negligence or malice risks losing his livelihood, which is ultimately
to the detriment of Hatti’s land-based economy. Penalties had
to be sufficiently high to prevent this, or to ensure adequate
compensation for the victim. Even though in later versions of the
Laws compensatory payments for damage to agricultural property
or livestock were generally much smaller, sometimes 50 per cent
smaller, than in earlier versions, the prescribed compensation was
still up tofive or ten times greater than the actual loss suffered by
the victim. Livestock were a particularly important asset, and the
laws which deal with theft of or injury done to them reflect the
value Hittite society placed on them–especially animals which
had been trained to do important, specific jobs. Trained working
animals like sheep- and cattle-dogs were valuable assets. Strike and
kill an ordinary farmyard dog, and you will pay its owner one
shekel of silver. But if you strike and kill a herdsman’s dog, you will
pay 20 times that amount.
ONHISMAJESTY’SSERVICE?
The Hittites were not a great trading people, and references to
actual Hittite merchants in our texts are very rare. Foreign
intermediaries conveyed most of the goods imported into the
kingdom, ranging from essential commodities to luxury items.
Sometimes these goods were tribute from the kingdom’s vassal
states or ‘gifts’to Hittite kings from their international Royal
Brothers. Even within the land of Hatti, we have very little evidence
of merchants or traders hawking their wares between cities or in
local markets. Indeed, the Hittite word for a merchant,unnattallaš,
is rarely found, and even when it does occur it refers only to
wealthy and important men who conducted the business of
international trade with allied countries, as His Majesty’s agents
and acting under his protection.
Many of these agents came from the port city of Ura on
Anatolia’s southeastern coast and seem to have played a major role
in arranging shipments of goods from Ugarit on the eastern
Mediterranean coast to the homeland. Grain originating in Egypt
or Hatti’s Syrian vassal states was amongst the most important of
132 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA