Christin Möllenbeck's book on institutional slavery in temple and palace in southern Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period (2000–1595 bc) is the first comprehensive study devoted to that subject. It consists of four sections: I. Time, space, and object; II. Institutional slavery in Old Babylonian texts from Mesopotamia; III. Evaluation and summary; and IV. Appendix. The first part contains a historical introduction, comments on the research history on slavery in antiquity and in the ancient Near East, discussions on topics such as the terms for slave, the concepts of temple and palace, and the interactions between the latter institutions and private economy. After pondering various proposals, the author adopts Bruno Lasker's 1956 definition of slavery, understood as a property right, the right to dispose of the person and not just of the product of the slave's labour. In this view, slaves were permitted to own property, have a family, and, given the appropriate circumstances, have the right of emancipation; whereas the rights of the owner were usually limited by common law. Möllenbeck thus defines slavery as a matter of property rights (p. 19). She maintains that temples and palaces were large economic households and notes that, in certain records, it is difficult to distinguish between private and official actions. Finally, she suggests the possibility of institutions that may not have belonged to the state, to the temple, or to the private sector, but were anchored in several areas at the same time. This fourth category is problematic, for the fact that the information is insufficient to affiliate these entities with official or private activities does not necessarily mean that they constituted an additional undefined category.

The second part presents textual evidence arranged from south to north. She calls the examination of the individual corpus of each locality a “mikrohistorische Herangehensweise” (p. 9). However, the spatiotemporal scope of the work and its method have little to do with microhistory, at least not in the sense that it is employed in modern historiography by, say, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie or Carlo Ginzburg. Möllenbeck discusses documents from 16 sites: Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Kisurra, Isin, Nippur, Dūr Abiešuḫ, Maškan-šapir, Babylon, Tell Egraineh, Damrum and Mananâ-texts, Sippar, Šaduppûm, Nērebtum, Tutub and Ešnuna. It is unusual to think of the localities listed north of Nippur as Südmesopotamien, as the book title has it. Babylonia, as used occasionally (e.g. p. 391), or even Lower Mesopotamia, seem more appropriate. Each subsection on a given locality comprises a brief political history of the city, notes on texts’ provenience and types of documents, analysis of the evidence, and conclusion. The author does not include unpublished material, nor does she collate tablets whose readings she questions. The evidence is introduced and discussed systematically, with transliterations and translations of documents and useful charts, tables and plans. Naturally, quantities, qualities, characteristics and distribution of the sources are uneven, which affects the results of the inquiries, as Möllenbeck duly notes. On certain occasions, opinions are provided without citing relevant sources. For instance, she claims that Daganma-ilum was the king of Mutiabal (p. 160) but does not refer to Samsu-iluna's statue published in 2020, where Daganma-ilum is mentioned five times without any title, unlike all other rebel leaders who do bear titles (e.g. lugal or šagina).

The third part is devoted to providing an evaluation and summaries of the information analysed in previous sections. Mollënbeck returns to the issue of those institutions which were located between the institutional and private sectors, and exemplifies the situation with the much-debated case of Balamunamhe. She then conveniently recapitulates her arguments concerning the main characteristics of slavery in political and religious institutions based on the documents from the 16 sites studied in this book. The author takes into consideration themes such as the acquisition of slaves, the status of prisoners of war, the tasks performed by enslaved labour, the maintenance, ransom, release, escape and death of slaves, and their chronological distribution during the Old Babylonian period. The comparison between those aspects in political and religious institutions shows that palaces acquired slaves by purchase (mainly men), capture and, more rarely, through hiring, whereas temples got them through donations, purchase (also mainly men) and temporary assignments, with no evidence of hiring. In palaces slaves were employed in farming (96% men and 3.7% women) and various crafts (35.1% men, 46.3% women, and 18.6% children), in temples slaves were assigned to cultic activities (89.5% men and 10.5% women), to textile production (17.6% men, 76.5% women, and 5.9% children) and to miscellaneous chores. The feeding of slaves for both institutions can be traced thanks to ration lists, although the information they provide is limited. Möllenbeck affirms that in political institutions a person could sever enslavement by paying a ransom, by release, escape, or death, but no such information is mentioned for temples. As for the chronological distribution, most documents come from the period between 1900 and 1700 bc, although in religious institutions slavery is attested from the early to the late Old Babylonian period without any significant interruption (p. 385).

The Appendix contains a list of abbreviations, bibliography, a list of illustrations and index of cuneiform sources. Regrettably there is no index of personal and geographic names. The manuscript has been carefully edited and has very few typos, except for the transcription of a French passage where five misspellings occur over six lines (p. 331).

Christin Möllenbeck's book deals with an area that had been neglected for the Old Babylonian period. She manages to present the evidence with clarity and consistency. If one may disagree with certain interpretations, her work is commendable and represents an important contribution for the understanding of forced labour and the socio-economic history of Babylonia during the first half of the second millennium.