reason for the state’s endorsement of it was to ensure that a wife so
taken in a second marriage continued to produce offspring if she
were still of child-bearing age. Given the chronic shortage of Hittite
manpower, the continuing patter of tiny Hittite feet, especially male
ones, despite the death of a woman’sfirst husband, was no doubt a
welcome sound in the Hittite kingdom.
ADULTERY
Of course, there must have been many instances where a man who
was obliged to marry an in-law’s widow was already married. Such
cases would provide the only examples of polygamy or concubinage
clearly attested in Hittite society outside the elite circle of royalty
where kings had several or many concubines as well as a chief wife.
Theremayhave been other instances at sub-royal social levels that
we don’t know about. But by and large Hittite society (unlike
Babylonian society as reflected in Hammurabi’s Laws) seems to
have been a monogamous one, with several of the laws concerned
with adulterous behaviour.
Let’s consider clause 197 of the Laws. It begins thus:
If a man seizes a woman in the mountains (and rapes her), it
is the man’s offence, but if he seizes her in her house, it is the
woman’s offence: the woman shall die.The rationale behind this distinction, not spelt out in the Hittite
text, is provided by a passage in Deuteronomy, which almost
certainly derives, directly or indirectly, from Hittite law. Part of it
reads:
If out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to
be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this
shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin
deserving death [...] for the man found the girl out in the
country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was
no-one to rescue her.
(Deut. 22:25–27).138 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA