaqs on their former owners, remained formative princi-
ples of social interaction and hierarchy even after the formal abolition of slavery.
 Marc Bloch, Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of
Those Who Write It, trans. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage, 1953): 34.
It would be beyond the scope of this essay to further investigate the relation-
ship between the original as hypotext and the translation as hypertext. But a com-
parison of the key terms identified in the translation and the corresponding places
in the original text alone has shown that the semantic concepts of the two texts do
not match perfectly. The translation process began with the Arabic text analyzed
here, and led through the Persian translation, which is only available in manu-
script, to the British-colonial paraphrase. In order to understand at which point in
the process these shifts entered the text, it would be necessary to examine the dif-
ferent text levels in detail and to compare the emic semantics in each case. My anal-
ysis of the emic terminology in the Arabic text could be a first step on this path. The
results of such a comparison would then also have to be matched with practical
legal documents, e.g. from the Mughal period or the early colonial period. This
analysis would be a necessary step to understand the legal and social implementa-
tion of normative semantics in each time and society. If we want to further investi-
gate emic historical semantics of strong asymmetrical dependency in Arabic or
Persian texts, the only path open to us at present is that of dense qualitative stud-
ies, since translations in OCR’able languages cannot be carried out at all without a
reconfiguration of the historical semantics inherent in the text.
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Veruschka Wagner
Modes of Manumission: What Terms Used
for Emancipation Tell Us about Dependencies
in Ottoman Society
1 Introduction
One of the formative elements of Ottoman society were slaves, who were found in all
parts of life. They came from different regions, including the Balkans and the Black
Sea, and they were entrusted with a variety of tasks in different spheres. One impor-
tant component were domestic slaves, who worked as part of the property in or
around the household of their owner. A particular feature of Ottoman slavery was the
fact that it was designed to be impermanent: slaves were manumitted after a certain
period of time. If necessary, freed slaves were given documents that confirmed their
manumission, enabling them to identify themselves. There are innumerable copies of
such manumission papers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the ar-
chives of several law courts in Istanbul. The results of a semantic analysis of these
documents is the subject of this contribution. I will look at the terms that were used
in the context of slavery and emancipation, how they relate to each other, and how
those terms and concepts depict relationships of strong asymmetrical dependency.1
What information about manumissions documents, manumissions and freed slaves
do they give us? And did different forms of dependency exist especially between
(freed) slave and owner?
2 Slavery in the Ottoman Empire

Society in the Ottoman Empire made fundamental distinctions – legally, at least –
between Muslims and non-Muslims, between men and women; it also distinguished
very clearly between the statuses of the free and the unfree. Free people were referred
to as ḥür, unfree ones as köle, the basic term for slave. Although a köle was, legally
 The term is used in the way as it is determined by Julia Winnebeck, Ove Sutter, Adrian Hermann,
Christoph Antweiler, and Stephan Conermann in their concept paper “On Asymmetrical Depen-
dency,” Concept Paper, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, January, 2021, https://
www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/publications/bcdsss-publishing-series/bcdss-concept-papers
[accessed 17.05.2022].
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-008
206 Veruschka Wagner
speaking, not a person, but an object owned by another person, slaves were granted
certain rights and freedoms, which they could even enforce in a court of law.2
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most enslaved people were brought in
from the Balkans and the Black Sea region,3 but also from other areas such as Southern
and Central Europe, North and West Africa or Iran. They were captured in raids and in
wars4 and taken on trade routes5 to slave markets, where merchants sold them to their
new owners. Istanbul, which had its own slave market,6 was an important center for
the trade; the slave dealers had their own guild there, which was reported to have had
as many as 2000 members in the first half of the seventeenth century.7 In order to regu-
late and control the slave trade and prevent unauthorized merchants from joining in, a
register was drawn up in 1640 which listed 40 official slave dealers – including eight
women – many brokers were probably former slaves themselves.8 Many more people
 There is an ongoing research concerning slave agency that deals with the capacity of slaves to
act and their scope of action. One way of slave agency is for example actively shaping the relation-
ship to the owner. For slave agency in premodern Istanbul see Veruschka Wagner, “‘Speaking Prop-
erty’ with the Capacity to Act: Slave Interagency in the 16th- and 17th-Century Istanbul Court
Registers,” in Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Stephan Conermann and Gül Şen
(Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2020): 213–36.
 For the slave trade and the import of slaves from the Black Sea region, see Alan W. Fisher, “Mus-
covy and the Black Sea Slave Trade,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 6, no. 4 (1972): 575–94 and
Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, “Slave Hunting and Slave Redemption as a Business Enterprise: The North-
ern Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries,” Oriente Moderno: The Ottomans
and Trade 25 (2006): 149–60.
 For slave capture and the slave trade in the Crimea, where Caffa was one of the most important
trading ports for the Ottoman Empire, see Mikhail Kizilov, “Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea
from the Perspective, of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources,” Journal of Early Modern History 11
(2007): 1–31.
 For trade routes, see Hayri Gökşin Özkoray, “La géographie du commerce des esclaves dans l’Em-
pire ottoman et l’implication des marchands d’Europe occidentale,” Rives méditerranéennes 53
(2017): 103–21.
 Alan W. Fisher, “The Sale of Slaves in the Ottoman Empire: Markets and State Taxes on Slave
Sales, Some Preliminary Considerations,” Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Dergisi 6 (1978): 149–74, here
149–50; Zübeyda Güneş Yağcı, “İstanbul Esir Pazarı,” in Osmanlı Devletiʾnde Kölelik – Ticaret,
Esaret, Yaşam, ed. Zübeyde Güneş Yağcı and Fırat Yaşa (Istanbul: Tezkire, 2017): 57–90. For the
slave markets around the Black Sea region see Zübeyde Yağcı, “16. Yüzyılda Kırım’da Köle Ticar-
eti,” Karadeniz Araştırmaları Dergisi 8 (2006): 12–30. For Bursa see Halil Sahillioğlu, “Onbeşinci Yü-
zyılın Sonu Onaltıncı Yüzyılın Başında Bursa’da Kölelerin Sosyal Hayattaki Yerleri,” ODTÜ Gelişme
Dergisi, Sayı: Özel (Special Volume) (1979): 67–138.
 Fisher, “The Sale of Slaves”: 156.
 Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, ed., Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640lı Tarihli Narh Defteri (Istan-
bul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1983): 256; Madeline C. Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire:
The Design of Difference (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 144. In the Istanbul court
records I came across one entry that refers to a Jewish woman who worked as a slave dealer. İstan-
bul Kadı Sicilleri, Hasköy Mahkemesi 10, 95 [56–4].
Modes of Manumission 207
were involved in the trade.9 It has been estimated that one fifth of the population of
Istanbul in the sixteenth century either were or had been slaves.10 Many emanci-
pated slaves remained in the city and did not return to their former homes. Often, a
connection between a slave and their former owner continued even after manumis-
sion. Documents from the Istanbul law courts tell us, for example, that slaves were
made beneficiaries of endowments or donations by their former owners, managed
businesses together with them or continued to live in their households. This tie to
the household meant that the (manumitted) slaves continued to have access to pro-
tection, work and a social status.11 Of course, that was not true for all; the files also
tell us about the recapture of escaped slaves, lawsuits against owners who did not
treat their slaves properly; and about dissatisfied owners who returned slaves who
did not meet their requirements or expectations, or who sold them on. And what
emerges very clearly from all court records is the dominance of owner over slave
and the dependency, to varying degrees, of slave on owner. This contribution will
focus on manumission papers from the Istanbul law courts in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries, in the hope that they will help elucidate the question of how de-
pendency is being represented in the sources.
3 Manumission and Manumission Papers

Court registers (ḳādı sicilleri or şeriyye sicilleri) are an important source for re-
search into the history of the Ottoman Empire. The legal matters of everyday life,
both urban and rural, are document in resolutions and court notices issued and
written down by a judge (ḳādı). Frequently these were contracts or conflicts be-
tween two parties who could belong to any stratum of society. On average, a reg-
ister has one hundred pages and contains between 400 and 500 records. A record
can be as short as two lines, and as long as several pages.12 Many of the Istanbul
 For the guild and the slave merchants, see Fisher, “The Sale of Slaves”: 156; Mustafa Akkaya,
“XVII. Yüzyılın İlk Çeyreğinde Üsküdar’da Köle Ticareti, Kölelerin Ticaretle Uğraşması,” Balıkesir
Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 14, no. 25 (2011): 204–17, here 205.
 Madeline C. Zilfi, “Slavery,” in Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Gábor Ágoston and
Bruce Alan Masters (New York: Facts On File, 2009): 530–33, here 531.
 Ehud Toledano, “An Empire of Many Households: The Case of Ottoman Enslavement,” in Slaves
and Households in the Near East, ed. Laura Culbertson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011):
85–97, here 94.
 For an overview of the existing sicils in the archives, see Ahmet Akgündüz, Şer’iye Sicilleri. 1. Ma-
hiyeti, toplu kataloğu ve seçme hükümler (Istanbul: TDAV Yay, 1988). For an introduction into the
topic, see Yunus Uğur, “Şerʿiyye Sicilleri,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi (TDVİA) 39 (2010):
8–11; Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı Tarihi Hakkında Mühim Bir Kaynak,” A.Ü. DTCFD 1, no. 68 (1943):
89–96; Dror Ze’evi, “The Use of Ottoman Sharīʿa Court Records as a Source for Middle Eastern Social
History: A Reappraisal,” Islamic Law and Society 5, no. 1 (1998): 35–56. For studies drawing on the
court records13 concern slaves; there are contracts of all kinds, papers that prove
a person is no longer a slave, records about the recapture of escaped slaves, man-
umission papers and more. They document significant moments in the lives of
enslaved persons, moments that often were decisive turning points. My aim in
this contribution is to shed more light on the dependency of slaves on their own-
ers. That is why I will focus on manumission papers, which constitute a large pro-
portion of the documents in the Istanbul court records; because the manumission
of slaves was a widespread phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire. While in the
nineteenth century it was customary to manumit slaves after between seven and
nine years,14 in premodern Istanbul the duration of enslavement could vary
much more.15 Most house slaves were manumitted either during their owners’
lifetime, or posthumously by testamentary disposition.16 We cannot say exactly
what percentage of emancipations were in fact officially recorded. It is likely that
some slave owners preferred not to have to pay the legal fees for registering the
emancipation and having a certificate issued.17 Manumission itself could take a
variety of forms. One of them was based on a contract (mükātebe/kitābe), which
came into force once the condition(s) which had been set out in the contract be-
tween the slave and their owner had been fulfilled. This could be the payment of
a sum of money, the elapsing of a specified period of time, or the handing over of
a particular item. As such, contract-based emancipation consisted of two parts:
the contract itself; and the manumission document, which referred back to the
contract and was not handed over to the (now manumitted) slave until the
Istanbul court registers see Yvonne J. Seng, “The Şer’iye Sicilleri of Istanbul Müftülüğü as a Source for
the Study of Everyday Life,” Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15, no. 2 (1991): 307–25; Eunjeong Yi,
Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul. Fluidity and Leverage (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and Nur
Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles. Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers,
1560–1572 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
 The Istanbul-area court records for the sixteenth and the majority of the seventeenth centuries have
been digitized and are accessible online. İSAM (İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi/The Center for Islamic Stud-
ies) published 40 volumes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century court registers from Istanbul-area
courts, and another 60 volumes of the Istanbul-area court registers from 1557 to 1911 each volume con-
taining transliterations into the Latin alphabet of the entries with modern Turkish summaries and fac-
similes of the original texts. Access to digital copies of these entries enables a keyword search and
simplifies analysis and examination (http://www.kadisicilleri.org [accessed 17.05.2022]).
 Zilfi, “Slavery”: 532.
 The figures I found when I examined the documents from the Istanbul court files show that
slavery ended after only one year for some slaves, but could last much longer for others. According
to Tahiroğlu, the number could vary between two and fourteen years; see Bülent Tahiroğlu, “Os-
manlı İmparatorluğunda Kölelik,” İstanbul Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Memuası 45 (2011): 667.
 Zilfi, “Slavery”: 531.
 Joshua M. White, “Ottoman Slave Manumission Documents,” in Christian-Muslim Relations. A
Bibliographical History, vol. 12, Asia, Africa and the Americas (1700–1800), ed. David Thomas and
John Chesworth (Leiden: Brill, 2018): 227–33, here 230.
previously agreed condition(s) had been met. The Istanbul court files for the period
under investigation here contain mainly mükātebe/kitābet contracts in which the
specified condition is either a certain sum of money or a specified period of time.18
Another variant (called tedbīr) was manumission after the owner’s death, where the
contract lay down that the slave was to be manumitted upon the death of their
owner. A distinction was made between unconditional (tedbīr-i muṭlaḳ) and condi-
tional emancipation (tedbīr-i muḳayyed), such as the owner’s death from an illness.19
It was considered, like the contract-based version, an agreement between slave
owner and slave, and as such had to be registered.20 Then there was manumission as
a charitable act (ʿıtḳ), where the owner could freely determine a point in time at
which the slave would gain their freedom. This unilateral form of emancipation ap-
pears very frequently in the records.21 Lastly, the records contain the type of cases
known as ümm-i veled (literally “mother of the child”), where an enslaved woman
achieved liberty upon her owner’s death if she had given birth to his child. The child
inherited its father’s free legal status and was an heir equal in rights to his other chil-
dren.22 The religious factor played an important role in all types of manumission.
Whether conditional or not, enacted unilaterally or bilaterally, manumission was re-
garded as a pious act.23 Some manumission papers state that Allah will save the
parts of the manumittor’s body from the fires of hell. Religious motives will therefore
have been important for Muslim slave owners. For a slave of a Muslim owner, conver-
sion could be a short-cut to manumission.24
 In contrast to Bursa, for example, where the contract stipulated the production of a certain
quantity of cloth; see Halil Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa in the Late
15th and Early 16th Centuries,” Turcia 17 (1985): 43–112.
 In cases of unconditional manumission, a slave was freed immediately after the owner’s death,
as long as their value did not exceed one third of the total of the owner’s property. Two-thirds of
the property had to go to the rightful heirs. See Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life
of Bursa”: 43–112, here 58. In addition, there were two other types of tedbīr manumission. Emanci-
pation that was conditional not only on the owner’s death, but also an additional stipulation such
as completion of a particular task, was called tedbīr-i muʿallaḳ; while manumission from a specified
time (such as the next day) was tedbīr-i mużāf. Fahrettin Atar, “Tedbir,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm
Ansiklopedisi (TDVIA) 40 (2011): 258–59.
 Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa”: 58.
 See also Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 70.
 Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 77.
 Ron Shaham put it as follows, “Manumission is regarded by Islamic law as a pious act that de-
serves a reward in heaven.” Ron Shaham, “Masters, Their Freed Slaves, and the Waqf in Egypt
(Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43,
no. 2 (2000): 162–88, here 162.
 Cf. Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 119. For the hadith on which the comment is based
see, “The man who frees a Muslim (v.l. ‘a believer’) slave, God will free from hell, limb for limb.”
See Robert Brunschvig, “ʿAbd,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. Pery Bearman et al.,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0003 [accessed 17.05.2022].
4 Semantic Analysis
The semantic analysis in this paper focuses on two aspects: terms and word fields
related to slaves. The lexical dimension of individual terms depends on the context
in which they are used. The chapter Terminology therefore looks at expressions that
were used in manumission documents for slaves. In doing so, we pay attention to
the setting and structure in which these words were used. Under the section Seman-
tic Fields, we look at word fields that occur in manumission papers in the context of
slavery. We examine numerous terms that can be traced back to the same root.
From the study of semantic fields related to slaves, we try to derive information
about dependency structures.25
4.1 Terminology
Manumission documents were comparatively standard in terms of both structure and

