The legal and social condition of slaves in West-Semitic societies appears in a somewhat concreter light thanks to the Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh. Most of them concern sale of slaves and they all date from the late Persian period. These documents are badly damaged, but their reconstitution is feasible to a certain extent, because they are written according to a fixed pattern. A translation of Pap. Samaria 6 with some comments is thus presented in the article with special attention to slavery resulting from insolvency and to possible legal consequences implied by a formal sale of such slaves.
