The king may kill him, g may sp h, but he shall not approach the king. The next law states: HL §188 If a man ss with a sheep: abomination. The person who performed it became polluted, and his pollution must be kept away from the king, who also functioned as the chief priest of the kingdom, a capacity that required him to remain pure. In addition, the perpetrator must not approach the king during his trial. As such, the perpetrator is to be judged by the king himself, who may decide to execute the man or to spare his life. The phrase “he shall be killed” communicates that this is a capital offense, which is unusual in Hittite, which usually favors financial compensation (even for murder). As was discussed by many scholars in the past, these two terms are understood as parallel to biblical חטא and תועבה, respectively. The act is defined as “to sin” ( waštai-), and is deemed “abomination” ( ḫurkel). The king may kill him, g may spare, but he shall not approach the king. They shall conduct (him) to the king’s gate. The first statute reads: HL §187 If a man ns with a cow: abomination. Notably, the laws are not comprehensive, i.e., no law that says, “it is forbidden to lie with all animals,” and thus far, no persuasive solution has been offered as to why these particular animals have been singled out. Rather than offering a blanket prohibition, with a single penalty against bestiality, these laws distinguish between various cases where a man has sex with a particular animal. Laws 187, 188, 199 and 200a address bestiality. Their law collection was probably composed around 1650–1600 (though perhaps as late as 1500) B.C.E., and thus predates the biblical laws by many centuries.
The Hittites were an Indo-European population that lived in Anatolia-nowadays central Turkey-during the second millennium B.C.E. In the ancient Near East, such formal laws are found in the Hittite and biblical legal compendia.
Sometimes, the social objection to bestiality became embedded in formal law. Many social and cultural factors stand behind this pervasive objection to bestiality, which blurs the hierarchical boundaries between the categories of human and non-human. The most common term in this regard, however, is “bestiality.” This act constitutes a unique deviation from the normative frame of sexual intercourse in almost every society throughout human history. “Zoophilia,” “bestiosexuality,” “zooerasty,” “zoosexuality,” “sodomy” these are but a few of the terms used for defining sexual intercourse between humans and animals.
0 kommentar(er)
