“I Want to Break Free”: model contracts recording slave self-emancipation

This paper presents a study of five cuneiform tablets which belong to the category of Sumerian model contracts. It is a great pleasure for me to dedicate this modest contribution to Prof. Francesco Pomponio, who devoted much of his career to the study of Sumerian texts. I would like to express my gratitude to him who, back in 2002, together with Prof. Franco D’Agostino and Prof. Lorenzo Verderame introduced me (an inexperienced young graduate) to the cuneiform tablets in the glorious “tablet room” (i.e., the British Museum Study Room for the Middle East collections).