Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire by Eric Berkowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

of divine devotion. Herodotus later tells us that goats were often seen as incarnations of the procreative god Pan. In countless instances, woman worshipped the goat god by copulating with specially trained bucks in temples.
    Hittite punishments for sex with animals also depended on the particular beast involved. Cows, dogs, and sheep were strictly off-limits. Any man taking one of them for his pleasure was subject to the death penalty. The king was permitted to spare the animal lover’s life, but the man would be treated as unclean and would never be allowed in the king’s company “lest he defile the royal person.” Sexual relations with horses and mules were permitted, but reluctantly. Men who enjoyed the intimate company of these animals would not risk execution, but they were barred from approaching the king and from becoming priests. Oxen and pigs were treated as potential sexual predators: Any ox that turned from its labor and “leaped” on a man “in sexual excitement” was to be killed. The man would escape execution, but a sheep was killed in his place. As for pigs, the law was clear that it was “not an offense” when a pig raped a man—but if the man was the sexual initiator, he was put to death.
    Rape between human beings was also dealt with according to who was doing the raping and who was suffering it. We have already considered the penalties for raping betrothed virgins. Husbands, of course, could never be charged with raping their own wives; the idea would have been regarded as incomprehensible, if not insane. Men owned their wives, and were at liberty to use them at their pleasure. Men also owned their slaves, though slaves were not technically people and thus had far fewer rights. Giving oneself to one’s master sexually was part of the job description. The question in terms of the law was what to do when a freeman had sex with another freeman’s slave without first obtaining permission. On that subject, ancient lawmakers had much to say.
    As far back as the days of Ur-Nammu, in the third millennium BC, the penalty for raping a slave girl was as trivial as a speeding ticket is today. A fine of five silver shekels was levied, but that was it. It was not much different in Babylon, where the fine for taking another man’s virgin slave girl rose to twenty silver shekels, and so on into the era of Hammurabi. In one famous Babylonian case, again before the Assembly of Nippur, a man named Lugalmelam was accused by the slave owner Kuguzana of “seizing” his slave girl, dragging her into a building, and then “deflowering” her. Lugalmelam denied everything, but Kuguzana found witnesses to back up his charges. The assembly decided that Lugalmelam had indeed taken the girl “without her owner’s knowledge,” and charged him a substantial fine.
    It need hardly be pointed out that no one asked Kuguzana’s slave whether or not she had consented to having sex with Lugalmelam. The only consent that mattered was that of her owner. Slaves were bought and sold like animals, given as gifts, offered in payment of debts, and shipped abroad as merchandise. At any moment in their perilous lives, their owners could use them as they wished. Even the rules against sex within families were loosened when slaves were involved, as no one recognized that slaves themselves could have families as such. Under the laws of the Hittites, for example, if a freeman had sex with sisters and their mother, “it [was] an abomination,” but if he slept with slave sisters and their mother, “it [was] not an offense.”
    The cruelty of slavery was nevertheless sometimes softened, especially when slaves produced children for their masters. Under the Code of Hammurabi, a slave concubine who bore her master’s children was automatically freed after he died. If a slave owner was forced to hand over a female slave to pay a debt, moreover, he was allowed to buy her back later if she had already given him children. This situation