content, despite the existence of different types and modes of manumission. They give
the name and place of residence of the slave owner; the name, origin, religious affilia-
tion, appearance and characteristic features of the slave; the time and manner of
emancipation and, where applicable, the condition that must be met before emancipa-
tion can be complete; and, lastly, the date and the names of the witnesses. All the
manumission documents in the court records are copies, since the original was given
to the – now freed – former slave, enabling him to produce it if necessary.26
 For reflections on semantics of slavery see the edited volume by Stefan Hanß and Juliana
Schiel, eds., Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800) / Neue Perspektiven auf mediterrane Skla-
verei (500–1800) (Zurich: Chronos, 2014), esp. “Introduction” / “Einleitung,” 11–48. In this regard,
see also the work of the Research Area A (Semantics, Lexical Fields, and Narratives) in the Cluster
for Excellence “Beyond Slavery and Freedom: Asymmetrical Dependencies in Pre-Modern Socie-
ties” at the University of Bonn. This paper is the result of a participation in a workshop on “Seman-
tics and Lexical Fields of Slavery and Other Forms of Asymmetrical Dependencies,” organized by
Research Area A in March 2020. https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/our-research/research-
areas/research-area-a-semantics-lexical-fields-narratives [accessed 17.05.2022]. An examination of
the various terms in the field of Ottoman slavery in their semantic spectrum is provided by Özkoray
in his study. However, he is not interested in examining semantic or lexical fields with regard to
degrees of dependency, but rather in a differentiated presentation of the terminological variations,
their etymology, and their connotations. Hayri Gökşin Özkoray, “L’esclavage dans l’Empire otto-
man (XVUe-XVIIe siècle): fondements juridiques, réalités socio-économiques, representations”
(PhD diss., PSL University, 2017).
 Cf. Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa”: 51. Sometimes manumission
papers were not handed over – and, as such, entered into the court records – until years (in some
cases up to twenty years) after the act of manumission, because there was no need to hand over the
document. Furthermore, the fee charged for registration was another reason not to do so. It was
only when a slave wanted to leave their place of residence and risked being taken for a fugitive that
A manumission document in a court file from 1653 in one of the Istanbul courts
(Ahi Çelebi Mahkemesi) reveals that a man named El-Hac Osman bin Abdullah27
had manumitted an enslaved woman, Canfeda bint Abdullah, for reasons of piety.28
It begins by giving the place and the name of the slave owner who appeared in court
to manumit his slave. The first thing said about the woman is that she has admitted
to being a slave (rıḳḳını mu‘terife), then follows a description of her appearance and
background (amongst others, she is described as being light-eyed, blonde and of
Ukrainian origin). The document states that she was present during the manumis-
sion and now identifies her as cāriye-i memlūkesi. She is next referred to in direct
speech: her owner declares that cāriyem, literally “my slave,” is now free.
So there are three terms in the document that describe the slave’s relationship of
dependency: rıḳḳını mu‘terife, cāriye-i memlūkesi and cāriyem. Rıḳḳ is the state of slav-
ery which a person acquires through the loss of their freedom, either by capture or
sale (alternatively, Ottoman Turkish also uses the term rıḳḳıyyet). It is a general ex-
pression that does not contain any further information about the slave in question.
Rıḳḳ may also refer to a male or female slave, and as such can denote a person as
well as a state. If mu‘terife is added, we know that the slave in question must be fe-
male (the male form is mu‘terif without the final “e”) and that she has acknowledged
her slave status. This was important. Admitting to being a slave was a precondition
for manumission, since it defined the slave’s status. A person who claimed to be free
could not be freed.29
The second expression, cāriye-i memlūkesi, tells us that this is about a female
slave (cāriye). The equivalent masculine term for a male slave is ʿabd.30 So on this
level there is a clear lexical distinction between a male and a female slave. The attri-
bute memlūk signified something that was owned by another person, the word de-
rives from the term for property (mülk). It was used not only for slaves but also for
other items that might be a person’s property, such as houses, estates, land and so
forth (e.g. bağ-ı memlūk = a garden belonging to s.o. or menzil-i memlūk = a house
belonging to s.o.). But memlūk could also be a stand-alone term denoting a male
slave, and memlūke a female slave. In memlūkesi, -si is the possessive suffix in the
they needed their manumission document as proof of their freed status. As such, the act of manu-
mission was not dependent on the document, Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life
of Bursa”: 52.
 All names are written in the modern Turkish spelling.
 İstanbul Kadi Sicilleri Ahi Çelebi Mahkemesi 1 Numaralı Sicil, 8 [3a–1] (H. 1063–1064 /
M. 1652–1653).
 Another category of document relevant to slavery in the Istanbul court records are the proofs of
non-slave status (isbāt-ı ḥürriyet). Alleged slaves went to court to bring proof of either their freeborn
or freed status.
 In current usage, köle is frequently used as the male equivalent of cāriye, but the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century court records show that köle was the overall, general term for both male and
female slaves.
third person singular which tells us that the enslaved woman (cāriye) is owned by
her owner. The third term, cāriyem, again combines cāriye but this time with the pos-
sessive suffix -m for the first person singular. Here, the owner talks in direct speech.
With the following words he completes the act of manumitting her:
I unconditionally emancipate my said female slave (cāriyem) from my possession (mülkümden

āzād). She shall be free like other freeborn persons (sāʾir ḥarāʾir-i aṣliyyāt [gibi] ḥürre). From
today onward I shall have no more rights over her except for the velā right (ḥaḳḳ-ı velādan
gayrı ḥaḳḳım ḳālmadı).31
In legal terms, the woman is now as free as all other free persons. Her owner relin-
quishes all the rights he was entitled to, with the exception of velā. The velā right
indicates that, in legal terms at least, the relationship between former owner and
former slave did not completely dissolve upon manumission. The law stipulates
that, if a manumitted slave has no agnates, their former owner and his paternal kin
will be as agnates to the freed slave, particularly with regard to their guardianship
in matrimonial matters and co-responsibility in criminal cases. In return, and as-
suming that the freed slave owns property and has no heirs of their own, they will
name their former owner or his relations as heirs. In this way, their property will
not vanish into public coffers but benefit the former owner.32 So in most cases man-
umission did not mean an end to the relationship between former slaves and their
owners; often it was transformed instead into a sort of patron-client relationship.33
Such patronage relationships seem to have significantly influenced the lives of for-
mer slaves both during and after their enslavement, often only terminating with
death.34 Moreover, this is all an indication that freed slaves never attained the same
free status as other freeborn ones.
 İstanbul Kadi Sicilleri Ahi Çelebi Mahkemesi 1 Numaralı Sicil, 8 [3a–1] (H. 1063–1064 /
M. 1652–1653).
 Brunschvig, “ʿAbd,”; Zilfi, Women and Slavery: 134.
 Halil İnalcık, “Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire,” in The Mutual Effects of the Islamic and
Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern, ed. Abraham Ascher, Tibor Halasi-Kun, and
Bela K. Kiraly (Brooklyn: Brooklyn College Press, 1979): 25–52, here 30, n. 26; White, “Manumission
Documents”: 230.
 A quite recent study on the topic is Olga Todorova’s essay, “‘Нищо друго освен правото на
покровителство . . . ’: робската интеграция в Oсманската империя в светлината на отно-
шенията между господари и роби (по материали от Централните Балкани, средата на XVI –
началото на XVIII век)” (“‘Nothing but the right of patronage . . . ’: Slave integration in the Ottoman
Empire in the light of the relationship between masters and slaves [on materials of the Central Balkan
from the middle of the 16th to the early 18th century”]), Исторически преглед / Historical Review
3–4 (2016): 22–88. In her article, which looks at the city of Sofia in the 1670s, Todorova underlines
the active role played by the slave owner and their family in all phases of a slave’s socialisation pro-
cess, especially during the “post-emancipatory phase” when, in accordance with to Islamic law, the
relationship between a former slave and a former owner grew into a patron-client relationship.
Another document in the Istanbul court records (Eyüb Mahkemesi) from the year
1680 tells us that one İbrahim bin Sırrı manumitted his slave Rıdvan bin Abdullah,
also originally from Ukraine. This was a contract-based manumission (mükātabe/kitā-
bet), where emancipation was conditional on the payment of a sum of money (bedel-i
kitābet). As in our previous example the owner’s name and place of residence come
first, followed immediately by the slave’s admission of being a slave. Again the term
used for the slave is rıḳḳı mu‘terif (here in the masculine form without the final -e, be-
cause it denotes a male slave); and again this in turn is followed by a description of
the slave’s outward appearance and characteristic features (these include a note that
he is of medium height and has injured his right eye) and his place of origin. Where a
slave has converted to Islam, there is an additional patronymic: “ibn/bin Abdullah,”
as in this case, or “bint Abdullah,” as in my previous example; i.e. son or daughter of
Abdullah, as the case may be.35 The document tells us that it has been agreed that the
owner will manumit the slave from his possession (mālımdan āzād, an alternative
wording of the phrase mülkümden āzād in the previous document – literally, “from
my possession,” since this passage is in direct speech and as such in the first person
singular) and from the bond36 of slavery (ḳayd-ı rıḳḳdan ıṭlāḳ), as soon as the slave
has paid the previously agreed sum of 27,500 akçe.37 After handing over the sum, the
slave will be free like other freeborn persons (sāʾir aḥrār-ı aṣliyyīn gibi ḥür) and his
owner will have no more rights over him except for the velā right (velā-i şer‘īden gayrı
ḥaḳḳım bākī ḳālmadı).38
The declaration of emancipation is in direct speech; the owner declares in the first
person singular that he is manumitting his slave. Sobers-Khan has identified the act of
manumission itself as “a speech act [ . . . or] a performative utterance,”39 positing that
speech is constitutive to the act, so that manumission would have been impossible
without the verbal declaration. We may assume that even when the documents do not
quote the act of manumission in direct, first-person speech, it will have been performed
as such. Official acts only began to be put into writing from the fifteenth century on-
wards,40 while the original format – the legal act in the form of an oral declaration
 In some cases, instead of Abdullah the document gives the names Abdulmennan or Abdulvehhab.
 Alternatively, this might be translated as the “clutches” or “shackles” of slavery.
 Akçe was a silver coin that became devalued over time. Until the end of the 17th century it was
the main monetary unit in the Ottoman Empire. According to İnalcık, in the second half of the fif-
teenth century in larger Ottoman cities the average market price for a slave fluctuated between
1600 and 3200 akçe. Halil İnalcık, “Part I – The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600,”
in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil İnalcık and Donald
Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 9–41, here 284.
 Eyüb Mahkemesi (Havass-ı Refia) 90 Numaralı Sicil, 440 [66a–1] (H. 1090–1091/M. 1679–1680).
 Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 70.
 The earliest court registers in the Ottoman Empire are to be found in Bursa and date to the year
1455. See Uğur, “Şeriyye Sicilleri”: 9. For slaves in the Bursa court registers in the late fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries see Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa”: 43–112.
with witnesses – was retained. Direct speech is a common legal form that occurs in a
variety of document types.41 But the fact that manumission, whether unilateral or bilat-
eral, could only be effected through the slave owner’s verbal declaration, points to the
strong asymmetrical dependency of slave on owner. The owner needed to declare the
manumission for the act to become effective.42
These cases, which I chose because they are typical examples of manumission
papers, show that these documents contain a number of structural, linguistic and
content-related elements that emphasize the slave’s position and dependency. We
must also bear in mind the guidelines that existed for the textualization of legal mat-
ters in terms of structure, wording and composition. They too, symbolize and transport
particular hierarchies and dependencies. Sobers-Khan pointed, for example, to the lo-
cation of the manumittor’s and manumittee’s names on a manumission document,
which underlines the slave’s subordinate position vis-à-vis their owner. First came the
name and place of residence and sometimes also the profession of the slave owner (for
whom there was, incidentally, no specific administrative category); then, in some
cases, the name(s) of his legal representative and his witness; and only then was the
slave named: all of which indicated both the superior status of the owner and his full
legal capacity to act and stood in sharp contrast to the slave who had neither free sta-
tus nor full legal capacity to act at the time the verbal declaration was performed.43
Not only the structural features, but also the linguistic elements of the documents
indicate strong asymmetrical dependency. In addition to the different terms that cate-
gorize the slave and define their status, the grammatical elements also spell out
clearly the fact that the enslaved was their owner’s property. The stylized description
of the slave’s physical appearance purportedly served to aid with identification and
recognition,44 although it is somewhat questionable how much use it really was,
given the limited number of markers. Sobers-Khan makes the point that apart from its
practical purpose, the description also functioned as a “symbolic domination of the
slave through language,” by reinforcing symbolically and linguistically the enduring
dominance of the Ottoman legal system (represented by the court and the scribe)
 On the aspect of first-person narratives in the documents see Boğaç A. Ergene, Local Court, Pro-
vincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire. Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı
and Kastamonu (1652–1744) (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 133–38 and on the representation of slave voices
see Veruschka Wagner, “Slave Voices as Represented in the Ottoman Court Records – A Narrative
Analysis of the Istanbul Registers from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Narratives of
Dependency, ed. Marion Gymnich and Elke Brüggen (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming).
 Yavuz Aykan uses the term “asymmetrical fictive kinship” to describe the relationship between
slave and former owner after manumission. Yavuz Aykan, “On Freedom, Kinship and Market Re-
thinking Property and Law in the Ottoman Slave System,” Quaderni Storici (2017): 3–29, here 4.
 Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 71.
 In order to be able to return an escaped slave to their rightful owner, or to protect a freed slave
from being re-enslaved.
over the freed slave and over the bond between them and their owner.45 Whether it
was intended as a tactic of symbolic domination or as protection against mistaken
identity: it clearly emphasized the hierarchical structures.46 And the latter, in turn,
allow us to identify dependencies which would go on to define the slave’s position
even after manumission.
This is also evidenced by the patronymic, which can’t have been any real use in
helping to identify or differentiate the slave (it is unlikely that a missing patronymic
would have made any difference to the document). So its purpose was also to signify
the slave as such47 and to indicate their position and their dependency. A fixed
scheme was used systematically for the content. About the slave it was noted that the
manumittee was a person who had acknowledged their slave status (See above for
the importance of this admission). The document then tells us that the said person
has been freed from their previously admitted condition of slavery, and so inscribes
their status. The other regular component relates to ownership. We learn from the
text that the enslaved person is the property of the owner, who now proceeds to re-
lease them from being in his possession. It may be deduced from this that an en-
slaved person is not free until their owner has declared them free both from being in
his possession and from being a slave. Since slaves could be sold on from one owner
to the next, being released from someone’s possession did not necessarily also free
an enslaved person from the status of slavery. Only when both of these components
were enacted did a slave become “free like other freeborn persons.”
4.2 Semantic Fields
The information that these manumitted slaves are now “free like other freeborn persons”
is common, with some slight variations, to all manumission papers. Whichever actual
wording is used, the word stem of the terms for “free” and “freeborn” is always a form
of the word ḥür (sāʾir ḥarāir-i aṣliyāt [gibi] ḥür(re) or sāʾir aḥrār-ı asliyyīn gibi ḥür) (Fig. 1).
The adjective ḥür(r) means free; the feminine form ḥürre denoting a female free
person. The plural of ḥür(r) is aḥrār; the plural of ḥürre is ḥarāʾir, both meaning
“free” or “freeborn” persons. Ḥürriyet is liberty/freedom, and taḥrīr liberation/re-
lease, including the manumission or emancipation of a slave.
 Cf. Sobers-Khan on the significance of Ottoman manumission documents including a descrip-

tion and classification of a slave’s physical appearance. Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 270.
 Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 236.
 It is very likely that most persons with the patronymic bin/bint Abdullah are (former) slaves,
even if the document does not provide additional information or allow us to clearly identify them
from the context, since in the majority of cases the patronymic marks a convert. See Suraiya Far-
oqhi, “From the Slave Market to Arafat: Biographies of Bursa Women in the Late Fifteenth Cen-
tury,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 24, no. 1 (2000): 3–20, here 10.
ḥarāʾir = free
women
ḥürre = free aḥrār = free persons

