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In southeastern Turkey a team of Archaeologists is deciphering an ancient Assyrian tablet found in the ruins of a ziyaret (or ziggurat).  The National Geographic posted an article on the tablet at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091209-ancient-tablets-decoded_2.html but the story seems to be avoiding the use of a term which has become quite taboo, even when referencing ancient cultures.  That term is slavery.

The article talks about how this tablet is a superb find because it details administrative issues of a local governing body during the rule of the Assyrian Empire 3,000 years ago.  In cuneiform the tablet details various economic affairs and other management issues.  Interestingly, almost half of the article is spent talking about some 144 names of “Mystery Women,” noting the names were primarily from areas outside of where the tablet was found. 

What the article says is that the Assyrians made a practice of moving people from one area of the other, but it inferred that these people were paid workers and used terms like “deportation.”  Deportation implies the act of returning a person to their homeland, like when the INS deports illegal aliens.  It is quite the opposite of what was going on in the story: instead of sending migrant workers home, they were migrating workers.  Sounds more like exporting and importing than deporting

The article did mention that it is likely the Assyrians used this movement of people to facilitate the destruction of local powers, but nowhere does it suggest that the women were slaves.  Many cultures did indeed move people about to degrade a region’s ability to revolt, but those people were moved about in chains and were not paid.  The article says the tablet recorded “mundane affairs,” so it is probable the Mystery Women were recorded next to other mundane property accounts as how many goats the court maintained and how many bushels of millet were collected that harvest.  The scribes had to work painstakingly to record these things in stone, so why would a leader bother naming each of the women in court records unless he considered them property?

Perhaps the article needs a little editing.  It looks like the Assyrians were enslaving women, probably as part of a campaign of social integration much like the Arab and Persian powers did in various seasons of reign in the same region.  The women, as property, worked the lands of lords, became integrated with the local population of a different area, and eventually people throughout the Assyrian Empire were combined into a single Assyrian identity rather than the multitude of disparate identities each small area would represent.

Or maybe the Mystery Women willingly left their home — one with fields and orchards of its own — and traveled to the other side of an empire to work some other lord’s fields for the social progression, health care, and retirement benefits.