The fact that slaves sometimes ran away from their masters, like Barachiel, who pretended to be a free citizen, and that in contracts for their sale their obedience is expressly guaranteed, proves that they were not always content with their lot. Indeed, it is not strange that it should have been so. They were merely chattels, subject to the caprices and tyranny of those who owned them, and their lives were as little valued as that of an ox. Thus in the fortieth year of Nebuchadnezzar a judgment was delivered that, if it could be proved by witnesses that a certain Idikhi-ilu had murdered the slave of one of the Arameans settled in the town of Pekod, he was to be fined a maneh of silver; that was all the slave's life was worth in the eyes of the law, and even that was paid to the master to compensate him for the loss of his property. Sometimes the name of the slave was changed; as we have seen, the captive Egyptian woman received a Babylonian name, and a contract of the time of Khammurabi, relating to the female slave of a Babylonian lady, who had been given to her by her husband, and who, it is stipulated, shall not be taken from her by his sons after his death, mentions that the name of the slave had been changed. In this case, however, the reason seems to have been that the girl was adopted by her mistress, though the adoption was not carried out in legal form and was therefore technically invalid. The contract accordingly describes her by her proper name of Mutibasti, but adds that "she is called Zabini, the daughter of Saddasu," her mistress.
That the law should nevertheless have regarded the slave as a person, and as such possessed of definite rights, appears strange. But Babylonian law started from the principle of individual responsibility and individual possession of property, and since the slave was a human being and could, moreover, hold property of his own, it necessarily seemed to place him more and more on a footing of equality with the free-born citizen. The causes which brought about the legal emancipation of women worked in the same direction in favor of the slave. Hence the power he had of purchasing his freedom out of his own earnings and of being adopted into a citizen's family. Hence, too, the claim of the law to interfere between the slave-owner and his property.