Navigating coercion in Ancient Babylonia

The project studies temple dependants (oblates) and chattel slaves in 6th century BCE Babylonia with a focus on the lived experience of coercion. Drawing on the exceptionally rich textual record from that era, it reconstructs the action profiles of dependent men and women. It shows how their lives were influenced by the interplay between the asymmetric dependency linking them to their masters and the agency they exercised within the legal framework of the day, under conditions of transformative economic change. Thereby the project recovers a wide range of socio-economic circumstances and nuances in their status and behaviour that are not captured by the legal-historical approach to coercion which dominates most pertinent research. To unlock the perspective of the temple oblates and chattel slaves from sources that were written for their masters needs, we will combine archival research and socio-economic methodologies that capture the whole variety of contexts in which oblates and slaves appear with a close microhistorical focus on those bodies of data that lend themselves to elucidation by thick narratives. This methodological mix allows a nuanced and comprehensive reconstruction of these marginalised voices from the past. The project will cast its findings into a terminological and conceptual framework that allows cross-cultural comparison. This interdisciplinary perspective will be a key focus in the final phase of the projects work.