obligations to his victim by paying him appropriate compensation.
Thus:
If anyone injures a person and temporarily incapacitates
him, he shall provide medical care for him. In his place, he
shall provide a person to work on his estate until he recovers.
When he recovers, his assailant shall pay him 6 shekels of
silver, and shall pay the physician’s fee as well.^5Punishment purely for punishment’s sake has little place in Hittite
law.
The Laws also draw a distinction between various categories of
manslaughter. But what of cases of actual murder–homicide with
deliberate intent? Here again the Laws seem to have changed over
time in favour of more lenient punishment for the offender.
In earlier times, the fate of a murderer seems to have lain in the
hands of the victim’s family who could demand the death penalty.
In later times, the death penalty appears to have been ruled out.
Except in districts where capital punishment had the sanction of
customary law, the only choices available to a murdered person’s
family seem to have been either compensatory payment by the
murderer or his enslavement to the family.
Arson, house-breaking, burglary, theft of livestock and damage
to or interference with another man’s property are dealt with in
many Hittite laws. Thus:
If anyone carries embers into afield while it is in fruit, and
ignites thefield, he who sets thefire shall himself take the
burnt-overfield. He shall give a goodfield to the owner of
the burnt-overfield, and he (the new owner) will reap it.^6This prompts me to make a general point. The high percentage of
laws dealing with theft of or damage to property, and the penalties
which such offences attract, clearly reflect the importance which
Hittite society attached to the protection of individual property
rights, particularly in an agricultural context. The farmer who
loses his crops or livestock or equipment through someone else’s
JUSTICE AND THE COMMONER 131