“Yes, a totally religious authoritarian system”. It was many authoritarian systems. Kind of like what we would call “States”. “totally religious”. Yes it was. But what was religious in that time period? It meant schools, police, banking, mail system, health system. But we have a lot of data from letters people wrote back and forth. And they don’t seem any more into deities than we are.
“based on cheap labor (slavery).” The slaves worked in the temples. Don’t see it in the public. People sometimes had to work another job to be able to afford to pay to be a slave in the temples. There was competition for temple slave jobs. Temples had the best food and entertainment available. There are records of gifts from the public to the temples. A lot of flower bouquets. Which means the people had plenty of food and were able to spend time growing flowers.
Would I want to go back there? Yea. I have read a couple books of translated letters and they are no different that people from here in the Mid-West.