Dandamayev M.A. The Slavery in Babylonia during the 7th to 8th Centuries BCE (626-331) [Рабство в Вавилонии VII - IV вв. до н.э. (626 - 331 гг.)]. Moscow: Nauka GRVL Publishers 1974.
The Neo-Babylonian Kingdom was founded in 626. By that time Babylonia had already passed through a long period of historical development as a class society: the first state units in Mesopotamia appeared 2000 years earlier. Towards the end of the second millennium B.C. big cities – centres of handicraft production – grew up in Babylonia, and from the 8th-7th centuries domestic trade began to flourish, a development which was followed by the expansion of foreign trade. Naturally, important changes occurred in the social structure. Society consisted of full-fledged citizens, of freeborn persons deprived of civil rights, of various groups of glebae adscripti and, finally, of slaves…