The Hittites of central Anatolia adopted the cuneiform writing system and used it to write out their distinctive Indo-European language. A Hittite law composed around the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.E. specifically refers to monetary payments to be made to the immediate heir or legal representative of the victim's family:

If anyone kills a man or a woman in a [quarr]el, he shall [bring him] for burial and shall give four persons, male or female respectively. He shall look [to his house for it (that is, the victim's heir is entitled to damages from the estate of the perpetrator)]. (HL §1)

In the Edict of Tekpinu, written circa 1500 B.C.E., the Hittite king declared that compensation for homicide was the norm in his kingdom:

A matter of blood is as follows. Whoever does blood, whatever the...