BESTIALITY
Notable in the list of such offences were those involving what was
regarded as sexual deviancy. Incest and certain types of bestiality
figure a number of times among offences punishable by death. The
latter included intercourse with pigs, dogs and sheep. Thus Clause
199 of the Laws begins by stating that anyone who has sexual
relations with a pig or a dog commits a capital offence. The matter
is to be judged by the royal court. But the clause then goes on to say
that the king has thefinal say on the verdict andmaydecide to
spare the lives of both the animal and the human. Whatever his
decision,‘the human shall not approach the king’–so the clause
continues. What precisely is the significance of this?
Firstly, it seems that bestiality was not in all cases deemed a
capital offence, or even a punishable one. Thus Clause 200a tells us
that it is not an offence for a man to have sex with a horse or mule,
though anyone who does so may not approach the king or become
a priest. The reason why horses and mules are excluded from the
bestiality provisions remains a mystery to us. (Do you have any
suggestions?) In any case, in this and in a number of other respects,
Hittite law was at variance with biblical law which has a blanket
prohibition on all forms of bestiality. But even when sex with
certain animals was not banned by Hittite law, persons who
indulged in any form of bestiality were forbidden to enter the
king’s presence. This almost certainly has to do with the concern
that such persons had rendered themselves unclean, and thus
unfit to appear before the king, who might be contaminated by
contact with or even proximity to them. That could have terrible
consequences for the king and indeed his whole kingdom, if the
gods took punitive action.
EVEN LICIT SEX COULD POLLUTE
And there were certain prohibitions that applied to all forms of sex,
licit or otherwise. Even a king, Mursili II, was instructed to refrain
from intercourse with a woman the night before he embarked upon
a ritual designed to cure him of a speech affliction, for fear that by
140 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA