Five Thousand Years of Slavery Read online

  I have brought back in great numbers those that my sword has spared, with their hands tied behind their backs before my horses, and their wives and children in tens of thousands, and their livestock in hundreds of thousands. I have imprisoned their leaders in fortresses bearing my name, and I have added to them chief archers and tribal chiefs, branded and enslaved, tattooed with my name, and their wives and children have been treated in the same way.

  War was not the only way Egyptians got their slaves. Like the Assyrians and Babylonians, they bought impoverished people who were in debt. They also bought slaves, along with dates and spices, from the nomadic traders who led caravans across the desert.

  The head on this fragment from a stone carving tells us that Egyptian armies brought back African captives as slaves. The carving is almost 2,500 years old.

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  Eventually almost anybody could afford to own a slave. People would even rent out their slaves to earn a bit of money. In one early document we read about a shepherd who complains that he needs clothes; he offers another shepherd two days of his slave’s work in exchange for garments.

  Not only was slavery common, but the Egyptians feared they might be enslaved even after they died. They believed that life after death would be much like life on earth, and they placed in their tombs statuettes of wood and pottery representing workers who would do the jobs of slaves after death.

  By about 2,400 years ago, Egypt was no longer a great power. Slavery dwindled with the empire.

  FROM ADOPTION TO FREEDOM

  Some slaves in Ancient Egypt were lucky enough to be adopted by their owners. In a document known as the Adoption Papyrus, we learn how one mistress adopted and then freed her slave’s children:

  We bought the slave girl Dienihatiri, and she gave birth to three children, a boy and two girls, three in all. And I adopted, fed, and raised them, and to this day they have never treated me badly. On the contrary, they have treated me well, and I have no sons or daughters other than them. And the overseer of the stables, Pendiu, connected to me by family ties, since he is my younger brother, came into my house and took the elder sister, Taimennut, as his wife. And I accepted this on her behalf and he is now with her. Now, I have freed her, and if she gives birth to a son or daughter, they too will be free citizens in the land of the Pharaoh.…

  Slavery in Ancient Israel

  Like their neighbors, the Hebrews kept slaves. The Bible introduces several slaves by name, and describes them as part of the family. Abraham, the first Jew, has a wife named Sarah and a son named Isaac. Sarah has an Egyptian slave, Hagar, and Abraham is the father of Hagar’s son, Ishmael. Fearing that Ishmael will share her son Isaac’s inheritance, Sarah has him and his mother sent off into the wilderness, with only a loaf of bread and a waterskin. Soon their food is gone and, worse, so is their water. Hagar is a devoted mother who feels powerless to save her child. But God hears her cries and, slaves or not, saves them.

  In the Bible story, God sends an angel to comfort Sarah’s slave, Hagar, when she and her son are alone and desperate in the desert.

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  As new generations appear in the Bible, so does the story of slavery. Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, is sold by his jealous brothers into slavery in Egypt. When he is promoted to a high position in the pharaoh’s court, he rescues the Egyptians from famine. Generations later, under a new pharaoh who does not remember Joseph, the Hebrews are enslaved by the Egyptians.

  The pharaoh decides that the Hebrews are becoming a threat to his power and orders that every newborn Hebrew baby be killed. But the mother of one baby, Moses, places him in a basket in the Nile River. An Egyptian princess rescues him and decides to raise him in the palace. When Moses grows up and sees how his people suffer as slaves, he is angered. God chooses him to approach the pharaoh with the words “Let my people go.” Again and again, the pharaoh refuses. Finally God frees the Hebrews, parting the waters of the sea so they can begin their long march to freedom.

  This event, the Exodus, is the central story of the Hebrew Bible. Later, when God gives the Israelites the Ten Commandments in the desert, He reminds them that they were slaves in Egypt:

  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there.

  Every year at Passover, Jewish people read from the Haggadah, a book that tells the story of their escape from slavery in Egypt. This fourteenth-century illustration shows Hebrew slaves lifting heavy loads to the top of a tower as they build a city for the Egyptian pharaoh.

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  Slavery Laws in the Bible

  Over and over in the Bible, God reminds the Israelites that they were once slaves. By recalling their own bitter lives, they may understand what it feels like to be oppressed, and learn to treat the poor and downtrodden with loving-kindness.

  The Hebrews’ neighbors had harsh laws that instructed slave owners to cut off the nose and ears of a slave who did not obey, or to scour out the mouth of an insolent slave with a quart of salt. According to the Hebrew Bible, however, slaves are human beings, not just property. They must not be mistreated. “When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth.” A master may not kill a slave, and taking captives to enslave or sell is forbidden.

  The law did nonetheless favor the Hebrew slave, who had presumably sold himself to repay a debt. Such debt bondage was not permanent: “If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free.” Although foreign slaves could be slaves forever, the Bible forbids turning over a runaway slave, Hebrew or not, to his master: “He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, where he pleases; you must not ill-treat him.”

