Slavery

    There is some controversy whether there was slavery at all in ancient Egypt. The differences of opinion stem mostly from how slavery is defined. Theory and practice of Egyptian slavery were, as far as we can ascertain, quite different from those of Greece or Rome, where slaves were wholly at the mercy of their owners with little protection from society, and more in line with the kind of slavery practiced in the rest of Africa.
    Hem (Hm), generally translated as 'slave' and originally meaning body, was seemingly a person with lessened rights dedicated to a certain task such as the service of a god (since the 1st dynasty) or the royal administration. The hemu (pl. of hem) are mentioned in the context of private persons only since the end of the Old Kingdom . 
    Since the Middle Kingdom foreign slaves mainly from Asia became increasingly numerous. They were either prisoners of war or traded by slave merchants. Their period of enslavement in Egypt was often limited. Debt slaves or prisoners of war were at times set free after serving for a certain period. 

    Part of the slaves were personal servants of individuals. Others belonged to estates of temples and noblemen, often taken during a military campaign or bestowed by the king. But how is one to interpret the following Old Kingdom inscription

There were presented to him the things of his father, the judge and scribe Anubisemonekh; there was no grain or anything of the house, [but] there were people and small cattle.

Were these people  just tenants, free to move away if they wanted to, or - as the context seems to suggest - more like part of the estate, perhaps with a social position similar to that of a medieval serf? Such inscriptions, tying together land and labourer, occur frequently throughout Egyptian history .
    For want of better words slave and slavery are used on this website to refer to people with significantly reduced rights  and their social state.

The enslavement

Debt

    Some Egyptians were sold into slavery because of debts or sold themselves to escape poverty. As indentured slaves they did not lose all their civil rights; and sometimes the economic security they gained through their new status might seem to be worth giving up some freedoms for. 
    A remnant of these customs is seen in the demotic contracts concerning security, where grasping the hand refers to the warrantor's hand being held by the creditor symbolizing the debtor giving the creditor power over his person. Debt slavery was abolished in the Late Dynastic Period.

Punishment

    It has been proposed that the vizier had the right to impose perpetual forced labour on a convicted criminal, which would put him in a position of virtual slavery. 

Voluntary servitude

    A woman paid a temple to be accepted as a servant :

The female servant ... has said before my master, Saknebtynis, the great god, 
    'I am your servant, together with my children and my children's children. I shall not be free in your precinct forever and ever. You will protect me; you will keep me safe; you will guard me. You will keep me sound; you will protect me from every demon, and I will pay you 1¼ kita of copper . . . until the completion of 99 years, and I will give it to your priests monthly.'

But whether this kind of voluntary servitude was anything like the bondage imposed on a destitute debtor cannot be answered.

War

    While there had been slaves in Egypt since the beginning of its history, their numbers greatly increased during the New Kingdom, when the pharaohs were committed to a policy of foreign involvement and conquests in Nubia, Canaan and Syria brought in many prisoners of war, seqer-ankh, who were enslaved, at times branded with the signki

I gave to them captains of archers, and chief men of the tribes, branded and made into slaves, impressed with my name; their wives and their children were made likewise.

and often given to deserving servants of the crown:

Then Avaris was despoiled, and I brought spoil from there: one man, three women; total, four persons. His majesty gave them to me as slaves. Then Sharuhen was besieged for three years. His majesty despoiled it and I brought spoil from it: two women and a hand.

    During the campaigns of Thutmose III prisoners of war were taken and slaves were part of the tribute paid by the defeated.

The number of spoil taken in them ..... of vile Naharina who were as defenders among them, with their horses, 691 prisoners, 29 hands [of slain], 48 mares ... in that year 295 male and female slaves, 68 horses, 3 gold dishes, 3 silver dishes, ..........

    In the 41st (?) year of Thutmose's reign he received from the Hittites among other things eight male and female black slaves, calling it tribute. The Hittites must have thought of them as presents, probably quite valuable ones, as black persons were a rarity among them. 
    Defeated nations like the Nubians which lost their independence and were administered by the Egyptians, paid taxes which often included slaves. Their number was not as great for Lower Nubia as it was for Kush which produced less gold than its northern neighbour.

    The successful defence against the Sea Peoples resulted in large numbers of slaves as well, when whole wandering peoples were defeated and captured. The following, somewhat generalizing and possibly exaggerated report describes the exploits of Ramses III

... I laid low the Meshwesh, the Libyans, the Esbet, the Keykesh, the Shai, the Hes and the Beken. 
... I carried away those whom my sword spared, as numerous captives, pinioned like birds before my horses, their wives and their children by the ten-thousand, their cattle in number like hundred-thousands.....

    The least fortunate captives were sent to work as slaves in the dreadful gold and copper mines of Nubia and Sinai, where, according to the Greeks, water was rationed and men died in great numbers from exhaustion and dehydration in the desert heat. On the other hand not all the prisoners were enslaved: some were absorbed into the army, where Sherden for instance constituted a large part of the bodyguard of Ramses II.

    Many slaves laboured on the estates of the pharaohs, the nobility and the priests. Seti I announced on the Wadi Halfa stela how he had endowed Min-Amen's temple at Buhen, so that his storehouse was filled with male and female slaves from the captivity of his majesty, L.P.H. Ramses III is said to have given 113,000 to the temples during the course of his reign. 
    The slaves who found themselves serving the royal family  or the nobility were generally the lucky ones. Their life was often less hard than that of the native peasants. The children of a few of these slaves, foreigners or Egyptians, who had exceptional ability, made themselves indispensable to their masters and rose to high positions in the bureaucracy or married into their former owners' families after being set free.

By birth

    In the Roman empire the offspring of slaves inherited their parents' status . At times, similar circumstances seem to have ruled the destinies of Egyptian slaves . On a stela Sheshonq lists his endowments of supplies, land, gardens and people and states their value:

[...] Nesitetat, triumphant , whose mother is Tedimut, the female slave, daughter of Nebethapi; her mother, Ero ....ekh; [the female slave], [Tepiramenef], daughter of Paynehsi, triumphant; ......... for each one; 5 ²/3 kidet of silver being the price of the man; amounting to 3 ²/3 deben.

    Children of dependants were passed on together with their parents:

I bequeath to the Citizeness Ineksenedjem, the woman who is in my house, all that I have acquired with her, namely, two male servants and two female servants, total 4, and their children.

Capture

    There were apparently times when order was barely enforced and people, above all women, were abducted and enslaved. In a letter from the late New Kingdom the owner of such kidnap victims complained to the trader from whom he had purchased them, that the woman's family had come to claim her and he demanded compensation . Similar incidents happened during the Roman periods, when policing was in the hands of the Roman army instead of the professional policeforce which had come into existence in the second millennium BCE .
   

Similar occurrences took place all over the ancient world: Travellers were easily and often illegally captured in foreign lands where nobody knew them, and sold into slavery; and there was often no one they could appeal to for help.

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