įor the Neo-Assyrians, mass executions seem to have been not only designed to instill terror and to enforce obedience, but also as proof of their might. Whoever sees a veiled prostitute shall seize her.
In the Middle Assyrian period, paragraph 40 in a preserved law text concerns the obligatory unveiled face for the professional prostitute, and the concomitant punishment if she violated that by veiling herself (the way wives were to dress in public):Ī prostitute shall not be veiled. This would explain why Pentawere, the prince whose mother instigated the would-be coup, was most likely strangled or hanged himself as a royal, he would have been spared this ultimate fate. Professor Susan Redford speculates that after the harem conspiracy in which pharaoh Ramesses III was assassinated, the non-nobles who had participated in the plot were burned alive, because the Egyptians believed that without a physical body, one could not enter the afterlife. Jon Manchip White, however, did not think capital judicial punishments were often carried out, pointing to the fact that the pharaoh had to personally ratify each verdict. On the statute books, at least, women committing adultery might be burned to death. Under the civil war flaring under Takelot II more than a thousand years later, the Crown Prince Osorkon showed no mercy, and burned several rebels alive. 1971–1926 BC) is said to have rounded up the rebels in campaign, and burnt them as human torches. In Ancient Egypt, several incidents of burning alive perceived rebels are attested to. Furthermore, a man who began committing incest with his mother after the death of his father could be ordered to be burned alive. Looters of houses on fire could be cast into the flames, and priestesses who abandoned cloisters and began frequenting inns and taverns could also be punished by being burnt alive.
The 18th-century BC law code promulgated by Babylonian King Hammurabi specifies several crimes in which death by burning was thought appropriate. Historical use Antiquity Ancient Near East Old Babylonia Those who survive the burning frequently die within days as the lungs' alveoli fill with fluid and the victim dies of pulmonary edema.
Many victims die quickly from suffocation as hot gases damage the respiratory tract.
The amount of pain experienced is greatest at the beginning of the burning process before the flame burns the nerves, after which the skin does not hurt.
Complete cremation is only achieved under extreme circumstances. The cause of death is frequently determined by the respiratory tract, where edema or bleeding of mucous membranes and patchy or vesicular detachment of the mucosa may be indicative of inhalation of hot gases. The organic matter of the body may be consumed as fuel by a fire. Fluid shifts, especially in the skull and in the hollow organs of the abdomen, can cause pseudo-hemorrhages in the form of heat hematomas. Shrinkage of the skin around the neck may be severe enough to strangle a victim. Shrinkage and contraction of the muscles may cause joints to flex and the body to adopt the "pugilistic stance" (boxer stance), with the elbows and knees flexed and the fists clenched. Internal organs may be shrunken due to fluid loss. In the process of being burned to death, a body experiences burns to exposed tissue, changes in content and distribution of body fluid, fixation of tissue, and shrinkage (especially of the skin).