Egyptian slaves mostly worked singly in small urban middle-class households

Evidence

The historical record makes clear, however, that, once purchased, most African slaves in Egypt worked in the homes of the middle and the upper classes. Baer cites examples of slaves working for “beduins, village notables, fellahs, millers, butchers, shopkeepers, a bookseller, all kinds of merchants, a banker, clerks, all grades of officials and government employees, all ranks of army officers, religious functionaries, some muftis, a judge, a physician and others” during the 1860s and 1870s. Some of the households the slaves served in would have been large, with many slaves and servants, but the majority would have been small, with only one slave, who became a member of an intimate group, privy to all the family life and dependent on its other members for his or her health, well-being, food, and clothing. She or he would perhaps help raise the children, and in some cases, female slaves would have children with the head of the household. From both Egyptian and British accounts, black slaves definitely formed part of the family. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts sharply with plantation-slavery models of the Americas and with how slavery functioned in other African contexts — relevant to distinguishing Egyptian domestic slavery from other colonial-era slavery regimes.