The ordeal
Something very like an ordeal was occasionally imposed. The very fragmentary condition of the texts which give it adds to its obscurity. But it appears to have consisted in the litigant being compelled to eat a mina weight of some magically concocted food and to drink the contents of an inscribed bowl. What the result was expected to be is not stated. One fragmentary text appears to name the ingredients of the magic potion. All that can be made out points to an ordeal, somewhat similar to that inflicted upon a suspected wife in Numbers v. 12-31.
9. Penalties for wrong-doing.—We are chiefly indebted to the Code for our knowledge of the penalties which the judge and his assessors might inflict.
The death-penalty
Foremost we may place the death-penalty. This was inflicted by the Code for witchcraft, for theft, for corruption of justice, for rape, for causing death by assault, for neglect of duties by certain officials, for allowing a seditious assembly, for causing death by bad building, and for varieties of these crimes. It is curious that no mention is made of murder pure and simple. But this is only accidental. It is evidently assumed. For the Code brings several cases of murder under this penalty. Procuring the death of a husband is punished by it; even a fatal assault, as that on a pregnant woman who dies of miscarriage as the result. The need of an oath to establish lack of malice in giving a blow in a quarrel which led to death tends to show that murder was punished by death, and that it was regarded as death intentionally caused. An explicit statement was clearly not needed. We do not yet know how this sentence was carried out. Usually the Code only says “he shall be killed”; by whom, or how, is not stated. For special cases the manner is described.
Drowning
Death by drowning was inflicted on a beer-seller for selling beer too cheaply; on a woman for adultery, for being a bad wife, for incest, or for desertion of her husband's house. In every case the victim was a woman. When men were drowned they shared a woman's fate. In two cases, adultery and incest, we read of the criminals being bound. In the latter, § 155, it seems that the man was “bound” and the woman drowned. In the former, § 129, both were “bound” and both drowned. It is hardly likely that “bound” can mean merely tied up, or imprisoned, in the case of the man who committed incest. I would suggest that in both cases it means “strangled.” The alternative would be that the confusion in § 155 is due to the scribe.
Burning
Death by fire is directly ordered for a votary who opens or enters a beer-shop, for a man and his mother in incest, and indirectly for a thief at a fire.
Impalement