CHAPTER 13

Health, Hygiene

and Healing

WARDING OFF POLLUTION

T

he food preparation areas would have passed even the

most rigorous health inspections today:

Those who prepare the daily loaves must be clean. They

must be bathed and groomed, and their (body-)hair and

nails removed. They must be clothed in clean garments.

They must not prepare the loaves while in an unclean state.

The bakery where the loaves are baked must be swept and

scrubbed. Further, no pig or dog is permitted at the door of

the place where the loaves are broken.^1

But Hittite regulations went even further. Anyone found guilty of
serving their guests food from an unclean vessel were forced to eat
excrement and drink urine as a punishment. And kitchen-hands
who prepared the food in an unclean state–by having sex the
previous night and then failing to bathe at sunrise–suffered the
death penalty.
Now we must hasten to add that the guests on the occasions
referred to here were very special ones – gods who had been
summoned to their temples and taken up residence in their statues.
During the gods’residency, their mortal hosts were required to
attend to all their physical needs–washing and anointing them