Code of Hammurabi

Enslavement in ancient Babylon shared similarities to its practice across the ancient Near East, but it was different in several respects from the institution of enslavement as practiced elsewhere in world history. Enslaved persons could be brought into a household by purchase, by birth to enslaved parents, or by being captured in war. An enslaved person’s status meant that most of the legal protections due to that person accrued to the benefit of one’s enslaver, not to oneself. Nonetheless, enslaved persons in Babylon could attain varying degrees of autonomy, often acting as tenants of their enslaver’s properties rather than merely as laborers.

“Misfortune of a king” is a Babylonian idiom used several times in the Code, particularly in sections dealing with property laws relating to an absent landlord who was captured in battle. The misfortune of a king is a loss on the battlefield, and soldiers serving in that king’s army would likely be taken as prisoners of war and often enslaved by their captors.

“Pointing the finger” is another Babylonian idiom, primarily used in the Code’s section on marriage law. To point the finger at someone was to lodge an accusation against them, such as an implication of adultery. The idiom often bears a connotation not only of accusation, but of malicious slander.

In Babylonian society, a “sister of a god” was a special class of women associated with the work of the religious temples. A parallel term might be “priestess,” though this does not encompass the entirety of the role. Some such women were dedicated to chastity, like nuns in Catholic practice or the vestal virgins of ancient Rome. Some ancient historians, like Herodotus, suggested that ritual sex work was involved in Babylonian temples, but many modern scholars doubt the veracity of his account. In the Code, “sisters of a god” come under special protections because they were women who would have had no husbands (and sometimes, no legal heirs) to ensure their financial well-being.