Hittite Laws

Audience

Both the author and the circumstances surrounding the writing of the Hittite Laws are unknown. This makes it difficult to determine what audience was intended. Perhaps it is more accurate to think of “audiences” than of a single “audience,” since the law collection exists in several versions that were copied over time. Unlike other law collections from the ancient Near East, there is no prologue or epilogue—or at least none preserved—for the Hittite Laws, which might give hints about the intended audience. It is improbable that average citizens would have been able to read the law collection, given the specialized training needed to read and write cuneiform. Nevertheless, three different, but not mutually exclusive, audiences should be considered.

The first possible audience would be rulers. It is clear that kings considered this law collection to be important, since most of the copies of the Hittite Laws come from the royal archives. Given that justice was an important aspect of kingship in the ancient Near East, it is not surprising that this collection continued to be copied over several hundred years.

The second audience would be scribes. One colophon of a tablet records the name of the scribe who copied the law collection. Although little is known about Hittite scribal training, it is known that Mesopotamian scribes were trained by copying excerpts from texts. Given the large numbers of copies, it is possible that some copies were scribal exercises.

The third audience would be legal officials. Most scholars agree that the Hittite Laws reflect actual legal practice. If this is the situation, then legal officials would have needed to consult the laws in deciding court cases that would have affected even ordinary citizens.