From Trevor Bryce’s Warriors of Anatolia. This is the third in the I.B. Tauris ancient/forgotten/something civilization series I’ve read – along with the Etruscans (terrible) and Persians (fine for the history, drags for the influence into the present) – and the second of Bryce’s Hittite books – with the more specialized The Kingdom of the Hittites.
But Hittite regulations went ever further. Anyone found guilty of serving their guests food from an unclean vessel were forced to eat excrement and drink urine as a punishment. And kitchen-hands who prepared the food in an unclean state – by having sex the previous night and then failing to bathe at sunrise – suffered the death penalty.
Extracts 