Muškēnum in Third-Millennium BC Mesopotamia.

This article reexamines the origins and social status of the muškēnū (maš.gag.en, etc., "those who prostrate themselves") in ancient Mesopotamia. Previously thought of as commoners, analysis of third-millennium sources reveals them to be settled outsiders, distinct from citizens of the communities they inhabited. This precarious position necessitated protection from rulers or other powerful figures. Evidence suggests the Semitic Middle Euphrates-Tigris region as the homeland of this phenomenon. Early Dynastic data (ca. 2600–2300 BC) portray the muškēnū as low-status outsiders by placing them in the context of male regular and house-born slaves, menial workers, robbers/seminomads, and female sex workers. Akkadian conquerors brought the phenomenon to Sumer during the twenty-third century BC. The muškēnū lived in imperial centers and traveled between Sumerian cities. The data on the muškēnū become more common during the Ur III period (2110–2003 BC). They lived primarily in royal settlements and on the kingdom's periphery, suggesting a deliberate policy to establish a loyal social base, and they were "people" rather than "natives" of these towns. Male muškēnū were typically conscripted full time in low-income occupations involved in animal husbandry and cultivation, and they seldom held administrative positions. Male citizens, on the other hand, enjoyed a better economic position with part-time work and additional income opportunities. Few muškēnū women (feminine forms of the term are not attested) might have been forced into penal labor like some citizen women. Sex work was another profession for some muškēnū women, also mirroring the situation for some citizen women. During the Old Babylonian period (2002–1595 BC), muškēnum remained a term for a group of state-protected free individuals distinct from regular citizens of southern Babylonia. What was new is that Babylonian states used this category as a blueprint to conceptualize the entire free population as royal/state subjects, a concept originally alien in the south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]