This is the most complex category, involving redress on several
levels. The basic approach (in my view, and in this I differ funda-
mentally from the evolutionary school) was that these wrongs gave
rise to a dualright in the victim or his family, namely to take revenge
on the culprit, orto make composition with the culprit and accept
payment in lieu of revenge. The right was a legal right, determined
and regulated by the court, which set the level of revenge permis-
sible, depending on the seriousness of the offense and the circum-
stances of the case. The court could also fix the level of composition
payment. If it did, the effect was to make revenge a contingent right,
which only revived if the culprit failed to pay. Some law codes impose
physical punishments and others payments for the same offenses,
while some codes have a mixture of the two. There is not neces-
sarily a contradiction: they are two sides of the same coin. In high-
lighting one or the other alternative, the codes are making a statement
as to their view of the gravity of the offense.^59
Because it was a private right, the initiative in bringing a case lay
with the victim. At times, however, the impersonal language used or
the circumstances suggest that a public authority is pursuing the law-
suit, especially as regards homicide. Nonetheless, it would be anachro-
nistic to think in terms of a public prosecutor bringing cases on
behalf of the state. In homicide, it was obviously not the victim who
brought the case; a member of his family took the role of avenger.
For victims who had no one to claim revenge, the king was regarded
as the ultimate avenger, as would any head of household for his
subordinates. (Beyond the king, the ultimate avengers are, of course,
the gods.) The situation is particularly clear in the case of foreign-
ers, who have no one to sue on their behalf in the local courts. The
king of Babylon expects the king of Egypt to avenge Babylonian
merchants murdered on Egyptian territory (EA 8). The authorities
might therefore be expected to intervene if the victim or his family
were unable to do so.
A further complication is that some of the offenses in this cate-
gory—homicide and adultery in particular—were also regarded as
causing pollution, that is, they were at the same time an offense(^59) Thus CC tends to allow revenge (and thus free bargaining over composition)
in cases where LE or LU would impose fixed composition. (Cf. Exod. 21:29–31
and LE 54 for death caused by a goring ox, but note that LE 58 takes the same
attitude as CC where death is caused by a falling wall.)
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