Family Life

From about the seventeenth to the early twelfth centuries BCE, the Hittite kingdom ruled from central Anatolia and extended into northern Syria. Marriage connected households, property and future children. The Hittite laws address disputes over marriage payments, separation and inheritance, while royal letters reveal the larger families formed within the palace.

On this page4 sections

Marriage joined households as well as spouses

Several rulings show that parents could take part in arranging a daughter’s marriage. The laws distinguish a betrothal from the marriage itself: if a girl was promised to one man and another took her away, the person responsible for the change could owe the first suitor the payment he had made. If her parents gave her to a different man, they could be responsible for returning that payment. Another clause says that parents who withdrew their agreement after the suitor had paid had to return twice the amount. A man who paid but then refused to marry the girl forfeited his payment.

These rules treat a marriage payment as part of an agreement involving more than the prospective couple. The woman’s dowry was a separate matter. A ruling about a wife who died distinguishes between her husband’s house and her father’s: when she died in her husband’s house, the husband took her dowry, while if she died at her father’s house and there were children, he could not claim it. The clause ties the handling of property to both the place of death and the presence of descendants.

The laws also address marriage after a husband’s death. One ruling allows a widow to marry her husband’s brother; if he had no brother, it names his father, and then the father’s son as possible husbands in turn. It does show that the rules could connect a widow’s future marriage to her late husband’s male relatives.

Separation, status, and the division of a household

The collection envisages couples separating and specifies how their property and children might be divided. The surviving text of one clause begins with a woman divorcing her husband, but parts of the passage are damaged, making its settlement difficult to reconstruct. Other clauses give more detail about couples of different legal status. In one, a free man and an enslaved woman live together as spouses and have children. If they later separate, their property is divided equally; the man takes the children, with one child going to the woman.

Other rulings prescribe different outcomes. When an enslaved man and a free woman separate, their property is divided equally, but the woman takes most of the children and the man one. For an enslaved couple, property is again divided equally, and the woman takes most of the children. These clauses show that the rules did not assign children in exactly the same way in every household; the parents’ legal status and gender both mattered.

Enslaved people could form legally recognised households. The separation clauses assign them possessions and responsibilities for children, while preserving a distinction between enslaved and free spouses. A wife’s marriage and her legal status were therefore linked questions, with consequences for the household if the couple separated.

Children, inheritance, and work

Children appear in the laws as members of households whose care and property could be contested. One clause associates a mother taking a child’s garment with excluding the child from inheritance, and refers to the child being made her child again. The wording is compressed, so it gives only a partial glimpse of inheritance and reconciliation rather than a general account of how ordinary estates passed from one generation to another.

A father could arrange instruction for his son in carpentry, metalworking, weaving, leatherwork or fulling, the cleaning and finishing of cloth. The final law in the collection specifies a silver fee for such training. This connected a child’s future work with an agreement between the parent and an experienced craft worker.

Royal succession followed a separate set of royal priorities. Telipinu’s proclamation preferred a prince of the first rank, then a son of the second rank if none of the first rank existed. If there was no male prince, a husband was to be chosen for a daughter of the first rank and become king. Rank within the royal family therefore affected the choice, alongside the availability of an eligible heir.

Women and the royal household

Women appear as participants in marriage and property arrangements. The damaged divorce clause begins with a wife separating from her husband; other provisions concern dowries and a woman’s share of possessions and children after separation. The settlements made a woman’s natal family, marital household and legal status consequential to her economic position.

The royal household offers a named example of family life at the highest level. In the thirteenth century BCE, Queen Puduḫepa wrote to the Egyptian king Ramesses II about her marriage to Hattusili III and her children. She said that she had borne sons and daughters and had cared for children in the palace, including those born to princesses under her care and children who were already there when she entered the royal household. She also said that she had helped raise them for service as military officers. Her account describes a palace family that included children from earlier relationships as well as those born during her own marriage.

Royal marriages linked ruling houses. After the peace treaty between Hatti and Egypt, a daughter of Hattusili III married Ramesses II and received the Egyptian name Maathorneferure. Negotiations over the princess and her accompanying wealth continued the diplomacy between the courts. The marriage formed part of the royal family’s political obligations, while the laws on payments and separation concern disputes across a wider range of households.

For the wider setting, see Hittite daily life.