That is to say, the woman was considered innocent if she were
attacked in circumstances where she was unable to summon
assistance. In contrast to this situation, the second part of the
Hittite clause implies that if the act occurred in a place where the
woman could have called for help from others nearby (as would
allegedly have been the case if the offence was perpetrated in her
own home) but failed to do so, this would imply consensual sex.
And she must pay the penalty for it.
What penalty? It is clear that the law is referring specifically to a
married woman, for the second part of clause 197 states that if the
woman’s husband catches his wife and her lover in the act, he can
kill them both without suffering any penalty. That is to say, the law
condoned if not actually legitimised his action. By implication, if
he failed to do this in the heat of the moment, he could not later
take the law into his own hands, but had to refer the matter for
judgment to the king’s court. This is made clear in Clause 198:
If (the husband) brings (the adulterous pair) to the palace
gate (i.e. to the royal court) and says‘My wife shall not die’,
he can spare his wife’s life, but he must also spare the lover
[...]. If he says:‘Both of them shall die,’[...] the king
(or presumably his delegate) may have them killed or he
may spare them.Note the important proviso: the cuckolded husband cannot ask for
his wife to be spared and her lover executed; it had to be both or
neither. If both, thefinal decision rested with the king or his
delegate, who no doubt investigated the circumstances of the illicit
liaison before making the decision.
Overall, the range of offences for which capital punishment was
prescribed was relatively small in the Hittite world, and indeed
became even smaller as the Laws were revised over time. This is in
marked contrast to Hammurabi’s Laws where the death penalty is
stipulated for a wide range of offences, including some we might
regard as trivial. So those offences which did attract the death
penalty in Hittite society had all the greater significance because of
their relative rarity.
NO SEX PLEASE,WE’RE HITTITE 139