making; occupations; religion and cosmology; sacred
sites; ships and shipbuilding; slaves and slavery; stor-
age and preservation; textiles and needlework; trade
and exchange; transportation; weaponry and armor;
weights and measures.
FURTHER READING
Barb Aston, Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels: Materials and Forms
(Heidelberg, Germany: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1994).
J. D. Cooney, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Mu-
seum IV: Glass (London: British Museum, 1976).
Ilay Cooper and John Gillow, Arts and Craft s of India (London:
Th ames and Hudson, 1996).
George Wharton James, Indian Basketry, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover,
1972).
Geoff rey Killen, Ancient Egyptian Furniture, vol. 1 (Warminster,
U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1980).
Geoff rey Killen, Ancient Egyptian Furniture, vol. 2 (Warminster,
U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1994).
Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw, Ancient Egyptian Materials and
Te c h n o l o g y (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
P. R. S. Mo o r e y, Materials and Manufacture in Ancient Mesopota-
mia—Th e Evidence of Archaeology and Art: Metals and Met-
alwork, Glazed Materials and Glass (Ox ford, U.K.: B.A.R .,
1985).
P. R. S. Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries:
Th e Archaeological Evidence (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
G. M. A. R ichter, Th e Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans
(London: Phaidon Press,1966).
Philip Steele, Clothes and Craft s in Roman Times (Milwaukee, Wis.:
Gareth Stevens, 2000).
Rebecca Stone-Miller, Art of the Andes from Chavín to Inca, 2nd ed.
(London: Th ames and Hudson, 2002).
▶ crime and punishment
introduction
Crime was dealt with harshly in the ancient world. Early hu-
man settlements had no legal codes, courts, prisons, or other
systems for dealing with crime, so most oft en crime was pun-
ished by family retribution. If someone committed a crime
against another person, that person’s clan would hunt down
the perpetrator and mete out punishment. Crime was always
a personal matter. Because there were no nation-states, there
was no such thing as a crime against the state or “society.” Th e
victim of a crime was always a person.
Th e world’s earliest legal code, developed in Mesopota-
mia, specifi ed particular punishments for particular types
of crime. While historians know about the existence of this
code, no record of the code itself survives. However, the later
Code of Hammurabi, also from Mesopotamia, provides his-
torians with a comprehensive legal code developed by a king
for his people. Historians are particularly interested in the
prologue to the legal code, which outlines its rationale and
moral underpinnings. Hammurabi was one of the fi rst rulers
to see punishment not just as a form of retribution but also as
a deterrent to crime. His code was also the fi rst to incorpo-
rate the notion of “an eye for an eye,” a phrase later used in
the Bible to refer to the notion that a punishment should be
proportional to the crime committed.
Early legal codes were also developed in China and India.
Th ese codes were harsh by modern standards. In China, for
example, fi ve forms of punishment were typically carried out.
Tattooing and disfi gurement served to identify the person as
a criminal, but still harsher punishments included castration,
mutilation, and death. Oft en, the manner of death diff ered
for diff erent sorts of crimes, also a common practice later un-
der the Roman Empire.
Punishment could also vary by a person’s social class or,
i n t he c a s e of I nd i a , c a s te. W h i le t he C o de of Ha m mu r a bi pu r-
ported to treat all people equally, in practice people of higher
social classes oft en did not face the same harsh punishments
that people of lower classes did; in fact, crimes were defi ned
diff erently depending on the social classes of the perpetrators
and victims. In India the caste of a person oft en played a ma-
jor role in the harshness of a person’s punishment.
Ancient Greece was the source of the modern jury sys-
tem. Until then, legal codes and administration were dictated
by kings or a king’s delegates. Th e ancient Greeks, however,
devised the fi rst system in which citizens took part in hearing
cases and meting out punishment. Th e ancient Romans were
the fi rst to distinguish between private crimes, such as assault
and burglary, and public crimes, such as treason and bribery.
Prisons were not common in the ancient world, though
ancient Assyria had some fairly large prisons. Convicted
criminals were swift ly punished in a variety of ways, includ-
ing beating, having arms or hands cut off , or being put to
death by various means, including hanging and crucifi xion.
Another common form of punishment was exile, meaning
that a criminal was forced to leave the community. Some-
times criminals were sold into slavery, and sometimes they
were abandoned in remote areas, where they faced death by
starvation or attack by wild animals.AFRICA
BY SAHEED ADERINTO
Conceptualizations of crime vary from one part of Africa to
another and from one time to another. An act that constitutes
a criminal off ense in one culture might be permitted in an-
other culture; an act treated as a criminal off ense today might
have been condoned in the past and vice versa. As African
societies moved from one period to the next in the course of
their history, perceptions of crime, its control, and the pun-
ishment of off enders changed. Any analysis of the history of
crime requires a critical understanding of the socioeconomic,
cultural, political, and other changes a society experienced in
succeeding decades and centuries.296 crafts: further reading