(M271) The forfeit sometimes took the form of white horses, or foals (?), which were dedicated to a divinity. Very interesting is the mention of the dedication of the eldest child to a god, or goddess. This is worded as if the dedication was to be by fire. The additional mention of incense or cedarwood, as accompanying the offering, renders it probable that it was really meant that the litigant should be punished by the sacrifice of his child as a “burnt offering” to the god. But this only makes it clearer that such penalties were simply meant to be deterrent. We have no proof that such an offering ever took place. It was a memory of bygone horrors, but not less interesting as showing what had once been possible. A more natural and extremely common penalty was the payment of a tenfold value to the disturbed owner. In later times this was twelvefold. This was an example of the multiple restitution so common in the Code. (M272) 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. (M273) 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.