Code of Nesilim
The Hittites were powerful warriors whose capital city was Hattusa. This large city was 3,000 feet above sea level and was protected by a ring of mountains and a stone wall thought to have been 26 feet thick.
The Hittites were the first people to use a treaty to settle a dispute. Hittite King Hattusili III signed a treaty with Egyptian King Ramses II in 1284 B.C. In this historic treaty, both civilizations agreed not to attack each other and to protect each other if attacked by another civilization.
The collection of Hittite legal texts is generally referred to as The Laws, suggesting that it does not make up a document produced by a central authority but rather it is a compilation of civil and criminal law traditionally observed by society, as illustrated by the excerpts given here from among somewhat over two hundred clauses.
As many other great ancient civilizations, laws regulated various aspects of a vast Empire. Written somewhere from 1650-1500 BC, The Laws known as 'the Code of Nesilim' (Nesilim is the Hittites' name for themselves) was a document that stated ancient laws of the Hittites. They reveal much about the social structure of the society. Compared to the Code of Hammurabi, where death was the punishment for the majority of the offenses described the punishments stated in the Code of Nesilim was not very severe, although, some laws were rather unusual according to modern standards. Two of its most significant topics concerned women and the treatment of slaves.
The Laws have been preserved on a number of Hittite cuneiform tablets found at Hattusa (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).
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 labor. They are preserved on two separate tablets, each with approximately 200 clauses, the first categorized as being ‘of a man’; the second ‘of a vine’; a third set may have existed.
The Laws may be categorized 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:
- Aggression and assault: Clauses 1 - 24
- Marital relationships: Clauses 26 - 38
- Obligations and service - TUKUL: Clauses 39 - 56
- Assaults on property and theft: Clauses 57 - 144
- Contracts and prices: Clauses 145 - 161
- Sacral matters: Clauses 162 - 173
- Contracts and tariffs: Clauses 176 - 186
- Sexual relationships - HURKEL: Clauses 187 - 200
The death penalty was a common punishment among sexual crimes.
The 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.
Changes were apparently made to penalties at least twice: firstly, the Kra – 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.
Women
The Laws offered more protection to a woman than, if remembering correctly, Victorian England, in the sense that a Hittite woman could both initiate a divorce and keep her inheritance and half her husband’s estate if she divorced. On the other hand, the expressions used in Hittite for marriage—there is no one abstract word for “to marry”—reflect the control men exercised over women, “to take a wife” “to take as his own wife” “to make her your wife.” (Imparati, 572) A woman is never described as “taking a husband.”
The Hittites adopted a “liberal and pragmatic approach to the institution of marriage” (Bryce, 119). “Divorce was apparently not uncommon, and divorce proceedings could as easily be initiated by a woman as by a man” (Bryce, 119). “It seems that in a divorce between persons of equal status, the couple’s assets were generally divided equally and all the children but one remained with the mother; if the wife was of lesser social status, the husband retained the custody of all but one of the couple’s children” (Collins, 24). In addition to the equitable division of assets, the wife had another sizable financial advantage in the case of divorce: She retained both the Ku?ata and the Iwaru. Her dowry represented her share of her father’s estate and remained her property throughout her married life and divorce. While married, her husband acted as custodian of the dowry, but it only became his if she died before him, and in this case, it appears it passed to the children, as in Babylonian law. (Bryce, 130)
There were also provisions that a widow be adequately provided for after her husband’s death. Among other things, she had the legal right to disinherit her sons if they failed to take care of her. (Bryce, 132)
There are two key law codes to consider regarding rape and adultery, which in the Hittite mind, appear to be closely tied ideas. Here are the relevant codes:
Clause 197 “The Laws”
If a man seizes a woman in the mountains (and rapes her), the man is guilty and shall die, but if he seizes her in her house, the woman is guilty and shall die. If the woman’s husband catches them (in the act) and kills them, he has committed no offence.
Clause 198 “The Laws”
If he (the husband) brings them to the palace gate [the royal court] and says: “My wife shall not die,” he can spare his wife’s life, but must also spare the lover. Then he may veil her [his wife]. But if he says, “Both of you shall die”, and they “roll the wheel”. The king may have them both killed or he may spare them.
(Hughes, 190)
In Clause 197, if the sexual encounter occurs in an isolated place where the woman could not call out for help, it is assumed that it is rape and the man is guilty and the penalty is death (Imparati, 574). If, on the other hand, the sexual encounter occurs in the woman’s house (it is probably good not to take these exemplar places too literally), then the law assumes she was committing adultery, not being raped, and for that, she pays with her life.
The husband, if he catches a man with his wife, is justified under The Laws in killing them, but only in the heat of the moment. Clause 198 indicates that if he stops to think about it, he must bring the two before the king for the court’s decision. Interestingly, he cannot request that only one of the adulterers be killed. It’s an all or nothing decision. The king can override the angry husband’s decision and spare both.
As said, The Laws were a mixed bag as far as women’s rights. Certainly rapists paid a high penalty for their crime, however defining rape by location. In addition, a married man could have sex with another woman without it being counted as adultery as long as the woman was not married. That is, only a woman was bound in marriage to the one sexual partner. Clearly the Hittites operated under a “double standard” like so many other cultures through time.
Slaves
As in all other ancient civilizations, slaves were not on the same level as free men. Yet, The Laws were surprisingly fair, allowing slaves to marry whomever they wanted, to buy property, to open businesses, and to purchase their freedom. Under The Laws, slaves were not treated as human chattel, or property that could be used and abused by their masters however they saw fit. They had a limited number of rights that guaranteed them a level of dignity and protection.