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7.11 Contracts could be made ancillary to a status such as mar-
riage, adoption, or slavery. They are discussed under the appropri-
ate status.- CR D^180
8.1 Homicide^181
The law codes present a series of special cases, from which we can
conclude that the level of culpability depended upon various factors:
the mental condition of the culprit, the status of the victim (awìlum
or mu“kènum, head of household or son, daughter or slave), or the
directness of causation.^182 An underlying principle of punishment
appears to have been its symbolic association with the crime, espe-
cially by talion, either in like means of death or like member of fam-
ily killed (vicarious talion).8.1.1 Premeditated
In the Nippur Murder Trial, three conspirators found guilty of mur-
dering a man are condemned to be killed before the victim’s chair.^183
The victim’s wife, who was informed after the event by the con-
spirators but kept silent, is condemned to death also, on the some-
what dubious grounds that her silence raised a presumption of
complicity with her husband’s enemies beforehand, which was as
bad as actual participation in the deed. LH 153 reveals a similar
attitude, condemning to death by impalement a wife who “caused
her husband to be killed” on account of another man. The wife’s
disloyalty in both cases was regarded as an aggravating factor.
A letter of King Rim-Sin of Larsa orders that a slave who threw
a boy into an oven suffer the same fate himself (AbB 9 197).^184(^180) Renger, “Wrongdoing...”
(^181) Van den Driessche, “Homicide.. .”; Wilcke, “Diebe.. .,” 64–66.
(^182) It is a matter of debate whether, e.g., “son of an awìlum” refers in this con-
text literally to a son or to a member of the awìlumclass. See Driver and Miles,
Babylonian Laws, 86–90; Westbrook, Studies.. ., 54–71.
(^183) A literary exercise tablet; see Jacobsen, “Homicide.. .,” 193–204. Discussed
by Roth, “Gender and Law.”
(^184) LH 1 imposes death on the false accuser of murder (nèrtum), implying that
the same fate would have been the murderer’s had the accusation been true.
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