(female) / a free (the plural of ḥür)
girl/woman
ḥür = free
taḥrīr = liberation
ḥürriyet = liberty
Fig. 1: Semantic field ḥür.
After the owner’s declaration that he has released the slave from being in his
possession (mülkümden or mālımdan), the slave has now obtained the status of
being free in the same way that other, originally free(born) (ḥarāʾir) people are free
(ḥür). While we have seen that the terms for “free” and “freeborn” go back to the
same word, i.e. ḥür, the terms employed in the act of manumission go back to an-
other word, i.e. āzād and not ḥür. So for “free,” we have two different words or word
stems. An enslaved person had to undergo the process of liberation (āzād) in order to
obtain the status of being “free” (ḥür) legally, like other free people. We can infer
from this that ḥür defines a status, while āzād seems to describe a process.48 At the
end again, a slave never really attained the free status of a freeborn person.
There are more semantic fields in the manumission papers. This linguistic pecu-
liarity occurs with other Arabic loan words, because the relevant terms are all
based on the same word stem; just as they were around the word ḥür. If we look at
manumission papers that tell us about slaves who have been manumitted in the
course of a pious activity, we find, first of all, the term ʿıtḳ, which we encountered
earlier. ʿItḳ describes manumission as a charitable act without stipulating a condi-
tion for it.
A 1670–1671 record from the registers of one of the Istanbul courts (Bab Mahke-
mesi) tells us about one such manumission as a pious act.49 Written in the margin is a
note that this is a manumission document (ʿıtḳnāme). Such annotations referred to the
nature of the decision. This ʿıtḳnāme records the manumission of a slave who is, again,
of Ukrainian descent, whose name was Şahin. The word ʿıtḳnāme is a composite of ʿıtḳ
(Fig. 2), which has an Arabic root, and the Persian word nāme, which denotes a written
 Some manumission papers explicitly state that a manumitted slave obtained, along with their
new status, not only rights but also duties, just like other freeborn persons. Sobers-Khan has
pointed out that under Ottoman law, slaves had diminished responsibility for any crimes they com-
mitted. As such, liberation not only brought emancipation but also full accountability before the
law, which meant that freed slaves now had to face full legal punishment for all crimes committed.
Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 72.
 Bab Mahkemesi 11 Numaralı Sicil, 79 [16b–3] (H. 1081 / M. 1670–1671).
communication or a certificate. ʿItḳ as an act of emancipation was accomplished by a

unilateral and unconditional action on the part of the slave owner. The freed slave is
referred to as a muʿtāḳ, while the owner is muʿtıḳ (and the mistress muʿtıḳa). The word
muʿtāḳ denoted the person who was freed by a pious act; muʿtık was the person who
did the freeing. Both share a root with ʿıtḳ. While muʿtāḳ can function both as a noun
(as it is here, in the masculine) or as an adjective in combination with other expres-
sions for slaves (such as ʿabd-ı muʿtāḳ or, in the feminine, cāriye-i muʿtāḳa or muʿtāḳa
cāriye); other words which are formed from the same word stem function only as
nouns such as ʿatīḳa (pl. ʿatīḳāt or ʿuteḳāt) that denotes a freedwoman or ʿatīḳ (pl.
ʿuteḳa) which denotes a male slave. Our record goes on to state that the slave owner
had in fact manumitted (literally, liberated, taḥrīr ü iʿtāḳ) the slave three years earlier.
The term (iʿtāḳ) is again formed from the same word stem; it is here redundantly com-
bined, as is typical in Ottoman Turkish, with another verb, taḥrīr, which also means
“to liberate” but without specifying the kind of liberation. Taḥrīr in turn shares a root
with ḥür (free). The term iʿtāḳ is used only in manumission papers of slaves who have
been emancipated in accordance with ʿıtḳ, i.e. for pious reasons.
iʿtāḳ
= emancipation
muʿtaḳ/a
ʿatīḳa – pl. ʿatīḳāt /
= freedman/ ʿutaḳāt
freedwoman/
ʿıtḳ =
emancipation
ʿatīḳ – pl. ʿuteḳa

muʿtıḳ/a
ʿıtḳnāme = freedman
= man / woman who
sets free a slave/ = manumission
Fig. 2: Semantic field ʿıtḳ.
Another semantic field in this context is the one around the term tedbīr. Tedbīr was
the type of manumission where a slave was promised their freedom after the owner’s
death. There were a number of different variations; the two most common ones in the
Istanbul court records are unconditional manumission, tedbīr-i muṭlaḳ, and condi-
tional manumission, tedbīr-i muḳayyed. In a case of unconditional emancipation, a
slave was simply given their freedom upon the owner’s decease. If emancipation was
tied to a condition – for example only if the slave’s owner died from illness – the other
variant came into play. Conditional manumission also occurred if a slave owner stipu-
lated during their lifetime that their slaves were to be manumitted a specified time
before their death, albeit retroactively.
A record from the year 1666–1667 states that a slave owner was going to manu-
mit her slave, whose name was Mülayim bint Abdullah, after her death. The slave
was to go on to serve her mistress during the latter’s lifetime and was then to be
freed by tedbīr-i muṭlaḳ, i.e. emancipation was not tied to any further conditions.50
The term used for emancipation is müdebbere eyledim, literally, “I have freed in ac-
cordance with tedbīr” (Documents in the Istanbul court registers also use the vari-
ant expression tedbīr eyledim, which has the same meaning). Müdebbere (freeing in
accordance with tedbīr) originates from the same semantic field as tedbīr (Fig. 3).
The freedwoman emancipated in this way is also called müdebbere and the freed
man müdebber. These terms, though, do not occur in manumission papers. Docu-
ments that refer to freedmen as müdebber or freedwomen as müdebbere deal with
cases in which former slaves who have been emancipated according to tedbīr are
being left property or assets by their former owners, such as donations or founda-
tions. Manumission papers, however, describe an action that will not happen until
after the slave owner’s death, so at the time the document is being drawn up the
slaves are still caught in their slave status. That is why in the document we just
discussed, Mülayim bint Abdullah is referred to as cāriye-i memlūkem (“my slave”)
and not as müdebbere(m) (“my freedwoman”).
müdebber =
free, emancipated
tedbīr = müdebber/e
emancipation = freed man / woman

müdebbir
= manumitter
Fig. 3: Semantic field tedbīr.
In the Istanbul records we find tedbīr both as a noun meaning “manumission”; and,
in combination with the Turkish verb etmek or eylemek (= to do, to make), meaning
“to manumit,” or in combination with olmak, then meaning “to be manumitted.” The
same applies for müdebber/e etmek or eylemek and olmak. Müdebber is being used
both for the act of manumission through tedbīr and for the male slave so manumitted;
 Bab Mahkemesi 3 Numaralı Sicil, 41 [5b–4] (H. 1077 / M. 1666–1667).

while müdebbere is the female slave who has been emancipated through tedbīr by
the müdebbir, the manumitter.
Another record from the year 1662 that has the word müdebber noted in the
margin also concerns a manumission through tedbīr.51 But the case concerns not
only emancipation, but also the transfer of certain items from the ownership of the
slaveholder to the to-be-freed slave (both, incidentally, are women). The document
refers several times to the manumittee and at one point uses the term müdebberem
(my slave woman manumitted through tedbīr). Even though the slave has not yet
been freed at the time the decision is being made, because her mistress is still alive,
she will be free at the point when she will receive the items in question as a benefi-
ciary. That is why the document refers to her future self, so to speak, and calls
her müdebbere, a female slave manumitted through tedbīr.
The form of manumission through tedbīr – i.e. tedbīr-i muḳayyed – which is
most frequently found in Istanbul’s court registers is the one whereby a slave was
already considered manumitted before the owner’s death. To achieve this, the
owner declared in the document that they had freed the slave a certain number of
days (usually 40, although some documents stipulate 20 instead) before their pass-
ing. So it is in the case where Mihal veled Hristo52 (probably a dhimmi53 of Bulgarian
origin) declares in a manumission document that he freed his slave Yuvan veled
Bahto 40 days before his death.54 By employing this retroactive procedure a slave
could be prevented from remaining in their owner’s possession after the latter’s
death; in this way they would not become part of the estate and pass into the pos-
session of – and, as such, into a fresh relationship of dependency with – the heir or
perhaps even a new owner, in case the heir decided to sell them on. This would
have made manumission impossible. So slave owners put a set date on the record
during their lifetime to ensure that their slave(s) really were manumitted after their
death by freeing them retroactively and so preventing them becoming part of their
estate.55
While in most manumission papers the act of emancipation is linked to only one
mode of manumission, there are also those that describe a combination of several.
One document from 1578 (Galata Mahkemesi) for example records an agreement be-
tween Ali bin Veli and his ʿabd-ı memlūk Yusuf bin Abdullah to the effect that Yusuf
 İstanbul Mahkemesi 10 Numaralı Sicil, 547 [66b–7] (H. 1072–1073 / M. 1661–1663).

 The v. stands for “veled” meaning of “son” and was used for non-Muslim men to show whose
son they were.
 Dhimmis was the term for followers of other religions who had legal protection from the Muslim
community. See Claude Cahen, “D̲h̲imma,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. Pery
Bearman et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1823 [accessed 17.05.2022].
 Ahi Çelebi Mahkemesi 1 Numaralı Sicil, 27 [5a–4] (H. 1063–1064 / M. 1652–1653).
 See also Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: 77.
would work for him for three years and then be freed.56 The slave owner, Ali bin
Veli, further declares that in case he should die from an illness, he will free Yusuf
through muḳayyed tedbīr, i.e. the conditional manumission mode after the owner’s
death. By arranging for two different options, the owner thus guarantees freedom
for his slave even in the case that he, the owner, should die before the end of the
agreed-upon period. Had Ali bin Veli died before the lapse of three years, Yusuf
would have become part of his inheritable estate. The additional declaration of mu-
ḳayyed tedbīr (a linguistic variant of tedbīr-i muḳayyed) ensures that the slave will be
emancipated either way.
The document explicitly states that the mükātab contract has not been dissolved,
but that additional, alternative arrangements have been made. If the contractually
agreed kitābet emancipation cannot occur, tedbīr will happen instead. In this case,
too, we may speculate that the owner wanted to prevent his slave from becoming part
of the inheritable estate and so from not gaining his freedom. Even if the motives for
this strong desire to ensure emancipation for one’s slave(s) probably were religious
rather than humane, the precautions and processes show the one-sided nature of rela-
tionships and dependencies. They always disadvantage the slave.
The double guarantee undertaken by the slave owners in these cases illustrates
to what degree slaves were dependent on their owners’ goodwill. We can also con-
clude that under simple contract-based arrangements for manumission, unless an
owner had taken appropriate precautions, his slave(s) ran the real risk of passing
into the ownership of his heirs. In those cases, the slaves’ fate was once again deter-
mined by the legal structures of the system.
5 Conclusion
This examination of manumission papers has once again shown that in early mod-
ern Istanbul not only men and women, but also Muslims and non-Muslims could
own slaves. The slave owners are mentioned in the manumission papers by name,
place of residence and, where applicable, profession; no attempt is made to differen-
tiate between them by linguistic means. This stands in marked contrast to the slaves,
who are described by numerous different terms. Those involved in the act of manu-
mission are named: in addition to the slave owners and the slaves these might in-
clude legal representatives and a variety of witnesses. The order in which these
persons are mentioned can be read as an indicator of the slave’s subordinate posi-
tion: the slave is named after everybody else. So the individual whose manumission
is the subject of the document; who is therefore the central person and the one who
attains their freedom and as such, according to the document, the same status as
 Galata Mahkemesi 7 Numaralı Sicil, 176 [55–2] (H. 985–986 / M. 1577–1578).

other freeborn persons, appears last of all. But it is not only structural characteris-
tics: these asymmetrical dependencies between the slave and their owner and the
system as a whole, are being reinforced by the use of particular terminologies and
expressions.
Manumission itself as a direct speech act emphasizes the owner’s superior posi-
tion, without whose willingness and performance the act of emancipation would not
have been possible. The owner manumits the slave and releases them from being in
his possession and from the bonds of slavery; as such he dominates the action. The
choice of words, the element of direct speech and other grammatical peculiarities
such as the possessive suffix can be read as signifying the slave’s relationship of
asymmetrical dependency with their owner.
The multitude of entangled terms shows, firstly, how complex and elaborate the
structures of slavery were in the Ottoman Empire. The labels for freed slaves primar-
ily provide information about sex, the mode of manumission and the freed person’s
relationship to their former owner. The different semantic fields (some of which
have been borrowed from Arabic while others have been modified) demonstrate that
slavery was an institution that had evolved and diversified over a long period of
time. The fact that there were so many differently connoted terms for slaves, manu-
mission and freed people (but not for slave owners) underscores how highly devel-
oped slavery was, and how deeply rooted not only within the judicial system, but
also in wider society. This is evidenced by the presence of these terms far beyond
legal texts: they occur in chronicles, travelogues, and other genres.
The large number of terms also shows the presence of different degrees of de-
pendency. If we take a slave’s potential scope of action as a basis for determining
the degree of their dependency, an enslaved person who achieved emancipation
through a contract had more options and say than one manumitted by their owner
in a charitable act. If the condition was payment of an agreed sum, the slave could
take action and work towards their manumission. So in theory, bilateral manumis-
sion indicates a lesser degree of dependency of slave on owner than does unilateral
manumission, because the act of manumission was not solely based on the action of
the owner. But in fact a slave’s scope of action (and, as such, their dependency) was
determined by a variety of factors, such as their relationship to their owner, the lat-
ter’s social position and so forth, which manifested differently in each case. We
might imagine a sliding scale of dependency where each slave occupies a slightly
different point. (There are a number of different circumstances, some but not all of
which the slave can influence; as a result, each slave can move along the scale – in
both directions.)
We can identify not only different degrees, but also different layers of depen-
dency. Slaves seem to have been in a number of different dependency relationships
during their enslavement, which are listed individually in the documents. The man-
umission papers show that a slave first had to acknowledge their slave status in
order to be freed from this dependency. They were, secondly, released from being in
their owner’s possession and, thirdly, the documents state that they are now free
like other freeborn persons. Dependency appears to happen in different layers simul-
taneously, each of which is then individually named and revoked upon emancipa-
tion. Thus, while the degrees of dependency for slaves could vary between less
strong and strong, they could be in different layers of dependency at the same time,
which were lifted one after the other when they were freed.
Again, in documenting manumissions various terms or semantic fields are being
employed for the concept free. While āzād appears to describe a process, ḥür repre-
sents a state of being. The freed slave has to pass through the process of manumis-
sion in order to attain the state of a free or freeborn person. Even so dependency
persists, both on the owner and on the wider system. Therefore, a slave never really
attained the free status of a freeborn person.
A further aspect that is mentioned in manumission papers is the slave’s reli-
gious denomination. While the majority of slaves owned by Muslims converted to
Islam, those in the possession of non-Muslims retained their original faith. Conver-
sion was mentioned in manumission papers, and it could contribute to accelerating
emancipation. But as non-Muslims were not allowed to possess Muslim slaves, con-
version was not an option to generate extra scope of action for their slaves. It is
likely that converts enjoyed better opportunities for integration into society than
non-converts. This probably also affected their dependency on their former owners.
To summarize: three characteristics have emerged from my examination of
manumission papers in the Istanbul court records from the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries: in addition to structural and compositional aspects the linguistic
dimension is of great importance. The terms and expressions employed in connec-
tion with manumission may be subsumed under the categories of terminology and
semantic fields. From this terminology and these semantic fields we can infer the
existence of different degrees and layers of dependency. While an enslaved person
was only ever dependent to a certain degree at any given time, they always inhab-
ited all layers of dependency because these covered different areas. In addition to
these multiple dependencies of the enslaved, freed people were never wholly free
even after manumission, because certain dependencies persisted even after en-
slavement had come to an end.
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Hans-Heinrich Nolte
Terms for Dependent People in Rural Russia
in Early Modern Records
1 From Macro to Micro: Back and Forth
Much of the historiography of Russia1 in the early modern period is preoccupied
with the history of power politics: the “collection of Russian lands” and the found-
ing of the “centralised Russian state” with Moscow as its new capital. Comparisons
to Western Europe, to the estates-based state (Ständestaat) and absolutism, and the
rise of Russia to great power status in the European Concert despite being a country
exporting raw-materials2 were and are quite often on the minds of historians. In the
Soviet Union, historiography was preoccupied with the question of how Russia fit-
ted into the socio-economic concepts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir
Lenin. After 1934, the old political and the new socio-economic schools combined
to form Soviet Patriotism, which became Russian nationalism in reaction to Ger-
many’s attack in 1941. Russian nationalism included the history of the other Soviet
nations, as long the leading role of the “older brother” Russia was not questioned.3
Whether the image of a “centralized” Muscovy is upheld or questioned remains a
question of political decisions – to this day.4
 Manfred Hellman et al., eds., Handbuch der Geschichte Russlands, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann,
1976–2003); Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Geschichte Russlands, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2012); Collec-
tion of sources in German translation: Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Bernhard Schalhorn, and Bernd Bon-
wetsch, eds., Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014).
 To cut the long discussion on unequal development very short – Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Ungleich
verbundene Entwicklung: Russland und der Westen seit dem 16. Jahrhundert,” in Handbuch der
Entwicklungsforschung, ed. Karin Fischer, Gerhard Hauck, and Manuela Boatča (Wiesbaden:
Springer, 2016): 333–36.
 Erwin Oberländer, Sowjetpatriotismus und Geschichte (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1976);
Benjamin F. Schenk, Aleksandr Nevskij (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004); Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Ot sovet-
skogo patriotizma k rossijskomu nacionalizmu, 1941–1942,” in Germanija i Rossija v sud’be istorika:
K 90-letiju Jakova Samojlovicha Drabkina, ed. M. B. Korchagina and V. V. Ishhenko (Moscow: Sobra-
nie, 2008): 171–82; Jens Binner, “Ein neues Bild des Stalinismus in Russland?” in Nationen und Na-
tionalismen in Geschichtsschreibung und Erinnerungskultur, ed. Hans-Heinrich Nolte (Gleichen:
Muster-Schmidt, 2020): 125–33.
 Vladimir Putin claimed that “Russia is part of western European culture [. . .] but Russia has
been founded as a super centralist state, this is in our genetic code, in the traditions, in the mental-
ity of the people.” Vladimir Putin and Natalija Gevorkjan, Ot pervogo lica. Razgovory s Vladimirom
Putinom (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000): 167. But pre-Petrine Russia was governed by consent: Hans-
Note: Transliteration GOSSTANDARD.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-009
226 Hans-Heinrich Nolte
In global history the place of Russia is debated: was it actor or object in the
“rise of the West,” semi periphery or periphery of the global system,5 “a peripheral
Empire,”6 a lonely nation and the heir to Byzantium7 – or following in the traditions
of the Eurasian steppe?8 Was Russia at its best as a communist alternative and one
of two superpowers? Can post-Petrine Russia be defined as the first “imperialistic”
empire in the European Concert of Powers, a forerunner to Napoleon and the Ho-
henzollern?9 The turn goes back to micro-history.
The number of dictionaries and encyclopedias alone offers convincing reasons
for starting a new round of research in semantics.10 The terms on feudalism in Rus-
sia have mostly been used for all kinds of topics, except in historiographies of ev-
eryday life11 and of culture.12 A fresh look at the sources is also necessary, because
during the Soviet era, party intervention disallowed the opinions of outsiders on
feudalism in Russia, as in the case of Mikhail Gefter.13 Research outside of Russia,
“from the other shore,” is only possible because Russian scholars, mostly in the
Academy of Sciences, edited a remarkable amount of sources on our topic – in the
Heinrich Nolte, “The Tsar Gave the Order and the Boiars Assented,” The Medieval History Journal
19, no. 2 (2016): 229–52. The abstract confuses my position with Vladimir Putin’s.
 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974); Hans-Heinrich
Nolte, “Zur Stellung Osteuropas im Internationalen System der Frühen Neuzeit: Außenhandel und So-
zialgeschichte bei der Bestimmung der Regionen,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 28 (1980):
161–97; English translation: Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “The Position of Eastern Europe in the International
System in Early Modern Times,” Review 4, no. 1 (1982): 25–84.
 Boris Kagarlickij, Periferijnaja Imperija (Moscow: Algoritm, 2009).
 See the new editions: Nikolaj Berdjaev, Russkaja ideja (Sankt Peterburg: Azbuka-klassika, 2008);
Archiepiskop Serafim (Sobolev), Russkaja ideologija (Sankt Peterburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1992); com-
pare Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “On the Loneliness of Russia and the Russian idea,” Coexistence 32, no. 1
(1995): 39–48.
 Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev, Drevnjaja Rus’ i Velikaja step’, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Mysl’, 1993).
 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Kurze Geschichte der Imperien (Vienna: Böhlau, 2017): 277–302.
 Sergej G. Pushkarev, Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970); Hans-Joachim Torke, ed., Lexikon der Geschichte
Russlands: Von den Anfängen bis zur Oktoberrevolution (Munich: Beck, 1985); V. A. Vladykina,
O. F. Kozlov, N. N. Khimina, V. F. Jankovskaja, eds., Gosudarstvennost` Rossii. Slovar`-Spravochnik,
5 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1999–2005): vol. 1–2; M. P. Mchelov, ed., Rossijskaja Civilizacija (Moscow:
Respublika, 2001); Norbert Franz, ed., Lexikon der russischen Kultur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2002); Karl-Friedrich Jäger, ed., Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, 16 vols. (Stuttgart: Met-
zler, 2002–2015).
 Carsten Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, 3 vols. (Zurich: Chronos, 2003–2005).
 A. V. Arcikhovskij, ed., Ocherki russkoj kul’tury, vols. 1–2 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo
universiteta, 1978–1979).
 Carsten Goehrke, “Zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Feudalismusdiskussion in der Sowjetunion,”
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 22 (1974): 214–47; Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Late-Soviet Control
of Historiography: the Case of Michael Gefter,” in Scientific Freedom Under Attack, ed. Ralf Roth
and Asli Vatansever (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2020): 87–100.
tsarist, Soviet and the republican eras. I am grateful for this work, which constitutes
the basis for my analysis.
2 Dependent People in the Russian Countryside

2.1 General Conditions for Agriculture and Trade in Eastern
Europe
This text focuses on dependent people in rural areas. Of course towns, border pop-
ulations, the bureaucracy and the social history of the royal dynasty (and other
princely families) also are important for analyzing Russian history, but if one starts
with a specific selection, agrarian history14 suggests itself as fundamental for the
period.15
Eurasia east of the river Bug may be divided into roughly four geographic
zones: tundra, taiga, steppe and desert. In the west between taiga and steppe, there
is a wedge-shaped piece of mixed woodland, with the wide end between St. Peters-
burg and Kiev, that grows ever narrower until it ends at the Urals behind Kazan; its
boundaries are determined by the amount of precipitation coming from the west,
cold air from the north and heat from the south.16 The climate affected the soil, al-
beit over long periods of time. There is fertile topsoil in favorable parts of the
wedge, and chernozem soil in the steppe region.17
The strip of chernozem soil in the north of the steppe has the best, and the
wedge-shaped area of mixed woodland still fine conditions for peasants in the
broad socio-economic meaning of the term.18 But for centuries it was a battleground
between nomad and peasant societies. Until the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Russian and Finno-Ugrian peasants, most of them Christians, settled the wedge to
 Boris D. Grekow, Die Bauern in der Rus von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum 17. Jahrhundert, trans.
Herbert Truhart and Kyra von Bergstraesser, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie, 1959); A. L. Shapiro, ed.,
Agrarnaja istorija Severo-Zapada Rossii, 2 vols. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978).
 Some sources and literature on Russian peasants in English: Robert E. F. Smith, ed., The Enserf-
ment of the Russian Peasantry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Robert E. F. Smith,
Peasant farming in Muscovy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); David Moon, The Rus-
sian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Created (London: Longman, 1999); Elise Kimerl-
ing Wirtschafter, Russia’s Age of Serfdom: 1649–1861 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).
 Sketch of the climate zones in Nolte, Geschichte Russlands: 19.
 I. P. Gerasimov, ed., Fiziko-geograficheskij Atlas Mira (Moscow: Akademija Nauk SSSR i glavnoe
upravlenie Geodezii i Kartografii, 1964): 192–249, maps on temperature, frost, soils, precipitation
etc. on page 202–20.
 Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Co.,1969; Norman:
University of Oklakoma Press, 1999): xxii: “populations that are existentially involved in cultivation
and make autonomous decisions regarding the process of cultivation.”
the north and west of the Oka. The Kazan region was the center of the Turkic- speak-
ing and majority Muslim, Tatar, peasant-based society. After the Mongol conquest it
became a khanate and continued to be a stronghold of the “Golden horde,” the west-
ern part of Mongol Empire and the empires of the Dzhingissid dynasty which were
based on a nomad economy, control of peasants and interregional trade.19 The taiga
is difficult for agriculture, and tundra and steppe offer good conditions only for no-
mads, who are capable of making a living on relatively barren grounds.
For centuries, trade had been one of the cornerstones of people and states in the
region. Since no silver or gold was mined until the eighteenth century, precious met-
als had to be imported – from Mesopotamia, from Germany or via the Netherlands
from Latin America.20 Prices for kholop serfs below are given in rubles, but fluctuated
widely. In early Muscovy a ruble was fixed at 206 g, in 1704 at 25–26 g of silver.21
Since Russian exports mostly consisted of products by peasants or hunters (or of
slaves), these also formed the main basis for the use of money in domestic and for-
eign trades,22 since only silver money was trusted, while paper money had no and
copper money only little credit.23 Also the tributes paid to the Mongol Empire and
later the ransoming of Russian captives in Kaffa had to be carried out in silver.24
2.2 Terms for Dependent People in the Kievan Rus
The Kievan Rus had its center in the fine soils and relatively mild climate of what
today is Ukraine. Although foreign trade had played a decisive part in the founding
 Introductory Nolte, Kurze Geschichte der Imperien: 121–36.

 Ian Blanchard, Russia’s ‘Age of Silver’ (London: Routledge, 1989); Dariusz Adamczyk, “Friesen,
Wikinger, Araber,” in Ostsee 700 – 2000: Gesellschaft – Wirtschaft – Kultur, ed. Andrea Komlosy,
Hans-Heinrich Nolte, and Imbi Sooman (Vienna: Promedia, 2008): 32–48.; Artur Attman, The Rus-
sian and Polish Markets in International Trade (Göteborg: Elanders, 1973): 103–93; Jan de Vries,
“Connecting Europe and Asia: A Quantitative Analysis 1497–1795,” in Global Connections and Mon-
etary History 1470–1800, ed. Dennis O. Flynn, Arturo Giráldez, and Richard von Glahn (Aldershot:
Edward Elgar, 2003): 35–106.
 Iwan Georgewitsch Spasskij, Das Russische Münzsystem (Leningrad: Aurora, 1957; Berlin: trans-
press, 1983). Compare A. S. Mel’nikova, Russkie monety ot Ivana Groznogo do Petra Pervogo (Mos-
cow: Financy i Statistika, 1989).
 For the process see now Dariusz Adamczyk, Monetarisierungsmomente, Kommerzialisierungszo-
nen oder fiskalische Währungslandschaften? Edelmetalle, Silberverteilungsnetzwerke und Gesellschaf-
ten in Ostmitteleuropa 800–1200 (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2020).
 Richard Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1999).
 De facto a constitutional tax in Muscovy. I used the following edition of the basic law code,
Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 Goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, ed. A. G. Man’kov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1987).
German translation: Das Sobornoe Ulozhenie, ed. Christian Meiske (Halle: Martin Luther Universität,
1984): chap. VIII.
of the state, Christianization, the decline of Byzantium, the rise of nomad power
and the intensification of economic control over rural areas increased the impor-
tance of agriculture for the princes and the nobility – they lived less from trade and
more from feudal rents. This was the economic context for the “feudal parceling” of
Russia even before the Mongols conquered the country; the political one was a
state owned by a dynasty which habitually divided the inheritance and competed
between individual branches of the family. In the religious context, unity was pre-
served by the church.
The oldest codices of law in Russia were written in Novgorod Velikiy, a trade cen-
ter near the Baltic Sea, which was governed by the church and the boyars, and which
is referred to in the literature as a republic.25 Here at the beginning of the twelfth cen-
tury, citing older texts, especially of Grand Prince Jaroslav and his sons in the elev-
enth century, this lawbook was compiled. The texts are called Russkaia Pravda –
there are short and long redactions. For the edition used here thirteen manuscripts
were compared.26 The main content of the Russkaia Pravda is the fixing of bloodwite
(wergild, vira), but by the twelfth century many other topics had been added.27
Dependent people are called roba, kholop or chelyadin in the Pravda. Roba is a
woman slave. Etymologically the word is derived from Indo-European *rb, from
which derive German Arbeit (work) and Erbe (inheritance), Bohemian robotten, and
the word rabotat’ in modern Russian. It is related to *arb – orphaned, small.28 A
roba is a woman worker, rab is used for a male slave, but rarely. The usual term for
male dependents is kholop, which most probably derives from a word meaning
young man, in Ukrainian today khlopec.29 The histories of the terms rab and kholop
indicate, that (enforced or habitual) labor by young people was common in medie-
val times, and that young people generally were at risk of becoming dependent.30
Also, as in the term “boyar’s children” for the lower nobility, age was used to define
social status, and young quite often meant low. Chelyadin is the only word that in-
cludes both men and women. A chelyad’ is the collective term for all those working
in a master’s household. The single term for a servant is a chelyadin. The chelyad’
 Introductory Nolte, Kurze Geschichte der Imperien: 51–53.

 O. I. Chistjakov, ed., Rossijskoe Zakonodatel’stvo X–XX vekov v devjati tomakh, 9 vols. (Moscow:
Juridicheskaja literatura, 1984–1994): vol. 1; V. L. Janin, ed., Russkaja Pravda. Vvedenie (Moscow:
Juridicheskaja literatura, 1984): 5–46, at 34, 45. The text of the Prostrannaja redakcija, 64–132
(V. L. Janin, ed., “Prostrannaja redakcija,” in Zakonodatel’stvo Drevnej Rusi, vol. 1, ed. V. L. Janin
(Moscow: Juridicheskaja literature, 1984): 189–298).
 Prostrannaja redakcija, §§ 64–73.
 Friedrich Kluge, s. v. “Arbeit,” “arm,” “Erbe,” in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen
Sprache, twentieth ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967); Compare Andrea Komlosy, Arbeit: Eine global-
historische Perspektive (Vienna: Promedia, 2014): 36–52.
 Pushkarev, Dictionary.
 Michael Zeuske, Handbuch der Geschichte der Sklaverei, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2019): 292–344.
has its own options, for instance it may decide to hide one of its number who has
committed a crime, but the collective then has to pay the fine for him.
The justice system depended on the communities, but the princes extended
their jurisdiction. In a case of murder, direct vengeance by family members was
legal, but the Grand Princes provided the option to pay a fine instead. The blood-
wite (vira) according to the Russkaja Pravda31 was:
– for killing one of the prince’s leading men, 80 grivna32
– an ordinary man of the prince 40, grivna
– a merchant, an artisan or a wetnurse, 12 grivna
– for a man from the rank and file (of peasants), 5 grivna
– for a woman slave (roba), 6 grivna
– for a kholop 5, grivna
For killing a prince, no bloodwite was provided, which means that there always
would be vengeance in this case. The difference in the vira between one of the
prince’s men and a kholop was 16:1; that between a merchant, artisan or wetnurse
and a roba 2:1; a roba is valued a little higher than a kholop. Kholop and peasant
are assigned the same value. The Russkaja Pravda describes three kinds of full
kholops33 – 1) bought before witnesses, 2) married to a roba and 3) having ac-
cepted a job as tiun of a prince or boyar. A full kholop is “unfree,” he may not tes-
tify in court (except as tiun “if necessary”); he does not pay the fee for the prince’s
judgement, but pays double the amount to the plaintiff.
The later texts in the version emphasize more defining property. According to
an article that was added later,34 kholop and roba no longer have a bloodwite; in
case they are killed (without provocation), a fixed amount is to be paid to the plain-
tiff and a fee of twelve grivna to the prince. When a master has children with a
roba, the mother and the children are to be set free when the master dies, but do
not have any claims to his estate.35 The last part of the Pravda is on kholops.36 It
repeats the definitions for becoming a full (polnyj or obel’nyj) kholop, with the obvi-
ous aim of limiting such transitions. Similarly, §111 notes what may not lead to it.
The next articles describe fugitives and offer, albeit without much enthusiasm, the
help of state officials in bringing them back. §116 forbids kholops to lend money,
but §117 allows them to engage in trade in case their master agrees. §120 decrees
 Prostrannaja redakcija, §§ 1–21. Since texts from different centuries have been combined into
one text, there are some contradictions.
 The Kiev-Grivna in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries was a chunk of silver of c. 260
g. Spasskij, Das Russische Münzsystem: 54.
 Prostrannaja redakcija, §§ 63–71.
 Prostrannaja redakcija, § 89.
 Prostrannaja redakcija, § 98.
 Prostrannaja redakcija, §§ 110–21.
that the family of a kholop accused of robbery shall not automatically come under
suspicion, but only in case there is proof of their complicity.
2.3 Northern Russia after 1237
One of the results of the conquest of Russia by the Mongolian Empire in 1237 was
that the southern strip of the mixed woodland wedge was returned to nomadic use
and lost for agriculture. Peasants of the Rus’ either emigrated westward, in the di-
rection of Lithuania and Poland, or to the north of the river Oka. Later the Grand
Princes of Moscow won the power struggle among the northern Russian princes
and started gather together the “Russian lands.” In the west, their territory was
called Muscovy to distinguish it from the other “Russias” in Lithuania and in Po-
land.37 At the beginning of the sixteenth. century, Muscovy stretched from the Pol-
ish-Lithuanian border – quite often with Smolensk as border town – and the most
eastern inlet of the Baltic Sea in the west, to the White Sea in the north, the borders
of the Kazan Khanate – east of Nizhniy Novgorod – and to the upper reaches of the
river Donets in the south. In the second half of the sixteenth. century, Muscovy con-
quered the Volga valley towards the Caspian Sea and in the seventeenth century it
expanded into Siberia and towards the Dnepr. Russian settlement in the new south
started, but as before, the steppe mostly was used as pasture by Nogai Tatars, Kal-
myks or Cossacks.
The agrarian system38 of Muscovy proper was characterized by slash-and-burn
agriculture. After clearing, the land could be used to cultivate buckwheat, rye, bar-
ley and oats. It was difficult to keep a cow or a horse alive through the long winter.
The piece of arable land, could be used for a period of four or five years, after
which new land had to be cleared; but it took about 25 years until the trees had
grown high enough to render it advantageous to clear again. Peasants and settle-
ments migrated in the wake of the land they cleared, and it made little sense to own
a particular stretch of land. In order to obtain value from the peasants, a lord had
to have claims against specific persons or their communities, which were autono-
mous organizations.
However, as population density increased, more land was being taken into con-
stant use, and by the sixteenth century, permanent settlements and three-field crop
rotation became common in Russia to the south of the upper Volga. Hay making
 Maps can be found in Westermanns Atlas zur Weltgeschichte, vol. 2, ed. Hans-Erich Stier et al.
(Braunschweig: Westermann, 1956): 71; Introduction Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der Uk-
raine (Munich: Beck, 1994): 41–53.
 Introduction Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Russische Bauern zwischen Waldeinsamkeit, Kommune
und Kapitalismus,” in Unterdrückung und Emanzipation in der Weltgeschichte, ed. Florian Grum-
blies and Anton Weise (Hannover: Jmb-Verlag, 2017): 127–51.
increased, which made it possible to feed more cattle through the winter and to ma-
nure part of the land. In the eighteenth century, some lords introduced four-field ro-
tation systems or even – following the example of Holstein (which itself followed
England) – “up and down husbandry” with five, six or more fields.39 But three-field
systems prevailed in central parts Russia till collectivization in the twentieth century,
while in the peripheries shifting cultivation with slash-and-burn agriculture remained
dominant.40
2.4 Survey of Social Groups in Rural Early Modern Russian
The fundamental social institution of the period was the fenced-in family-court or
household, in which noblemen and peasants lived, Hof in German, in Russian
called dvor. The term chelyad’ was by then used only rarely, maybe indicating a
loss of autonomy of the people living in a household. The dvor was headed by a
man. An adult man – whether he was a prince or bishop, a peasant or a cottager –
was the khozjain (master of the house) in his household. Since in this period it re-
quired a married couple to make a living as peasants,41 he would marry. The inter-
nal division of labor and authority was not monopolized by the man, but the rule
was that he decided outside the dvor and the wife inside.42 Since in Russia the testa-
tor was free, women might inherit such a dvor, but they too would soon marry. Be-
tween 1635 and 1725, and even more between 1678 and 1721, the dvor also was a tax
unit,43 which made it profitable to have as many people living on a dvor as possible.
A Russian household in the early modern period consisted of a collection of build-
ings whose size was determined by the building material (logs). The dvor was sur-
rounded by a fence with a more or less beautiful gate. Husband and wife lived there
with their children, unmarried relatives and possibly servants. There were three
major types of agrarian settlements: (1) derevnja – a small village or hamlet; (2)
seló – a village, often with the main house of a noble estate; and (3) volost’ – the
territory of a community (mir), this was often also where the church and the room
(izba) of the starosta was. In the “black” volosts the members would elect the “el-
dest” (starosta) and the local judges for offenses that were tried within the village;
 Michael Confino, Systèmes Agraires et Progrès Agricole (Paris: Mouton, 1969). Map in Hans-
Heinrich Nolte, ed., Der Aufstieg Rußlands zur europäischen Großmacht (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981): 64.
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 3.1 description from
1790: mostly slash and burn with a four-year term, but Tatars around Kasan used a three-field sys-
tem. Compare no. 3.3.
 In the eighteenth century a couple was called quite often tjaglo – a yoke, invoking their capac-
ity to carry certain work-loads together.
 Although for an urban household compare Klaus Müller, ed., Altrussisches Hausbuch (Leipzig:
Kiepenheuer, 1987).
 Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982): 538.
in the volosts belonging to a prince or a pomeshchik the owner would appoint an

officer for administration and local adjudication. The prosecution of murder and
robbery were the monopoly of the government.44 The peasants had to pay a land
tax (dan), perform corvée labor for the noble owner (barshchina) and/or pay him
rent (obrok).45 The volost’ had to collect taxes of all kinds and was liable for their
payment (krugovája poruka); in the eighteenth. century also supplying recruits.
Who was living on the land in what conditions in the sixteenth century?
From the state’s point of view there were “black people” (chernye) paying full
taxes, and “whitened people” (belomestnyj in Moscow) who paid less tax, since they
gave barshchina or obrok to either a church institution or to a noble landowner. A
village (seló) belonging to the Grand Prince may serve as a micro example (1543/4).46
In this village there were three untaxed households (two priests who served two
churches and one deacon), 75 taxed peasant households (vytye) plus 26 untaxed ones
(nevytye). The taxable unit was named sokhá – that is a light plow. Officially, untaxed
land had been cleared only recently. The ratio between arable and grazing land to be
worked for the landowner (barshchina) and the fields the peasants could use for
themselves was about 1:2, if hamlets were included, it was 1:3. Remote hamlets paid
their dues in monetarized form (obrok), but in this village also those in the center
had to contribute some smaller dues, for instance for “the goose, the cock, the eggs,”
in that form. Obligations in kind were changed to money.
There were two kinds of property rights of the nobility:47 (1) Votchina – an in-
herited estate. Many were part of a family inheritance and were passed on when a
branch of the family died out. It could be sold only if the family agreed. There were
also votchinas belonging to individuals, which could be sold freely. In western Eu-
rope this would be called an allodium. (2) Pomest’je – an estate given by the Grand
Prince or a church institution to a nobleman on the condition of service. The West-
ern European equivalent would be a feudum (fief). This of course could not be
sold – until the Russian allodification of pomest’ja during the reign of Anna.
For a peasant, there were two kinds of property rights within a volost’. He
owned his household, his tools and his land (either by clearing or in the three-field
rotation system). Politically, the volost’ was made up of the khozjain’s. As members
of the volost’, peasants owned the forests, lakes and rivers communally. In this pe-
riod there was no periodic redistribution of the arable land; the romantic concept of
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 2.18.
 A list of the distribution in 1780 can be found in Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, eds., Quellen
zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 3.2.
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 2.1.
 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Eigentumsrechte im Moskauer Rußland,” in Rechts- und Verfassungsge-
schichte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Gedenkschrift Joachim Leuschner, ed. Katharina Colberg
et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983): 226–44.
“archaic socialism” in Russia is not confirmed by the sources.48 The redistributive

commune was instituted in the eighteenth century only49 (for better control of the
peasants and to keep the poor from running away).
There were different statuses for the agrarian population; starting at the top:
1. Nobility living on the land: princes (knjaz), high nobility (boyar) or low nobility
(deti boiarskie).
2. Clergy (with their own justice system, as in the western church).
3. Officials of big landowners (tiun’, or even kholop)
4. Starozhilec – a peasant who has lived in one community for a long time
5. Novoporjadchik – a newly settled peasant. He accepted service with a land-
owner for a sum of money and might become starozhilec
6. Polovnik – “peasants who owned a half” of the soil needed for farming
7. Bobyl – cottager, landless peasant
8. Kholop – could fall into several different categories:
8.1 Starinnyj (old) – inherited
8.2 Kuplennyj – bought
8.3 Polnyj – full or dokladnyj – by official act –
8.4 Kabalnyj – kabalá was a written acknowledgement of debt. We may sys-
tematize three kinds of kabalnyj kholop:
8.4.1 zajȅmnaja – which was simply a certificate of debt
8.4.2 sluzhilaja – agreement to serve for time instead of paying
8.4.3 polnaja, kholopskaja – agreement to serve for life
In rural areas, kabalnye and kholops might live within the households of es-
tate owners and work as servants performing domestic tasks (cleaning,
cooking, sewing, heating etc.), but also clerical ones. They might live “be-
hind the estate” (zadvornye) in their own houses and work estate land. They
might even be put into autonomous positions with their own households,
for instance in fights for land against other estate owners or volost’s.
9. The ninth group of people living in rural areas were children, unmarried men
and women living within the households of khozjains. Although most probably
there were many individual differences within this group, we might find those
who endured the worst living-conditions – sleeping in the ashes and not on top
of the oven (as the tales about Cinderella indicate).
We have to keep in mind though that all these people of different statuses were
Orthodox Christians. They were obliged to attend church on Sundays, go to
confession and receive Holy Communion at least once a year. In moral and
 Carsten Goehrke, Die Theorien über Entstehung und Entwicklung des mir (Wiesbaden: Harrasso-
witz, 1964).
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 3.67, 3.73.
intellectual matters, they were tried by the church, as well as in all cases of
adultery, magic and sorcery. They enjoyed a Sunday rest that started on Satur-
day a 3.00 pm, and of course quite a number of feast days.50 Orthodox parishes
before Peter I were small, everybody knew everybody.
10. Outside of the church there was the tenth group of people living in rural
areas:51 This was the non-Orthodox nobility (from the fifteenth century on-
wards, this group included Muslim Tatars and animistic “elders” or Mordva
and Cheremiss “bestmen”; from the sixteenth century onwards they were Latin
Christians – soldiers from Scotland and Switzerland, artisans from Italy and
Germany etc.; and from the eighteenth century onwards they were members of
the Finnish-Swedish and Baltic German Protestant nobility), but also Muslim
and Jewish, Catholic and Protestant prisoners of war and Iasyry. As a rule,
these different religious communities had their own places of worship (mos-
ques, temples etc.) and their own parish-like organizations.
Sometimes the lack of a right to relocate is seen as defining a slave. But in reality,
only few people in the Russian countryside were free to leave. A votchinnik had to
live on his allod, unless he inherited another. A pomeshhik had to live on his po-
mest’e, unless he was given another. Both had to follow the call to arms and go to
war at whatever frontier – they could go elsewhere, but not follow their own free
will. A clergyman had to live at the post assigned to him by his bishop. In case his
wife (Orthodox parish priests have to be married) died or went into a convent, he
could also ask to join a monastery. The starozhilec, the settled peasant, was rather
an exception. However, even his right to leave the land was limited to two weeks
a year in 1497, and it was laid down that when leaving he had to give one ruble to
the lord, or in his absence nail it to the gate of the farmstead. The novoprojadchik
could have the same right, as soon as he had paid back the sum given him by the
lord for establishment of his dvor. A kholop had no right to choose his place of liv-
ing and laboring.
During the sixteenth century the nobility fought to limit the right of peasants to
leave, and during some years migration was forbidden. Then there would be a
search for those who changed their lords or went into the forest.52 In the Ulozhenie
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. X, §§ 25–26.

 For the religious aspect see, Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Religiöse Toleranz in Rußland 1600–1725 (Göt-
tingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1969); Nolte, “Verständnis und Bedeutung der religiösen Toleranz in Ruß-
land,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 17 (1969): 494–530. For ethnic aspects see, Andreas
Kappeler, Russlands erste Nationalitäten: Das Zarenreich und die Völker der Mittleren Wolga vom 16.
bis 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 1982); Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich (Munich: Beck,
1991); English version: Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-ethnic History (London:
Routledge, 2001).
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 2.24.
of 1649 the peasants lost the right to leave the land and were made krepostnyj – tied
to the soil,53 or rather to a certain village community. After the starozhilcy and novo-
porjadchiki had lost their right to leave, the differences between them and the po-
lovniki and bobyli became less important and they were increasingly subsumed
together in the status of krest’jane. Most peasant families over the centuries experi-
enced a deterioration of their status from free (black) to dependent people (white).
In the literature the social reason given for tying peasants to the soil is that the
lower nobility wanted it, as warfare had developed into a full-time occupation, and
those fighting could no longer work the fields to feed their families. But peasants
might run away, and big landowners, especially the clergy, were able to offer better
conditions to peasants than owners of small estates. But there was also an eco-
nomic argument: as noted above, the move to agriculture in permanent settlements
was more expensive and required more specialized labor. The practice of free move-
ment went well with slash and burn, but not so much with three-field rotation sys-
tems. Last but not least, the costs of control in (comparatively) densely settled
regions were less than in wooded ones. Incidentally, all persons, kholops included,
were free to visit even far-off towns and markets. Legally, however, leaving their
places of residence was difficult, if not impossible, for most of these groups.
But the enormous territory of Russia simply invited men and women to explore
their possibilities in another place. Legally, only few people were allowed to change
their places of residence, but in reality there was considerable, albeit illegal, move-
ment. Running away (begstvo) was the only way by which a kholop to could achieve
some freedom, and more than a quarter ran away at some time or another.54 Tying
them to the soil increased begstvo by peasants. After the schism (raskol) of the sev-
enteenth century, a new group was added: the Oldbelievers who fled religious per-
secution.55 “Living on the run” was also quite common in the eighteenth century.56
Running away was, indeed, part of the continuous expansion of Russia. After con-
quering the Volga khanates and building defense lines (sechki), in the seventeenth
century, Russian, Mordva and Tatar peasants went south. Such groups – people
fleeing for social or religious reasons – also formed the initial waves of Russian set-
tlements.57 Not a few of them lived on the other side of the sechki, and other
 Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: no. 2.25.
 Hellie, Slavery: 552.
 Nolte, Religiöse Toleranz: 122–81. The government was not able to control this flight: Hans-
Heinrich Nolte, “Die Reaktion auf die spätpetrinische Altgläubigenbedrückung,” Kirche im Osten 19
(1976): 11–28.
 Andrey Gornotaev, “Living ‘on the run’ in Eighteenth Century Russia,” paper presented at the con-
ference “Slavery, Captivity and Further Forms of Asymmetrical Dependencies in Early Modern Russia,”
hosted by the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), September 26–27, 2019.
 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Migrating in Tundra and Taiga: Russian Cossacks and Traders in Siberia
and Alaska,” in Bevölkerungen, Verbindungen, Grundrechte: Festschrift Jean-Paul Lehners, ed. Nor-
bert Franz, Thomas Kolnberger, and Pit Péporté (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2015): 165–75.
frontiers – Oldbelievers in Livonia, Poland, the lower Donets and Caucasia,58 hunt-
ers and fishermen on the American west coast, possibly as far as Seattle.59
2.5 Kholops in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
For research on Russian terms for dependent people and the problems of translation
I use a contemporary dictionary60 as well as Pushkarev’s Dictionary of Russian His-
torical Terms.61 I read editions of the sources, which lend themselves to this work
because they have an index of terms. Mostly the texts used are church and state re-
cords; but since the nobility used monasteries as repositories, there are also some pri-
vate documents. I will cite AFZCh62 and ASEI63by the numbers of the documents. The
typical word for dependent people in these volumes is ljudi – “Leute” in German,
“people” in English. Rab is still being used, as is kholop, but there are more than 50
forms of ljudi (ljudi polnye, monastyrskie, knjazhie, ljudi votchinnikov = belonging to a
monastery, a prince, an estate owner . . . ) We cannot read all ljudi as kholops; there
are also volostnye (members of a volost’). The semantic field ranges from sluzhilye
ljudi v pomest’e – low nobility64 – to polnye ljudi,65 who were full property and could
be bequeathed, as they were by knjaz (prince) Andrej F. Golenin to his family in 1482.
 Nolte, Religiöse Toleranz: 141–42.

 Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Rossija otkryvaet Ameriku 1733–1799 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye ot-
noshenija, 1991): 180–81. Report of the Russian Ambassador in Spain 1789, excerpt in Hans-
Heinrich Nolte, ed., Geschichte der USA, part 1 (Schwalbach am Taunus: Wochenschau, 2006):
109–10. Bolkhovitinov argues, however, that the Spanish captain erred by 10 degrees in determin-
ing the location of these Russian settlements. Lydia Black, Russians in Alaska (Fairbanks: Alaska
University Press, 2004): 79–99, at 95, does not mention Russian settlements that far south. In case
they existed and were Oldbelievers, they would have tried to present an official appearance to the
Spanish military, and then attempted to hide farther away.
 German translation in Dictionarium Vindobenense: Gerhard Birkfellner, ed., Teutscher, und Reus-
sischer Dictionarium (Berlin: Akademie, 1984). This is an edited MS from the late seventeenth century
from the Trinitarian monastery in Vienna, Alsergrund, founded 1688 – “Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatae
Redemptionis Captivorum” – in Austria called Weißspanier. Members of the order travelled in Muslim
countries and bought enslaved Christians. To negotiate with the owners, the monks needed to know the
social status of the slave back home. Today, the monastery is owned by the Friars Minor Conventual.
 Pushkarev, Dictionary.
 Lev V. Cherepnin and Aleksandr A. Zimin, eds., Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladenija i chozjajstva
XIV – XVI vekov [following AFZCh], part 1–2 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1951–1956).
Part 1: Documents on land owned by the Metropolitan or Patriarch of Moscow in different parts of
the country, dated between 1390 and 1602; part 2: 428 records of the Josifo-Volokolamsk Monastery,
mid-fifteenth century to 1612, including secular documents kept in the monastery.
 Boris D. Grekov, ed., Akty social’no-ėkonomicheskoj istorii Severo-vostochnoj Rossii konca XIV:
nachala XVI v. [following ASEI], vol. 1–3 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1952–1964).
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, part 2, no. 62.
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, part 2, no. 15.
My example is the term kholop.66 I translate it as “indentured servant.” The se-

mantic field of the term is very broad; not differing very much from ljudi in this re-
gard. Some of these – kholops for life – lived in conditions which may not have
been very different from slaves in other societies,67 while others were members of
the lower nobility. In the selected two editions of church records between 1390 and
1612 the term kholop is used: To enumerate kholopy i roby with their families in last
wills, for instance that of Vasilij Borisovich (Tuchka-Morozov) from 1497. Some are
recorded with their occupations, such as stable master, falconer, cook, German
cook, bootmaker, tailor, carpenter etc. Some are Tatars, of whom some also have
their occupations listed. Especially noted are stradniki, which term the editor ex-
plains as kholops working in barshchina; we may conclude that the kholops for
whom no occupation was given were peasants working on obrok. Vasilij willed a
considerable economic organization, including the workers, to his sons: a noble es-
tate.68 As was customary in a will, Vasilij manumitted a considerable group of moj
kholopy i roby – he “let them go into freedom.”69 In another will, a roba who had
provided sexual services to the lord is set free.70 D. G. Pleshcheev, a member of the
lower nobility, in 1558/9 freed in his will “my prisoners from Kazan and Germany,
men and women and boys and girls” – not kholops, but prisoners of war.71 In many
wills kholops are listed as fugitives. They are mentioned by their names and the
heirs are enjoined to search for them.72 Kholops are named as autonomously labor-
ing on farms – peasants in the socioeconomic meaning – of a princess and two
princes.73 It is accepted as an argument in court that kholops stole documents. This
shows that some were employed in the administrations of estates in the tradition of
the tiun.74 A nobleman could be a kholop. Ivan Voronin gave himself up as kholop
to princess Ofrosyna and received a volost’. As kholop he was removed from the list
of heirs to his family’s votchina. When the other branch of the family who owned
the votchina died out during the plague, the children of Ivan wanted to inherit the
 Dictionarium Vindobenense: Leibeigener Diener/ LeybEygen/ Scklave; Pushkarev, Dictionary: A

male slave. My translation to German: Knecht, Diener, dabei für polnyj kholop: leibeigener Knecht;
to English for Muscovy: bondsman, indentured servant.
 Hellie, Slavery; Introductory Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Kholopen,” in Jäger, ed., Enzyklopädie der
Neuzeit: vol. 1, 543–44.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 1, no. 612; citation p. 523: svoikh ljudej kholopov i rob.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 1, no. 612; citation p. 524: tekh vsekh ljudej otpustil na slobody. Similar Cher-
epnin and Zimin, AFZCh, vol. 2, no. 15, 172, Grekov, ASEI, vol. 1, no. 67, 67a.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 1, no. 67a, in case I interpret zhonka moja polnaja adequately.
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, vol. 2, no. 274, citation 281.
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, vol. 2, no. 15.
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, vol. 3, no. 15, 1036.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 105, 521.
family votchina. At first they were rejected, but Ivan Vasilevich (in this record he
used the title tsar) in 1474 granted them the privilege to buy the votchina back.75
As noted in the Pravda, a free man who marries a roba becomes a kholop, but a
1511 change to the law allows a kholop to marry a free woman who remains free.
The children from this union were to be divided – boys to follow the father’s status,
girls their mother’s.76 In Novgorod Velikiy, kholops were not admitted to testify as
witnesses, except in cases within their group.77 It was a sin to kill a kholop, but Mos-
cow granted as privilege to the Dvina lands that such cases should not come before
the governor (namestnik).78 Flight was an established custom.79 Fugitives were
sometimes hidden by other estate owners.80
2.5.1 The Lists of Djak Dmitrij Alab’ev
At the end of the sixteenth century, the central government in Moscow ordered a
new registration of all kholops in the territory of Novgorod Velikiy, which had been
annexed more than one hundred years earlier (1478). In 1597/1598, the Djak Dmitrij
Aljab’ev from Novgorod took notes from all records which the owners of kholops
presented, and also noted down the history of the kholops’ families up to his time.
The handwritten books in which he collected the notes have not been preserved,
but there are copies in other collections.81 As a rule the texts82 have been copied
from older documents, some from the last decades of independent Novgorod. The
Djak created a register of kholops in Novgorod Velikiy, and “kholops” is used in a
couple of records. In all records though the term v polnicu is used. I translate this as
“bought into full service,” which might correspond to polnye ljudi, but that term is
only rarely used. In most cases it is noted that the kholop sold himself. Aljab’ev, the
compiler of the list, does not give the reasons either why a person sold themselves
and or their children, or why another bought them. He is only interested in “full”
kholopstvo.
For almost all kholops in this register the names of their family members are
given –of husbands, wives and children. In most cases we find “family trees,” as it
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 1, no. 282.

 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 242. This does seem to be an exception, see below Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3,
no 410, 439.
 “Novgorodskaja Sudnaja Gramota,” in Chistjakov, ed., Rossijskoe Zakonodatel’stvo: vol. 1, 306.
 There were regional court systems (guby) where cases were heard – but only those brought be-
fore them. The main point here is that Moscow would not ask for fees in such cases.
 Cherepnin and Zimin, AFZCh, vol. 2, no. 15, 16.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 357.
 For the history of the texts see N. A. Golubcov, “O novgorodskikh zapisnykh knigakh starym
krepostjam na kholopov d’jaka D.i M. Aljab’eva 1597–98 gg.,” in Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 410–11.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 392–462.
was the object of the questioning to prove or disprove that the kholops in 1598/1599
in Novgorod Velikiy were descendants of kholops who had entered into this status
legally. People selling themselves and their families v polnicu did so initially with
the formula “by their own will” (po svoej vole). After 148583 the formula is no longer
used. Until the annexation by Moscow many bought and sold “without bailiff” (bez
pristava); after 1478 most bought with a bailiff. Other purchases were considered
legal when the person was bought from another citizen (this is only a minority of
the cases).
Peasants living in rural areas sold themselves by giving the key to their farm-
stead to their new master. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the re-
cords show an increase in buying (and selling) of peasants together with their
farmsteads in some hamlets. Novgorod families, such as the Novotschonok or Mur-
avev, increased not only the number of their kholops but also their influence over
the soil in competition with the obshchina. The handing over the key to one’s own
farmstead symbolized such selling and buying. A text from 150784 seems to indicate
that the term “he gave his key” developed into a transaction formula and was used
without the acquisition of property rights in a hamlet, while the term v polnicu was
less used. If we correctly interpret these changes in formula and procedure, it
means that after the annexation of Novgorod Velikiy by the Grand Prince of Moscow
the persons bought and sold (mostly by themselves) lost social presence or stand-
ing. Taking the formula at face value, after the annexation it was no longer neces-
sary for those who sold themselves and their families to testify that they did so of
their own free will.
In almost all of these family trees we find considerable numbers of fugitives:
flight was a common option for the kholops at least of the north-west of Russia.
Even in case a master knew where his runaway kholop lived, he did not always de-
cide to spend the means to get him back.85 Most of these kholops cost about one
ruble, only a few cost two.
We find cases of a free man going into kholopstvo in order to marry a kholop
woman,86 and of a woman becoming roba to marry a kholop man.87 After 1460, we
have the case of the wife of a tailor (zhonka) being sold together with her three
daughters “of her free will,” but without her husband, for six rubles for the four of
them.88 In 1490 Ivan Fedorov syn Novokshonov bought the zhonka Orenka and her
 The last one being Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 416.

 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 453.
 Which even was the case for big estate owners, see the excerpt from the list of fugitives of Trin-
ity Monastery in Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands: 62–63.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 410.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 439.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 400. The exact date is not known.
daughter; again we are not told about the fate of her husband.89 It is noted that
both women are married, and marriage in the Orthodox Church in this period is in-
dissoluble. Can we conclude that the women were indebted from their own busi-
ness, and were able to sell their daughters (not their sons) into kholopstvo to make
up for the debt? Further research is necessary.
Women might own kholops, usually by inheritance as noted above, but also by
purchasing them.90 Tatjana Gordeeva in 1510 sold her son, his wife and their son
for four rubles, again to a member of the Novokshonov family.91 While many buyers
had third names like Novokshonov (family names), many sellers or those being
bought only had two (Christian name and patronymic). A buyer 1499 is listed with
his patronymic in both the modern (Nikiforovich) and the older form (Nikiforov
syn).92 Also a considerable number of the names of both sellers and buyers do not
sound Slavic. In a couple of cases “cheremis” and “mordva” form part of the
names. I assume that these and others belonged to the Finno-Ugric population of
the region, which today lives in autonomous republics. Also in other regions (In-
gria) some used their Finno-Ugric tongues until the twentieth century.93
2.5.2 Summing Up for the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
The word most frequently used for dependent people in worth-western Russia in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was ljudi, and the semantic field stretched
from low nobility to persons fully owned by someone. The semantic field of kholop
in a comparable way extended from a nobleman serving a princess to an actual ser-
vant. The terms changed though in the late sixteenth century. The Djak Al’jabev put
together a list of kholops in Novgorod Velikiy in 1598 to control the usage of that
term. In all records the term v polnicu (bought) is used– in most cases the person
had sold themselves – “into full service.” People selling themselves and their fami-
lies into full service did so in the beginning with the formula “by their own will.”
After the annexation by Moscow that formula fell out of use.
Women could own and buy kholops, and female members of the princely fami-
lies might accept noblemen as kholops, but a husband could sell himself and his
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 422. The easiest solution would be, that the husbands not noted in
no. 400 and 422 had died.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 415.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 459.
 Grekov, ASEI, vol. 3, no. 442.
 Later than main Russian settlement and Russification-processes since the eighteenth Century,
but still show the diversity of ethnic groups the maps in S. I. Bruk and V. S. Apenchenko, eds.,
Atlas narodov mira (Moscow: Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii i kartografii, 1964): 14–15, 18–25; for a
brief sketch see Nolte, Geschichte Russlands: 410. Compare Imbi Sooman, “Sprache, wofür stehst
Du wirklich,” in Komlosy, Nolte, and Sooman, eds., Ostsee: 174–96.
family into kholopstvo. Kholops might have responsible and autonomous roles like
promoting the interests of their lords in land or keeping records. They could own
property – for instance money. At the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the six-
teenth century the records show (for Novgorod Velikiy) an increase in buying (and
selling) peasants complete with their farmsteads in some hamlets, which also gave
the local lord influence in these hamlets. The formula used was “to give the keys”
to the lords. To run away – begstvo – was common and is mentioned in many of the
documents consulted.
2.6 Kholops in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The government, instigated by the church, promoted the limitation of kholopsto

and discouraged the charging of interest – in the words of the Sudebnik (law code)
of 1555 (called Stoglav), “so that the peasants will stay and the villages will not fall
empty.”94 The aim of Alyab’ev’s work in Novgorod Velikiy 1589 fits in with that pol-
icy – registering also was an instrument to prevent free persons from falling into
kholopstvo without control. But during the crisis of the Smuta the number of depen-
dent persons increased, and during the seventeenth century kholopstvo was an im-
portant social status: the second most dependent group of people in Russia (only
the jasyry, prisoners of war, were even more dependent) .95 From the middle of the
sixteenth century onwards there existed a special Kholopij Prikaz96 (a government
department), where kholops had to be registered.97 Their social and legal statuses
could differ widely, from servants for a specified, limited time to kholops being born
into dependency.98 All legally free people of Russia, high and low nobility, servants
(sluzhilye ljudi) of all ranks, merchants and artisans (posackie ljudi), as well as peas-
ants and even kholops themselves, could own the labor of a kholop, whether for a
specified number of years or an unlimited time. The duration of limited kholopstvo
was measured in years.
 § 76 of the Sudebnik of 1555 required from all clerics and advised all lay people not to take inter-
ests from peasants (chtoby za nimi christijane byli, i sela ikh ne byli ne pusty). A. D. Gorskij, “Sto-
glav,” in Chistjakov, ed., Rossijskoe Zakonodatel’stvo: vol. 2, 242–500, citation 354.
 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Jasyry: Non-Orthodox Slaves in Pre-Petrine Russia,” in Eurasian Slavery,
Ransom and Abolition in World-History 1200–1860, ed. Christoph Witzenrath (Farnham, Surrey:
Ashgate, 2015): 247–64.
 There are different forms of writing this name.
 Vladykina et al., eds., Gosudarstvennost’ Rossii: vol. 4, 384–85; Grigorij Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v
carstvovanie Alekseja Mikhajlovicha, ed. Aleksandr Barsukov (Sankt Peterburg: Imperatorskaja Ar-
kheograficheskaja Kommissija, 1906): 113.
 Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mikhajlovicha: 113: dvorovye, kabalnye, danye, za-
pisnye. And also debtors for a period, in which they were supposed to work of their debts, as slugi.
Richard Hellie in his fundamental research referred to kholops as “slaves.”99 He

