Adultery and its punishment
Adultery was punished in the Code by drowning.[248] The Code in this and similar cases of sexual irregularity is explicit that the case must be flagrant. Suspicion was not enough.[249] But conduct leading to scandal had to be atoned [pg 118] for by submission to the ordeal. The Code did not take a higher ground than public opinion. The private contracts name death as punishment for adultery. Usually it is drowning, but being thrown from a high place, temple, tower, or pillar is named. In the later contracts death was still the penalty for a wife's adultery, but the penalty had ceased to be drowning only. The adulteress might be put to the sword.[250]
A woman's procuring her husband's death, for love of another, was punished by impalement.[251]
The punishment of incest
Incest on the part of a man with his own daughter involved his banishment.[252] Incest with a daughter-in-law, if she was his son's full wife, was apparently punished by his being drowned. The Code is obscure here and we are not sure whether she was drowned also.[253] If the girl was not yet fully married, the case was treated as one of ordinary seduction, and the culprit was fined half a mina.[254]
If a man committed incest with his own mother, both were burned.[255] If a man had intercourse with his foster-mother, or step-mother, who had borne children to his father, he was disinherited.[256]
IX. The Family Organization
The sources of information