CITIZENS AND NON-CITIZENS IN THE AGE OF HAMMURABI¹

Were the subjects of ancient Near Eastern states citizens? Is the analytic category of citizenship applicable to the ancient Orient? This chapter argues that they were and it is. First, I examine how citizenship is conceptualized in discourse about antiquity and the contemporary world, then how it is evident in sources the people of the ancient Near East produced. The applicable concept of citizenship is that which Josine Blok formulated for ancient Athens: membership in a political community that entails prerogatives and responsibilities non-members lack and that involves a distinct sense of belonging to that community. The prerogative and responsibility emphasized by Aristotle was participation in judgment and office. Although an abstract noun that translates as ‘citizenship’ is found in no ancient Near Eastern language, all the requisite criteria are found in ancient Near Eastern sources. Here, I focus on sources from Syro-Mesopotamian political communities of the early second millennium BCE -the age of Hammurabi, to name this period for the figure best known today -especially legal documents concerning the status of people or illustrating community members’ participation in governance. These sources show that native and free status, normally based on descent -as in ancient Athens -were the fundamental criteria for membership in a political community, which entailed both duty on behalf of that community and a share in its governance. This share could take the form of participation in judgment, most often as a jury member or witness in legal proceedings, as well as participation in the city assembly or other collective governance body. Since status was mutable, and not necessarily evident in people’s looks or voices, various means to establish and mark status were employed. In the early second millennium, these included the hairdo called abbuttu, a feature as transitory as the enslavement it signified.