  Slavery in Real Life

  We know what biblical law said, but we don’t know how slaves were actually treated. We do know that biblical prophets scolded the people for ignoring the ideals of the Bible. One prophet asks, What good is it to try to be pious by carrying out rituals like fasting if you fail to free the oppressed?

  No, this is the fast I desire:

  To unlock the fetters of wickedness,

  And untie the cords of the yoke

  To let the oppressed go free;

  To break every yoke.

  These ancient words would inspire those who fought slavery thousands of years later.

  THE FIRST ABOLITIONISTS

  Two Jewish sects’ way of living placed them at odds with the entire slave-owning ancient world.

  The Essenes did not have slaves, and they condemned slavery, and the Therapeutae considered that the ownership of servants was against nature. The Essenes and Therapeutae weren’t typical for the times. It took many centuries before any other abolitionists came along.

  CHAPTER 2

  REBELLION AND REVENGE: ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

  In the year 73 BCE, in Capua, Italy, a desperate group of seventy slaves armed only with kitchen knives escaped their masters and fled to the crater of Mount Vesuvius.

  These were no ordinary slaves. They were Roman gladiators – skilled entertainers who were forced to fight to the death in front of thousands of people in open-air arenas. A fortunate few achieved such glory in the ring that they earned fame, lavish gifts, and, most important, their freedom. Most gladiators died a painful and humiliating death as spectators cheered.

  Roman gladiators sometimes had to fight wild animals like lions or bears in the arena. In this mosaic, the gladiator is pitted against leopards.

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  NOW SHOWING IN THE ARENA!

  Part showman, part athlete, all slave. That was a gladiator.

  Gladiators had the most dangerous job of any slave entertainers. They had to kill or be killed. Depending on their training, they could use various weapons – shield and sword, dagger and buckler (small shield), slingshot, net and trident (triple spear), or short sword – and they could fight on foot or horseback, or even in chariots. Opponents usually did not use the same weapons; a man with a net might try to entangle a heavily armed opponent and then stab him with a trident. In some spectacles, men even fought elephants or other animals.

  Each bout was a life-or-death struggle. Sometimes, as soon as one gladiator died, another stepped in to do battle. At some games, no contestant was allowed to survive. At others, if one of the gladiators was so badly wounded that he could no longer fight, he would lie on his back and raise his left hand. The victor would turn to the emperor, sponsor, or spectators to decide the wounded man’s fate. By waving handkerchiefs or using hand gestures equivalent to our “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” these judges would show whether they thought the fighter had been brave and should live, or had been disappointing – in which case the victorious opponent would kill him.

  The winner couldn’t rejoice for long. He would receive expensive gifts but would still have to fight again. The very best gladiators might win a wooden sword to show that they had won their freedom, but that hardly ever happened. Brutal as they were, these displays were so popular that by the fourth century CE they were taking place 175 days a year in Rome.

  These gladiators were joined by forty thousand ragtag outlaws, outcasts, and runaway slaves. They followed a leader whose name has come down to us through history – Spartacus. In his own day Spartacus was notorious as a rebel. Today he is remembered as a hero for his fight for freedom.

  This shows one version of the death of Spartacus. The heroic slave proved his devotion to his rebel army by killing his own horse, saying that the enemy had plenty of good horses he could use if he won – and if he lost, he wouldn’t need a horse. As it turned out, he didn’t need one.

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  Spartacus had been a member of a Roman legion, an infantry unit in the army, but he had deserted and been captured and sold into slavery. When his skill as a fighter caught his captors’ eye, he was trained to be a gladiator. After Spartacus and the runaways fled to Mount Vesuvius, the government of Rome mustered its forces to quash them. Perhaps the government thought it would be easy to put down a rebellion of poorly armed slaves and outcasts, or perhaps they didn’t have a large enough army to go against the rebels – there were two other wars going on at the time. Whatever the reason, Spartacus and his supporters outsmarted and outfought the Romans for months.

  When the Roman army first came to Mount Vesuvius, the commander stationed his men along the only passable road from the mountaintop and waited for the rebels to come down. But while the Romans were waiting, Spartacus and his men crafted ladders out of wild vines and used them to climb down another side of the mountain. They launched a surprise attack on the Romans from behind. The slaves won that battle and many more battles to come, until the army returned to Rome in disgrace.

  But eventually the Roman troops proved too much for Spartacus. The Romans killed most of the rebels in battle but saved six thousand of them for crucifixion. They nailed them to wooden crosses lining the road from Capua to Rome to warn other slaves of the horrible fate awaiting them if they dared to challenge the authorities. No one knows whether Spartacus fell in battle or suffered a slow death on a cross.

