thumb|upright=1.3|19th-century engraving depicting an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara Desert. In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive. The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution. Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone. The three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labour, and forced labour.
thumb|upright=13|19th-century engraving depicting an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara Desert. In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive. The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution. Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of s.ervitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone. The three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labour, and forced labour.