used two registers dated 1597 and 1603 respectively, which together listed 5,575 kho-
lops, of whom about two thirds had sold themselves, more than one tenth had be-
come the property of their masters by gift or inheritance, one twentieth was born
into kholopstvo and only 148 became kholopy by captivity. In the remaining cases, it
was not possible to clearly establish their former status. In Hellie’s words, “most of
Muscovy’s slaves were natives.” However, he did not use the special lists kept for
prisoners of war.100 The history of these ethnically, socially and in most cases reli-
giously differing groups is yet to be researched.
From the cases handled in the prikaz during the seventeenth century and se-
lected for publication by Iakovlev, only Orthodox people appear, although some
names or definitions (like murza, batrak or tatarka polona) hint at non-Orthodox fam-
ily backgrounds.101 In cases analyzed by Paneiakh, we find “he was prisoner” given
as the reason for giving oneself into kholopstvo, but obviously these were Russians
who had been captive in Poland or the south.102 The legal position was defined in
§119 in chapter 20 of the Ulozhenie legal code.103 The code begins by forbidding mem-
bers of the lower nobility (deti bojarskie without pomest’e) to become kholops of boy-
ars, but legalizes earlier such acts. Peasants or cottagers who run away and ask to be
taken as kholop by other masters are to be sent back. The Kholopij Prikaz has to en-
sure that kholops freed by a will really are set free “even if children, brothers or offi-
cers do not let them go of their own free will.”104
There was no limit to the daily labor of kholops, except for those established by
the Church with Sunday rest, daily prayers, Lent etc. Kholops were entitled to food
and to marriage, but the lord could decide who they were to marry. As mentioned
above, marriages were not dissoluble.105 Children of mixed marriages were assigned
to the lower status. In legal matters kholops counted as subjects, admitted to the
oath and heard in the Kholopij Prikaz. They were able to successfully oppose being
forced into kholopstvo.106 The killing of a kholop was considered murder, but a dif-
ference was made: in case a kholop killed his master he was to be sentenced to
 Hellie, Slavery: 356–58. Cf. generally: 82–83.

 Vladykina et al., eds., Gosudarstvennost’ Rossii: vol. 4, 384.
 “Dokumenty: Tjazhby po kholop’im delam,” in Kholopstvo i kholopy v Moskovskom gosu-
darstve XVII veka, ed. A. Iakovlev (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1943): 323–27, 401–14,
496–512. For the time before Aleksandr A. Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi (s drenejshikh vremen do konca
XV v.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1973).
 V. M. Panejakh, Kholopstvo v pervoj polovine XVII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984): 80–86, 124–25;
Panejakh, Kholopstvo v XVI-nachale XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1975).
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, 103–17; commentaries 309–53.
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, § 14.
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, § 62.
 Jakovlev, Kholopstvo, 513–62; Hellie, Slavery: 540–53.
death “without mercy” – meaning he or she was to be tortured heavily.107 A kholop

had “honor” and was entitled to one ruble of compensation in case his honor was
offended; a kholop woman to two rubles.
Children could be born into unlimited kholopstvo.108 The work of an indentured
man-servant was fixed at 5 rubles a year, children of such kholops added by their
work to repaying the indebted sum (for children above 10 years fixed at 2 rubles
a year).109 In this way the repayment by labor of a fixed debt was regulated. Chil-
dren could also be given into temporary kholopstvo by free parents.110 As noted
above, the etymology of the terms for dependency indicates that youth and labor
had been traditionally connected. It was normal for children to work in early mod-
ern Europe,111 and they learned their trades by working alongside their parents.112
Giving (or even selling) children into service also was not uncommon: for instance
in southern Germany children of poor parents, mostly from Austria, were usually
procured through markets. The parents expected their children to bring back some
cash when they returned.113 But only in regions with bonded labor (in Germany,
these were most regions to the east of the river Elbe)114 was it possible to be born into
bondage; this was also true for some of the kholops. Iakovlev found that prices for
kholops in Novgorod between 1593 and 1609, from children to adults, varied between
one and five rubles.115 Hellie found that prices varied between four rubles for some-
one who had learned a clerical trade, and two for a beggar.116 Comparing these prices
with the sums they were entitled to receive in case their honor was offended, or the
sum of two rubles a year prescribed for the labor of a youngster, it appears that the
low price for kholops reflected the limitations there were for their uses.
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XXI, § 80. As this chapter shows, the Russian justice system (like
the Western ones in this period) depended on torture, but obviously kholops were tortured sooner
in higher degrees. For the history of torture in Russia see Evgenij Anisimov, Dyba in knut (Moscow:
Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999).
 Or even divided between two owners of one married couple Smith, Enserfment: no. 48; Sobor-
noe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, § 5 regulates, that children born before their parents became kholops are
free, from which follows, that others are unfree. The commentary on page 312 notes, that this § is a
transfer from the Sudebnik of 1550.
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, § 40.
 Sobornoe Ulozhenie, chap. XX, § 45.
 Maria Papathanasies, “Kinderarbeit,” in Jäger, ed., Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit: vol. 9, ll. 553–57.
 For children in Russia see B. N. Mironov, Social`naja istorija Rossii (XVIII–nachalo XX v.),
2 vols. (Sankt Peterburg: Dmitrij Bulanin, 1999): vol. 1, 233.
 Roman Spiss, “Tiroler und Vorarlberger ‘Schwabenkinder’ in Württemberg, Baden und Bayern
von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa, ed. Klaus
J. Bade et al. (Paderborn: Schöningh & Fink, 2007): 1036–39.
 Comparative overview Christoph Schmidt, Leibeigenschaft im Ostseeraum (Cologne: Böhlau,
1997).
 Jakovlev, Kholopstvo: 60–65.
 Hellie, Slavery: 366.
In my opinion, the term “slaves” is misleading for research on kholops.117 How-

ever, my suggestion to translate it as “indentured servants” does not quite fit the
perhaps 15% (around 1600 persons) born into kholopstvo, although this percentage
was decreasing. A historian of Russia, used to making terminological differences
between research publications and those aimed at a wider public, may accept the
use in a global history of slaveries,118 but the difference should be noted.
The most obvious desideratum is research on the non-orthodox and non-Russian
part of the servant population,119 starting maybe with searching the archive for the
lists of prisoners of different kinds.120 This research requires historians trained in the
history of Islam and especially the Tatar khanates and settlements between the rivers
Wisla and Yenissey.121
2.7 Future Directions for the Russian Empire
When the tsardom was transformed into an empire, the status of kholop was abol-
ished.122 In 1704, the Kholopij prikaz was closed.123 In 1713 it was decreed that both
peasants and kholops had to pay the same amount of poll tax, and to supply re-
cruits.124 The status of kholop was abolished in 1723. Now all servants of the nobility
within the towns125 and on the estates had the status of peasants (krest’jane).126 Be-
tween 1676 and 1762, the percentage of those with the status of peasant in the popu-
lation of Russia increased from 80% to 91%, while the percentage of townspeople
 For the immanent terminologies see Gleb Kazakov, “Semantics of Slavery in Early Modern
Russia,” Paper presented at the workshop “Slavery, Captivity and Further Forms of Asymmetrical
Dependencies in Early Modern Russia,” hosted by the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery
Studies (BCDSS), September 26–27, 2019.
 Zeuske, Handbuch: 930.
 Advanced, I hope, by Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “POWs, Slaves and Kholops: Non-Orthodox and
Non-Russian servants in Early-Modern Russia,” unpublished manuscript from 2020.
 Noted in Vladykina et al., eds., Gosudarstvennost’ Rossii: vol. 4, 384.
 Map in Nolte, Geschichte Russlands: 415.
 Hellie, Slavery: 695 – 710.
 Vladykina et al., eds., Gosudarstvennost` Rossii: vol. 4, 384–85; Erik Amburger, Geschichte der
Behördenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917 (Leiden: Brill, 1966): 3 (it was
united with the Vladimirskij prikaz); 117 (in 1704: the Prikaz cholopègo suda with the sudnyj prikaz).
 Repeated inter alia 1722: Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands:
107–8.
 Friedrich Christian Weber, The Present State of Russia, 2 vols. (London: W. Taylor, 1722; Lon-
don: Frank Cass 1968): vol. 1, 191–92: “The Country People, who are in the same Manner [as the
noble families] hurried away from their own Habitations, and forced to settle at Petersbourg.”
 Gorodskoe soslovie in statistics does not count all inhabitants of towns, but those of the status
“townspeople.” For their social stratification 1724 see Mironov, Socialnaja istorija: 116.
decreased.127 That percentage corresponds, albeit roughly, to the percentage Hellie

gives for kholops in pre-Petrine society.128 The word khlop became part of a formula
in correspondence129 (similar to “your obedient servant” in English).
The economic interest of the masters in kholops was that, as long as taxes were
paid by farmstead or per head, while individual kholops were untaxed, they had
tax-free labor within their households. Looking at the end of kholopstvo from the
point of view of the masters, they lost a privilege between 1704 and 1723. But since
it had been legal to sell full kholops, many owners went on selling these “peasants”
after 1723, creating one of the loopholes for selling peasants without land on mar-
kets. And in any case the sale of peasants still happened without official interven-
tions in cases of bankruptcy of a noblemen.130
Officially, after 1723 all people living in rural areas (except the nobility and
clergy) were peasants, and many town dwellers – servants of the nobility – also be-
longed to this status. New terms131 became common for servants132 living in some-
one else’s household (dvor). Quite often they were called dvorovye.133 Also the
practice of sentencing insolvent debtors to forced labor for creditors until the debt
was repaid za zhiv (in real life) continued until 1834. Socially proximate persons
were “workmen,” mostly captured runaway peasants who were controlled by the
police and sometimes hired out to private enterprises. In 1799, they were included
into the lowest category of townspeople (meshchane).
 Mironov, Social’naja Istorija: 129–30: The absolute numbers of townspeople increased also,
but not as fast as the population of the Empire.
 Mironov, Social’naja Istorija has no catchword Kholopstvo in the index for the two volumes.
 Elena I. Marasinova, Vlast’ i lichnost’: Ocherki russkoj istorii XVIII veka (Moscow: Nauka,
2008): 254–63.
 Compare Radishhev, excerpts in Nolte, Schalhorn, and Bonwetsch, Quellen zur Geschichte
Russlands: 143–45.
 In the religious history of the empire we observe a centrally planned change of terms, see
Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “‘Newly enlightened’: A Case of Intellectual Engineering,” Canadian American
Slavic Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2004): 33–60. Whether comparable procedure for social history is found
in the sources remains to be researched.
 Pavel G. Ryndzjunskij, Gorodskoe grazhdanstvo doreformennoj Rossii (The status of town-
citizens in pre-reform Russia) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1958): 48–50.
 Examples for dvorovye not living in households of the nobility S. S. Ilizarova, ed., Akademik
G.F. Miller – pervyj issledovatel’ Moskvy i moskovskoj provincii (Moscow: Janus, 1996): 83: napisan-
nykh po revizii za kanceljarskimi sluzhiteljami dvorovykh ljudej (“people living in households written
to staff of the chancellery in the revision”) or 109: Rospis’ [. . .] za raznymi chinami pri domakh dvor-
ovykh ljudej (“list [. . .] of people living in households with different ranks”).
3 Some Conclusions
During the period in which the history of Russia was governed from Moscow, the
terms for dependent people (ljudi of different kinds) were systematized. While in
the fifteenth century there were many kinds of ljudi and kholops, ranging in social
status from a tiun to an inherited man similar to a slave, in the sixteenth century
the Moscow government organized a separate Prikaz for the kholops, and in the sev-
enteenth century the usage of the term was standardized in the Ulozhenie. The gov-
ernment of Peter I ended the status of kholops in 1723 and made them peasants
(krest’jane). From the history of the semantic fields we may conclude that it was
characteristic for the Muscovy tsardom to use the quite differentiated term kholop,
and characteristic for the Petersburg empire to use the very comprehensive and
quite broad term krest’janin.
By losing the rights to change their lords (conclusively in 1649) and to appeal
(1767), but perhaps most of all by being forced to supply recruits to the military
(1722), all peasants were diminished in status, income and family life.134 The nobil-
ity in Muscovy had two kinds of landed property: inherited allodia and fiefs that
were bestowed, but they had to provide service from both. In the eighteenth century
the nobility won its freedom from the obligation to serve and full possession of
their estates. Allodia and fiefs were equated as property (imenie).
The empire secured the position of the nobility and increased the burden on the
peasants – to man and finance army and navy, the administration and imperial
building programs. Society was rearranged. Old differences were reduced and legal
statuses were created that encompassed larger groups. The government also used, as
previously mentioned, new terms for its social engineering. The long-term effects of
these politics were polarizing. The transition to empire was a long process. To de-
scribe it in current geographic terms: it started with the conquest of Tatarstan in 1552
and the Eurasian trading center of Astrakhan in 1556, and was extended by the con-
quest of Siberia within the following century. It was seriously challenged by the
Swedish occupation of the Baltic coast and the Polish occupation of Moscow
1610–1612. But empire-building gained new momentum with the Russian conquest
of the eastern parts of Belorussia and Ukraine in 1667, and was completed by the
conquest of Estonia and northern Latvia and the new title of “emperor” in 1721.
Was there an alternative in the face of the military capacities of other members of
the concert of powers (the Ottoman Empire up to 1683; Sweden up to 1709, Po-
land/Saxony up to 1706, Austria, later Prussia, then Napoleon . . . ), similarly bent
on expansion? Not to forget the Manchu, who advanced via the old Silk Road?135
 Soldiers lost their positions in their villages, served for 25 years and did not earn enough to
allow them to marry.
 Nolte, Kurze Geschichte der Imperien: 223–77.
The transition was accompanied by a constant systematization and degradation

