Babylonian Law - Three Classes

Three Classes

The Code contemplates the whole population as falling into three classes: the amelu, the mushkenu and the ardu.

The amelu was originally a patrician, a man from an elite family, possessed of full civil rights, whose birth, marriage and death were registered. He had aristocratic privileges and responsibilities, and the right to exact retaliation for corporal injuries, but was liable to a heavier punishment for crimes and misdemeanours, higher fees and fines. To this class belonged the king and court, the higher officials, the professions and craftsmen. Over time, the term became a mere courtesy title—already in the Code, when status is not concerned, it is used to denote anyone. There was no property qualification, nor does the term appear to be racial.

It is most difficult to characterize the mushkenu exactly. The term in time came to mean "a beggar", and that meaning has passed through Aramaic and Hebrew into many modern languages; but though the Code does not regard him as necessarily poor, he may have been landless. He was free but had to accept monetary compensation for corporal injuries, paid smaller fees and fines, and even paid less offerings to the gods. He inhabited a separate quarter of the city. There is no reason to regard him as specially connected with the court, as a royal pensioner, nor as forming the bulk of the population. The rarity of any references to him in contemporary documents makes further specification conjectural.

The ardu was a slave, his master's chattel, and formed a very numerous class. He could acquire property and even own other slaves. His master clothed and fed him and paid his doctor's fees, but took all compensation paid for injury done to him. His master usually found him a slave girl for a wife (the children were then born slaves), often set him up in a house (with farm or business) and simply took an annual rent of him. Otherwise, he might marry a free woman (the children were then free), who might bring him a dower that his master could not touch, and at his death, one-half of his property passed to his master as his heir. He could acquire his freedom by purchase from his master, or might be freed and dedicated to a temple, or even adopted, when he became an amelu and not a mushkenu. Slaves were recruited by purchase abroad, from captives taken in war, or by freemen degraded for debt or crime. A slave often ran away; if caught, the captor was bound to restore him to his master, and the Code fixes a reward of two shekels that the owner must pay the captor. It was about one-tenth of the average value of a slave. To detain or harbour a slave was punishable by death. So was aiding him to escape the city gates. A slave bore an identification mark, removable only by a surgical operation, that later consisted of his owner's name tattooed or branded on the arm. On the other hand, on the great estates in Assyria and its subject provinces there were many serfs, mostly of subject race, settled captives, or quondam slaves; tied to the soil they cultivated and sold with the estate, yet capable of possessing land and property of their own. There is little trace of serfs in Babylonia, unless the mushkenu is really a serf.