When did hanging emerge as a form of capital punishment?
score:11
Book 22 of the Homeric Odyssey contains a rather graphic description of how Telemachus hanged his father’s unfaithful maidservants. The Odyssey is of course a work of fiction, but it is reasonable to see this passage as evidence for the use of hanging as a judicial punishment at that time. Current scholarship puts the Homeric poems between 750 and 600 BC.
Here is relevant passage in Butler's translation:
Then when they had made the whole place quite clean and orderly, they took the women out and hemmed them in the narrow space between the wall of the domed room and that of the yard, so that they could not get away: and Telemakhos said to the other two, "I shall not let these women die a clean death, for they were insolent to me and my mother, and used to sleep with the suitors."
So saying he made a ship's cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the domed room, and secured it all around the building, at a good height, lest any of the women's feet should touch the ground; and as thrushes or doves beat against a net that has been set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest, and a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their heads in nooses one after the other and die most miserably. Their feet moved convulsively for a while, but not for very long.
Upvote:1
Primitive Norse and Germanic Cultures used ritual hanging to dedicate prisoners to the Gods, Odin or Wotan.
From Wikipedia: Odin
Worship among the Germans
Human sacrifices were very frequently offered to Odin, especially prisoners taken in battle. The most common method of sacrifice was by hanging the victim on a tree; and in the poem Hdvamfil the god himself is represented as sacrificed in this way. The worship of Odin seems to have prevailed chiefly, if not solely, in military circles, i.e. among princely families and the retinues of warriors attached to them. It is probable, however, that the worship of Odin was once common to most of the Teutonic peoples.
Owing to the very small amount of information which has come down to us regarding the gods of ancient England and Germany, it cannot be determined how far the character and adventures attributed to Odin in Scandinavian mythology were known to other Teutonic peoples. From Woden also most of the anglo-Saxon royal families traced their descent.
Upvote:2
The first recorded use of judicial hanging is in the Persian Empire approximately 2,500 years ago.2 [New World Encyclopedia]1
(Aside: Note that the reference is to " Richard Clark"The process of judicial hanging", Capital Punishment U.K. Retrieved April 15, 2007.", which is not currently available; you might want to check the wayback machine)
Mosaic Law codified many capital crimes. In fact, there is evidence that Jews used many different techniques including stoning, hanging, beheading, crucifixion (copied from the Romans), throwing the criminal from a rock, and sawing asunder. PBS
PBS does not attach a date to "Mosaic Law"
The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain "hanging". wikipedia
I suspect, based on the OED reference in wikipedia and on the two quotes listed that hanging goes back as far as human law, but the definition of hanging might not be precise.
Update OP clarified that he is looking for primary source material.
Eyewitness to history cites
This eyewitness account appears in: de Saussure, Cesar, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II (1902), reprinted in: Charles-Edwards, T. and B. Richardson, They Saw it Happen, An Anthology of Eyewitness's Accounts of Events in British History 1689-1897 (1958); Gatrell, V.I.C., The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (1994).
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey documents the hanging of Jack Sheppard in 1724. This is the earliest primary source I've found so far.
More post
- 📝 Is there any resource to learn interiors of a house for particular classes in 17th Century in Bohemia?
- 📝 Was the Somerset Decision in 1772 in England the real underlying cause of the American Revolutionary war?
- 📝 Did c.1900 France have a law against foreign government resisting its conquest?
- 📝 How prevalent were American disinformation campaigns during the Cold War?
- 📝 Did a kamikaze ever impact the hull of a ship, as opposed to the deck?
- 📝 Trying to identify this sword. Think early 20th century. Maybe ceremonial
- 📝 Has there ever been an encirclement without superior numbers or mobility
- 📝 What was the actual value of tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party?
- 📝 Have there been any joint US-Russia/Soviet military engagements post WW II?
- 📝 Were U.S. ships attacked in Tokyo Bay?
- 📝 How can scholarly non-historians locate and properly use scholarly histories?
- 📝 How was the dynamics of a naval battle in the 17th century?
- 📝 What is the difference between "liege-vassal" and "simple vassal"?
- 📝 When and how was West/East-German citizenship determined in the early years of post-war Germany?
- 📝 Was there a massacre in the Algerian war calculated to provoke French reprisals?
- 📝 What sovereign Jewish polities have existed outside of Palestine?
- 📝 Did Einstein really say this quote about time?
- 📝 Are the Xibe people the same as the Manchu?
- 📝 Was any pope imprisoned during his service to Catholic Church?
- 📝 What's the origin of celebrating the anniversary of the death of a famous person rather than their birth?
- 📝 How did people boil water before metal pots?
- 📝 What was life like in Korbach, Hesse, Germany during the 1700s?
- 📝 What was the exact path of the Doolittle Raid?
- 📝 Were there any British traitors during the American revolutionary war?
- 📝 Why was there so little information about sex in Eastern Block countries?
- 📝 What were the alleged crimes that Conradin, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, was accused of?
- 📝 Is the Bible considered a reliable historical resource?
- 📝 Why did new religions flourish more easily in the past than they can possibly do today?
- 📝 Was Deicide officially taught in American Catholic ("parochial") schools and if so, when did it officially end?
- 📝 What Were the Types of Sieges?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 When did hanging emerge as a form of capital punishment?
- 📝 When did private fighting become a capital offense in Japan?
- 📝 Why did Michigan abolish capital punishment so early?
- 📝 Why and when did countries develop long names that include the form of government?
- 📝 When did Turkic languages emerge in Central Asia?
- 📝 When and how did the concept of posthumous reward and punishment enter ancient Judaism?
- 📝 When did cultures start to emerge in ancient Peru?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 When did bombs actually look like this?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 When did worshipping of ancient Greek gods come to an end?
- 📝 Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
- 📝 When did humans develop the ability to sail any direction regardless of wind direction?
- 📝 Why did Britain not purchase Alaska when Russia had it up for sale?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did pilots know when to release bombs on airplanes during World War2?
- 📝 When did the Romans finally acknowledge that they were living in an empire?
- 📝 When did the Greeks stop calling themselves "Roman"?
- 📝 When did FDR announce he was running a 3rd time, and was there any outrage?
- 📝 When and how did people begin to consider slavery immoral?
- 📝 Where did Hitler get the funds to invest in economic development programs such as the autobahn when the German economy was in a depression?
- 📝 When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?
- 📝 When did the Roman Empire fall according to contemporaries?
- 📝 When did the practice of formally "declaring war" cease and why?
- 📝 When and why did having long hair become associated with women, and short hair with men?
- 📝 When did the U.S. Army start saying "oh-six-hundred" for "6 AM"?