of dependent people. In numerous uprisings, even wars, which originated in the
peripheries and were led mostly by Cossacks, the rebels attempted end the power of
nobility and bureaucracy. They were never able to conquer the center, but slowed
down the extension of first Moscow’s and then St. Petersburg’s power.136 And yet,
despite of the defeats of the rebels in these wars from the periphery, some limits to
imperial social engineering remained: the chance to run away was a normal option
for servants of all standings, including peasants. Of course this option for depen-
dent people must have influenced the behavior of their masters.
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Contributors
Dr. Susanne Adamski is an independent scholar specialized in early Chinese epigraphy. She
studied Sinology, Japanology and Oriental Art History in Bonn and Beijing, and received her PhD
(2014) from the University of Münster. From 2009 to 2017 she was Research and Teaching
Assistant/Assistant Professor at the University of Bonn, and Adjunct Lecturer at the University
of Münster in 2020. She has authored several book chapters, as well as a monograph on archery in
Western Zhōu bronze inscriptions (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2017, in German). Her research mainly
focuses on Shāng and Western Zhōu social history and ritual.
Prof. Dr. Ludwig D. Morenz has been Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bonn and Director
of the Egyptian Museum since 2009. His latest publications are Trauma und Therapie? Die
Schöpfung der schönen Literatur als eine kulturpoetische Bewältigung des Königsmordes an
Amenemhet I.? (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2020) and VerLautungen von Macht. Entwicklungen einer Bild-
Schriftlichkeit und Schrift-Bildlichkeit im Niltal des Vierten und frühen Dritten Jahrtausends v. Chr.
(Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2021).
Prof. Dr. Winfried Schmitz has been Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bonn since
2003. He is also a member of the German Archaeological Institute and the Academy of Sciences
and Literature, Mainz. After studying history and classical archaeology at the Universities of
Cologne and Freiburg, and completing his doctorate at the University of Freiburg, he worked as a
Research Assistant in ancient history at the Free University of Berlin from 1985 to 1989. This was
followed by an academic traineeship at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn and a DFG
habilitation scholarship. After two semesters at the universities of Freiburg and Münster, he held a
professorship in Ancient History at the Ruhr University in Bochum from 1996 to 1998 and at
Bielefeld University from 1998 to 2003.
Prof. Dr. Martin J. Schermaier studied law, politics and journalism at the University in Salzburg. He
graduated in 1985 (magister iuris), reached his LL.D (doctor iuris) in 1991 and qualified as university
lecturer (Habilitation) in 1995. Between 1987 and 1998 he worked as assistant professor at the
University of Salzburg, in addition he lectured at the Universities of Regensburg and Münster
(1996–1998). From 1998–2005 he held a chair for Private Law and Roman Law at the University
of Münster. Since 2005 he holds the same position at the University of Bonn. He is head of
department at the Institute for Roman Law and Comparative Legal History and member of the BCDSS.
Dr. Christian Prager studied Anthropology of the Americas, Prehistoric and Protohistoric
Archaeology, and Classical Archaeology at the University of Bonn and wrote his PhD about the
Classic Maya religion. Since 2014 he has been a research assistant and project coordinator of the
long-term project “Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan” of the North Rhine-Westphalian
Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts. He is also a founding member of Wayeb, the
European Association of Mayanists, and editor of the scholarly journal Mexicon. Prager is also a
project epigrapher with the Pusilha Archaeological Project and co-organizer of conferences
about Maya writing and culture.
Dr. Anna Kollatz is a Research Associate and Lecturer at the Department for Middle Eastern History
and Islamic Studies, University of Bonn. Her research focuses on history, society and literature of
the Islamicate world with special interest in the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517), the Mediterranean
region in general, and the Indian subcontinent up to the transition into the 19th century. Anna’s
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-010
254 Contributors
latest project engages into the study of satire and cartoon magazines in 20th century Egypt, with a
focus on the representation of social roles and intersectional stereotypes.
Dr. Veruschka Wagner is a Research Associate at the Department for Islamic Studies and Near
Eastern Languages at the University of Bonn and Affiliated Researcher of the Bonn Center for
Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS). She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies on Ottoman
travelogues about Europe from the University of Bonn where she also studied Communication
Studies and Phonetics, Translation Studies, and German as a Foreign Language. Her current
research project is part of the priority program Transottomanica funded by the German Research
Foundation (DFG) and focuses on mobility of slaves from the Black Sea Region in Istanbul in the
seventeenth century.
Prof. Em. Dr. Hans-Heinrich Nolte has been Professor for History of Eastern Europe at the Leibniz-
University in Hannover since 1980. He also worked for the Max-Planck Institute History and held
guestprofessorships in Lincoln (Nebraska), Voronezh and Vienna. From 2000–2018 he has been
editor of the Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte. Some of his recent publications are Nationen und
Nationalismen in der Geschichtsschreibung (Gleichen: Muster-Schmidt, 2020), Kurze Geschichte der
Imperien (Vienna: Böhlau, 2017), and Quellen zur Geschichte Russlands (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014).
Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann (PhD University of Kiel, 1996) is Spokesperson of the Bonn Center of
Dependency and Slavery Studies and Director of the Department of Near Eastern History and
Languages. His research interests include slaveries, narrative strategies in historiographic texts,
transition periods, mobility and immobility, global history, and rule and power. He focuses on the
Mamluk and Delhi Sultanates, the Mughal and Ottoman Empires and the Crossroads Area
“Transottomanica.” His latest publications include (ed., with Michael Zeuske) The Slavery/
Capitalism Debate Global. From ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ to ‘Slavery as Capitalism’ (Leipzig:
Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2020) and (ed., with Gül Şen) Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman
Empire (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020).
Jeannine Bischoff is Managing Director of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.
Her research focuses on Tibetan administrative documents concerning the rural communities
attached to Kundeling monastery, Central Tibet, before 1959. Among her publications are: (ed.,
with S. Mullard) Social Regulation: Case Studies from Tibetan History (Leiden, 2016); “Sklaverei auf
dem Dach der Welt? Zur Anwendbarkeit des Begriffes auf tibetische Bauern und Viehzüchter,” in:
Stephan Conermann, ed., Sklaverei in der Vormoderne. Beispiele aus außereuropäischen
Gesellschaften (Saarbrücken, 2017) and (ed., with A. Travers) Commerce and Communities: Social
Status and Political Status and the Exchange of Goods in Tibetan Societies (Mid-17th to mid-20th
centuries) (Berlin, 2018).
Index
Abydos 79, 83, 84, 90, 93 Gebel Sheikh Suleiman 83, 84, 85, 94
administration 39, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, gift, gifts 13, 31, 36, 48, 56, 100, 101, 109, 122,
94, 137, 140, 233, 238, 247 123, 197, 243
ajaw 153, 154, 155, 56, 157, 159 group, groups (of people social group, kin
al-Marghīnānī, Burhān al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan 181, group etc.) 11, 12, 27, 30, 42, 44, 47, 48,
183, 188, 189, 190, 191 52, 58, 60, 63, 65, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107,
archaeology 159, 167 110, 112, 117, 122, 123, 127, 129, 136, 139,
authority 13, 21, 63, 94, 109, 110, 11, 116, 117, 141, 145, 143, 151, 172, 173, 175, 232, 234,
130, 138, 155, 156, 157, 158, 184, 196, 232 235, 236, 238, 239, 242, 243, 247
āzād 190, 212, 213, 216, 222 Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 13, 48
Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Hamilton, Charles 184, 200

Studies (BCDSS) 1, 2, 4 Ḥanafī law 8, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 188, 191,
197, 199, 200
captive, captives 34, 47, 56, 57, 64, 65, 99, helot 7, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 122, 123
168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 228, 243 Hidāya (fī sharḥ bidāya al-mubtadī) 8, 179,
cāriye 211, 212, 217, 218 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 181, 186, 187, 188,
chén qiè 臣妾 33, 36, 37, 38, 41 189, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200
child, children 21, 23, 24, 47, 48, 99, 108, 109, hierarchy 27, 63, 159, 171, 173, 174, 175, 200
110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 117, 134, 135, 136, hieroglyph, hieroglyphs 7, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86,
138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 183, 87, 91, 92, 94, 151, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160,
193, 194, 197, 209, 229, 230, 232, 234, 161, 163, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174
238, 239, 243, 244 Honoré, Anthony M. 52, 53, 54
city state, city states 7, 120, 123, 151, 152, 153, Horus (King) 78, 82, 84, 88
154, 157, 158, 173 household 38, 39, 42, 45, 60, 82, 108, 112,
coercion 21, 26, 27, 40, 47, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 116, 117, 118, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133,
64, 65, 73, 91 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143,
contract 104, 139, 141, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 205, 207, 229, 232, 233, 234, 246
195, 196, 199, 207, 208, 209, 213, 220, 221 ḥür, ḥurr, ḥurriyya 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
conversion 209, 222 195, 212, 215, 216
convict, convicts 12, 23, 24, 25, 26, 47, 57, 64
court records / court registers 181, 207, 208, India 7, 8, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 200
210, 213, 217, 218, 219, 222 Inscription 6, 7, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 28,
29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 47,
De(we)n (king) 85, 87, 88, 91 48, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 65, 79, 80, 81, 82,
dólos, dóla 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 93, 94, 105, 106,
domus 136, 138 151, 152, 154, 158, 159, 161, 163, 168, 169,
172, 174, 175
familia 7, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, interpretative community 159, 162, 165, 167
135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, inventory, inventories 4, 78, 116
144, 145, 146, 147 Islamic Law 180, 182, 184, 185, 188, 191, 193
family, families 21, 23, 30, 41, 55, 109, 115, 116, Istanbul 8, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 213,
118, 119, 127, 129, 137, 141, 143, 145, 151, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222
197, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, ʿitāq, muʿattaq 180, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191,
239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 247 192, 194, 195, 197, 199, 200
Finley, Moses I. 61, 103 iugum 81, 89
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110786989-011
256 Index
kitāba, mukātab 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, Patterson, Orlando 21, 22, 40, 41, 47, 48, 52,
199, 213, 220 58, 109
kholop 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 237, pecunia 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137
238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, penéstai 101, 103, 105, 122, 123
246, 247 personae 130, 132, 136
klarṓtai 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 111, 120, 121, Piedras Negras 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175
122, 123 property 20, 30, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 100,
103, 104, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114,
labor, laborer, laborers 7, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123, 129, 131, 132,
46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 62, 64, 89, 133, 137, 138, 141, 144, 145, 149, 159, 161,
109, 110, 111, 151, 512, 153, 229, 232, 233, 175, 194, 195, 197, 205, 211, 212, 214, 215,
235, 236, 238, 242, 243, 244, 246 218, 230, 240, 242, 243, 247
legal status 7, 41, 107, 130, 136, 141, 147, 183, pú 僕 13, 16, 17, 19, 38
185, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 192, 193, 194,
195, 196, 199, 200, 209, 242, 247 rıḳḳ 211, 213
Lewis, David 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 103, 104, 111,
114, 122 sacrifice, sacrificial 35, 36, 47, 57, 64, 65,
lexical fields 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 121, 156, 157, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173,
lineage, lineages 16, 28, 30, 32, 37, 38, 42, 43, 174, 175
44, 47, 54, 55, 94, 157 semantics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 179, 180, 181,
185, 190, 191, 199, 200, 201, 225
maʾdhūn 194, 195, 196, 197 servant, servants 16, 17, 18, 25, 30, 31, 33, 35,
Mafdet (goddess) 91, 92, 93 47, 56, 60, 100, 187, 229, 232, 234, 238,
manumission 8, 40, 104, 118, 119, 122, 123, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248
143, 180, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, shùrén 庶人 13, 17, 18, 40
191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 205, slave markets 130, 206
207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, social death, socially dead 21, 24, 25, 58
216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 238 Sopdu (god) 91, 93
Mariandyni 7, 99, 100, 104, 105, 122, 123 Sparta 7, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 122
Maya 6, 7, 151, 152, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 160, Stela, stelae 151, 155, 156, 158, 167, 168
161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 174 Sumerian 75, 81, 88, 89
memlūk 211, 218, 219
metaphorization 80, 81 tadbīr, mudabbar, tedbīr 192, 196, 197, 199,
Milesia 7, 99 209, 217, 218, 219, 220
milk 187, 188, 189, 190, 195 tax, taxation 40, 42, 73, 74, 75, 78, 82, 83, 94,
Miller, Joseph C. 22, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52 139, 140, 143, 151, 233, 245, 246
tribute, tributes 7, 48, 49, 87, 88, 91, 92,
Nar-meher(king) 82, 86, 90, 91 99, 100, 102, 116, 121, 136, 152, 153,
narratives 1, 2, 4, 7, 151, 165 157, 228
tutela 133, 134, 135, 138
Ottoman Empire 8, 199, 205, 207, 208, 221, 247
ownership 21, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 105, 109, umm walad, istilād, ümm-i veled 193, 196,
111, 116, 118, 136, 145, 189, 190, 197, 215, 197, 209
219, 220
Index 257
victim, victims 35, 35, 57, 64, 106, woikeús, woikéa, woikeís 107, 108, 109, 110,
107, 108 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119,
violence 41, 47, 48, 49, 74, 91, 92, 94 121, 123
woman, women 35, 47, 48, 49, 99, 105, 107,
Weber, Max 3, 21, 62, 63 109, 112, 113, 142, 156, 183, 193, 197, 205,
wife, wives 21, 35, 41, 45, 48, 52, 105, 107, 108, 206, 209, 211, 212, 216, 218, 219, 220,
109, 111, 112, 134, 135, 136, 138, 142, 144, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 239, 240,
146, 197, 232, 235, 241, 249 241, 244

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Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939193

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Cover image: Stephan Conermann

(2) Lexical Fields. Our understanding of lexical fields is based on an onomasiologi-

 https://www.historyofconcepts.net [accessed 17.05.2022].

“subjugation” denotes radical subjection in connection with high levels of social

1 “Slavery” in Scholarship on Early Chinese

2000);10 or found evidence to refute the identification of one or more specific

version 1.1 (September 20, 2014), http://ocbaxtersagart.lsait.lsa.umich.edu/BaxterSagartOCbyMan

As presented elsewhere in more detail, Dǒng Shān’s interpretation of the “Sù

 See Adamski, “‘Sù yǒu 肅卣’ Inscription.”

1.2 Definition of “Slavery”

As we are aware, there is no scholarly consensus on a precise meaning of the terms

1.3 “Slavery” in Ancient China

Patterson’s characterization of slaves as “socially dead” has however been applied to

2 Looking for “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency”

2.1 The Problem of Dependent Labor during the Late Shāng

 Merriam-Webster dictionary, s.v. “coercion,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co

2.1.1 The Hū dǐng 曶鼎 Inscription: “Slavery,” “Bondage” or What?

 Keightley, Working for His Majesty: 240.

The verb used is ( , ), which should be transcribed as 賣, often normalized as later

 “Fields, seven, and men, five.” 田十(七)[田]人五夫.

2.1.2 Indefinite Terms? Problems in Searching for Social Status

 See Keightley, “Public Work in Ancient China”: 197–99, n. 1.

Another example is Héjí 629 (2):

貞今庚辰, 夕用甗小臣三十, 小妾三十于帚. 九月.91

I bestow on you fields at Yě 埜. I bestow on you fields at X 渒. I bestow on you X fields at X

䔲(司)我西扁(偏)東扁(偏)僕馶(馭)百工牧臣妾. 東(董) (裁)内外.106

用 于公室僕庸臣妾小子室家. 母(毋)又(有)不 (聞) (智).108

(兼) (司)康宫王家臣妾 (庸). 外入(内)母(毋)敢無 (聞) (知).110

2.2 Problems of the Sources

奴婢為善而主欲免者, 許之, 奴命曰私屬, 婢為庶人, 皆復使, 及筭事之如奴婢.

in the Yuèlù Academy Collection of Qín bamboo strips 嶽麓書院藏秦简 acquired in

yet conceptualized, or only in the process of being conceptualized. It is possible that

that needed to be controlled.134 In other words: it is not necessary to clarify social

3 Did “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency”

 See Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 32.

haben.”140 According to Zeuske, early situations of “slavery” almost always involved

 Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei: 100.

 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 8.

phenomena such as “serfdom” or “forced labor.”149 According to his global history

This reasoning is problematic in several ways. Historical linguistics, providing the

 Miller, Problem of Slavery as History: 90.

which are frequently mentioned in the tersely formulated oracle-bone inscriptions,

 Korolkov, “Empire-Building and Market-Making”: 101, n. 138, and 309.

While it is necessary to “investigate exactly what terms such as ‘property’ and

 Lewis, “Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery”: 47.

construed as the antithesis of the movement of British emigrants to Canada, which

Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). “Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer,” https://www.desta

Fig. 1: The complete Egyptian Nile Valley. Map by David Sabel.

In what follows, I propose to discuss questions of taxation with a view to struc-

in pronounced chronological, regional, social, medial or even genre-related differences in terms of

territorial state, whose limited state apparatus7 is characteristic of the pre-modern

the socio-cultural context of an at least moderately redistributive economy;11 and in-

Fig. 2: A modern caricature of bureaucracy. Image from Hans-Günther Semsek, Kauderwelsch 2,

 Eyre, The Use of Documents in Pharaonic Egypt: 10.

用于公室僕庸臣妾小子室家. 母(毋)又(有)不 (聞) (智).108