  Falling into Slavery

  If you had lived in Ancient Greece or Rome from about 800 BCE to 500 CE, you almost certainly would have been either a slave or a slave owner, because slaves were such a common part of everyday life. We don’t know how many slaves lived in Greece, but historians estimate that by the end of the first century BCE, two million of the six million people in Roman Italy were slaves.

  In the early days of Ancient Greece, slaves and masters lived and worked side by side. There was no question that the masters had power of life and death over their slaves, but everyday life was not as bleak for them as it would become in later years.

  The Romans conquered Greece and kept spreading their power until they dominated Europe. At its height, the Roman Empire extended as far west as today’s France, Spain, and England, as far east as Albania, and along the northern shore of Africa.

  During their conquests, both Greek and Roman soldiers traveled from land to land by sea, foot, or horse, claiming newly conquered territories as their own and enslaving those they defeated along the way. “It is a law established for all time among all men that when a city is taken in war, the persons and the property of its inhabitants belong to the captors,” wrote one Greek historian.

  THE MIGHTY SPARTANS

  Like most conquerors, the Greeks who lived in the city-state of Sparta enslaved those they vanquished. But they did not sell their captives in a marketplace to be transported far away. Instead, they enslaved them right in their own towns. One of the first towns they enslaved was Helos, in southern Greece; the word “helot” has come to mean any slave or serf. The Spartans forced the Helots to work land around Helos, to give a portion of the food they produced to Spartan families, and to follow the Spartans to war as servants. Although the Spartans were the masters, they were outnumbered by the Helots, so they lived in constant fear that their slaves would plot against them and revolt. Every year or so, the Spartans killed a prominent Helot to remind their slaves who was in charge.

  Buying Slaves

  It was not hard to buy a slave, if you could afford one. Greek slaves were displayed for sale at the marketplace, the agora, along with meat, vegetables, cheese, and other food. Sellers had to announce sales in advance, so that people could object to the sale of a particular slave. They also had to guarantee that the slave had no defects such as a violent temper. If they lied, the slave could be returned for a refund.

  Slave dealers traveled alongside the Roman armies, ready to buy up captives. Victorious military commanders decided for themselves which ones would be presented to the state, which would be given to the soldiers, which would be killed on the spot, and which would be sold.

  The dealers chained together the captives who would be sold and set up temporary markets in order to sell them. Buyers examined the captives as if they were farm animals, peering at their bodies and feeling their muscles. Roman slave dealers had to list the slave’s age and physical markings in deeds of sale. As in Greece, they had to warn buyers of any slave “defects” such as an extreme interest in religion, the arts, or love. These interests showed passion, and a passionate nature might make a slave hard to control. If the seller gave incorrect information, he would have to repay the buyer twice the price of the slave.

  Whether the sale was in the Greek agora or in a makeshift market near a Roman battleground, men cost more than women or children, and skilled workers cost more than unskilled ones. Child slaves cost less because of the expense of raising them and the uncertainty of their future. Would they be tall or puny, weak or strong, healthy or sickly?

  Kidnappers and pirates also took part in the slave trade. On land or sea they overpowered people and carried them off to the slave market. Wealthy families were sometimes fortunate enough to be able to buy back their loved ones. The desperate poor did as such people had always done; they sold themselves or their children into slavery to avoid starvation. Slave traders who found abandoned babies were allowed to claim them to sell as well.

  JULIUS CAESAR, CAPTURED

  Julius Caesar – the famous Roman statesman, conqueror, and emperor – was once captured by pirates. When he was a twenty-five-year-old praetor (similar to a magistrate), he was captured by pirates who plagued the Mediterranean Sea. These buccaneers sold most of their captives to Romans, but they demanded ransom from wealthy prisoners.

  The pirates didn’t know who
Caesar was, but they could tell that he was rich, so they asked for twenty talents of silver to free him. Caesar laughed at them, offered fifty, and sent his men to raise the funds. For thirty-eight days, until they returned, he acted as if he were the pirates’ keeper instead of their prisoner. He joined them in their games and exercises, and wrote poems and speeches that he read to them. If they did not praise his work, he insulted them and threatened to have them hanged.

  After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, captured the pirates, and had them imprisoned. He wanted them executed, but the governor wanted to sell them into slavery instead. Caesar returned to the prison, claimed the pirates for himself, and crucified them – as he had said he would when he was their captive.

  Less Than a Person

  There is no question that in the Bible slaves are considered human beings, but this was not so in Greece and Rome. Greeks called slaves andrapoda, which means “man-footed beings,” and Romans called them little ones or little boys regardless of their age. Owners named their slaves as if they were pets, or kept the names the dealers had given them on the auction block, which often promised an admirable quality – perhaps Hilarus for “cheerful” or Celer for “swift.” The degradation continued with the owners branding the slaves with hot irons, and speaking to them as if they were children.