Hittites and Hebrews
...le, for their time, wrote on cuneiform tablets in order to set laws for the next 800 years. Many of these laws didn’t seem to promote second chances; most every serious crime ends with the criminal receiving a severe punishment, usually death. Many of the crimes that were committed by the Hittites were; physical abuse, stealing and or sexual abuse. Even today all these offenses are still being committed everyday. The Hittites imposed more severe punishments than the Hebrews. Of course in both sets of laws there were serious consequences, for instance, in the Hebrews set: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Riley 29) There are also parts of the Hebrews set of laws that seem a little more lenient from the criminals’ point of view. Both obviously have their differences, because group’s location, their background, and even their leader can cause differences in philosophies. By reading and interpreting the Hebrews set of laws, one can tell that a large part of these peoples lives were raising animals. Many of the laws apply to the loss of livestock. In most cases the Hebrews promoted not as much violence, but giving back what someone had lost. For example “And if one man’s ox hurts another’s that he die; then they shall sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and the dead ox also they shall divide.” (Riley 54) In this law they do not focus on as much on revenge, but being responsible and doing the right thing. There is no reason to put the owner of the cattle to death. Sometimes in the Hittites’ eyes, the correct thing was to have the owner killed. The Hittites, as a consequence many times, made the accused give the victim shekels of silver and as a backup put their estate on the line for security. I’m sure that back then, not as much as now, the estate was absolutely everything to the person and their family. I think that these two civilizations differed in the written set of rules because one of them, the Hittites, had more of a problem with crimes and offenses. The Hittites tended to have a lot of rules dealing with slaves also. I’m sure slaves must have been a very important part of Hittite civilization. But on the other hand, if a free man were to violate another mans slave they would be charged with just a minor offense. As one can see while comparing these two ancient civilizations, they both made efforts toward writing rules to regulate crimes. Though both the Hittites and Hebrews set what they thought was the correct punishment for what was sometimes horrible acts, they both show...