This study is an attempt to describe the various institutions of slavery as they existed in the Ancient Near East from the middle of the third millennium B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era. Its aim is to investigate the sources from which slaves were recruited, their legal status, and the role of slave labor in the economic life of Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, and Palestine.

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A book dealing with the institution of slavery in the Ancient Near East needs no apology. The 'Ancient' Near Eastern world is becoming with each new excavation increasingly 'modern,' and as a result the problems that confronted the inhabitants of the 'Fertile Crescent' in the pre-Christian era no longer appear to us today to be as remote and as antiquated as they did a century ago. Slavery was a labor institution, and its origin, development, and function should therefore prove of interest not only to the historian but also to the economist and sociologist.