Hittite laws
Encyclopedia
The Hittite laws have been preserved on a number of Hittite
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...

 cuneiform
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...

 tablets found at Hattusa
Hattusa
Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....

 (CTH 291-292, listing 200 laws). Copies have been found written in Old Hittite as well as in Middle and Late Hittite, indicating that they had validity throughout the duration of the Hittite Empire (ca. 1650–1100 BCE).

The corpus

The laws are formulated as case laws; they start with a condition, and a ruling follows, e.g. "If anyone tears off the ear of a male or female slave, he shall pay 3 shekels of silver". The laws show an aversion to the death penalty, the usual penalty for serious offenses being enslavement to forced labour. They are preserved on two separate tablets, each with approximately 200 clauses, the first categorised as being ‘of a man’; the second ‘of a vine’; a third set may have existed.

The laws may be categorised into eight groups of similar clauses. These are separated for the most part by two types of seemingly orphaned clauses: Sacral or incantatory clauses, and afterthoughts.

These eight main groups of laws were:
  • I Aggression and assault: Clauses 1 - 24
  • II Marital relationships: Clauses 26 - 38
  • III Obligations and service - TUKUL: Clauses 39 - 56
  • IV Assaults on property and theft: Clauses 57 - 144
  • V Contracts and prices: Clauses 145 - 161
  • VI Sacral matters: Clauses 162 - 173
  • VII Contracts and tariffs: Clauses 176 - 186
  • VIII Sexual relationships - HURKEL: Clauses 187 - 200
    • Including the criminalisation of bestiality (except with horses and mules). The death penalty was a common punishment among sexual crimes.


The Hittite laws were kept in use for some 500 years, and many copies show that, other than changes in grammar, what might be called the 'original edition' with its apparent disorder, was copied slavishly; no attempt was made to 'tidy up' by placing even obvious afterthoughts in a more appropriate position.

This corpus and the classification scheme is based on findings arising out of a Master of Arts degree taken at the University of Queensland by N H Dewhirst, supervised by Dr Trevor Bryce in 2004.

Changes were apparently made to penalties at least twice: firstly, the kara – kinuna changes, which generally reduced the penalties found in a former, but apparently unpreserved, 'proto-edition'; and secondly, the ‘Late Period’ changes to penalties in the already-modified Old Hittite version.

Modern editions

The laws were first fully published by Bedřich Hrozný
Bedrich Hrozný
Bedřich Hrozný was a Czech orientalist and linguist. He deciphered the ancient Hittite language, identified it as an Indo-European language and laid the groundwork for the development of Hittitology. Though of Czech origin, he published his work in German or French.Hrozný was born in Lysá nad...

 in 1922. Johannes Friedrich published a new edition in 1959 and the latest critical edition was published by Harry Hoffner in 1997.

See also

  • Hittite texts
    Hittite texts
    The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...

  • Code of Hammurabi
    Code of Hammurabi
    The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...

  • Code of the Nesilim
    Code of the Nesilim
    The Code of Nesilim is an ancient Hittite legal code dating from c. 1650-1500 BCE.-Translation:From the Ancient History Sourcebook, The Code of the Nesilim, c. 1650-1500 BCE, Paul Halsall, August 1998, from: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources , Vol. III: The Roman World, pp....

  • List of ancient legal codes
  • List of artifacts significant to the Bible

External links


Literature

  • E. Neu, StBoT 26 (1983)
  • Harry Angier Hoffner Jr., The Laws of the Hittites: a Critical Edition (DMOA 23) – Leiden, New York, Köln 1997
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