Macabre discovery: ancient Egyptians used branding iron to mark slaves
New research has shown that branding iron from 3,000 years ago found in Egypt were used to mark slaves.
Slavery is one of the oldest social formations. Its history goes back as far as the Neolithic period. Archaeological discoveries in today’s Pakistan, among other places, have shown that people of the Indus culture used slaves for labor as early as 10,000 years ago. Slaves were also found in many other ancient civilizations, and their privileges and role often varied from region to region.
People were enslaved as far back as antiquity
In Mesopotamia, slaves were allowed to start families and own property. The situation was similar in Egypt. On the Nile, mainly prisoners of war were enslaved, who were forced to serve in palaces, among other things. However, slavery was not the basis of the state’s economy and economy, unlike in ancient Rome or Greece.
What most slaves in ancient cultures and civilizations had in common, however, was the way they were marked. Sometimes slaves had to wear distinctive clothing or armbands so that everyone could recognize them. Sometimes, however, they opted for more brutal methods, which involved burning marks and symbols on their bodies with red-hot metal. Stigmatization was extremely…
