Impalement
Impalement, as a method of torture and execution, is the penetration of a human by an object such as a stake, pole, spear, or hook, often by the complete or partial perforation of the torso. It was particularly used in response to "crimes against the state" and is regarded across a number of cultures as a very harsh form of capital punishment and recorded in myth and art. Impalement was also used during times of war to suppress rebellions, punish traitors or collaborators, and punish breaches of military discipline.
Offences where impalement was occasionally employed included contempt for the state's responsibility for safe roads and trade routes by committing highway robbery or grave robbery, violating state policies or monopolies, or subverting standards for trade. Offenders have also been impaled for a variety of cultural, sexual, and religious reasons.
References to impalement in Babylonia and the Neo-Assyrian Empire are found as early as the 18th century BC.
Methods
Longitudinal impalement
Impaling an individual along the body length has been documented in several cases, and the merchant Jean de Thevenot provides an eyewitness account of this from 17th-century Egypt, in the case of a man condemned to death for the use of false weights:Survival time
The length of time which one managed to survive upon the stake is reported as quite varied, from a few seconds or minutes to a few hours or even a few days. The Dutch overlords at Batavia seem to have been particularly proficient in prolonging the lifetime of the impaled, one witnessing a man surviving six days on the stake, another hearing from local surgeons that some could survive eight days or more. A critical determinant for survival length seems to be precisely how the stake was inserted: If it went into the "interior" parts, vital organs could easily be damaged, leading to a swift death. However, by letting the stake follow the spine, the impalement procedure would not damage the vital organs, and the person could survive for several days.Weather and seasons also affected duration of life after impalement. One example given of weather affecting death is noted by Stavorinus. A man was impaled following the spine. A light shower fell the next day. He died half an hour later. Stavorinus also mentions there having been instances of impalement during the dry season, in which people have survived for eight days or more without food or drink. A guard would be stationed near the site of execution to prevent food or drink to be given. A surgeon also explained to Stavorinus, how rain and other wet weather caused a quicker death. Water enters the wound caused by impalement. The wound then "mortifies" and causes gangrene to attack more "noble parts," causing "death almost immediately."
Transversal impalement
Alternatively, the impalement could be transversely performed, as in the frontal-to-dorsal direction, that is, from front to back or vice versa.In the Holy Roman Empire, women who killed their newborn babies were placed in open graves, and stakes were hammered into their hearts, particularly if their cases contained any implications of witchcraft. A detailed description of an execution that was carried out in this manner comes from 17th-century Kassa, Hungary. The case of a woman who was to be executed for infanticide involved an executioner and two assistants. First, a grave some one-and-a-half ell deep was dug. The woman was then placed within it, her hands and feet were secured by driving nails through them. The executioner placed a small thorn bush upon her face. He then placed, and held vertically, a wooden stave on her heart in order to mark its location, while his assistants piled earth on the woman, keeping her head free of earth at the behest of the clerics, because to do otherwise would have quickened the death process. Once the earth had been piled upon her, the executioner used a pair of tongs to grab a rod made of iron, which had been made red hot. He positioned the glowing iron rod beside the wooden stave, and as one of his assistants hammered the rod in, the other assistant emptied a trough of earth upon the woman's head. It is said that a scream was heard, and the earth moved upwards for a moment, before it was all over.
Variations
Gaunching
, travelling on botanical research in the Levant 1700–1702, observed both ordinary longitudinal impalement, but also a method called "gaunching", in which the condemned is hoisted up by means of a rope over a row of sharp metal hooks. He is then released, and depending on how the hooks enter his body, he may survive in impaled condition for a few days.Forty years earlier than de Tournefort, de Thévenot described much the same process, adding that it was seldom used because it was regarded as too cruel. Some 80 years prior to de Thevenot, in 1579, Hans Jacob Breuning von Buchenbach witnessed a variant of the gaunching ritual. A large iron hook was fixed on the horizontal cross-bar of the gallows and the individual was forced upon this hook, piercing him from the abdomen through his back, so that he hung from it, hands, feet and head downward. On top of the cross bar, the executioner situated himself and performed various torture on the impaled man below him.
Hooks in the city wall
While gaunching as de Tournefort describes involves the erection of a scaffold, it seems that in the city of Algiers, hooks were embedded in the city walls, and on occasion, people were thrown upon them from the battlements.Thomas Shaw, who was chaplain for the Levant Company stationed at Algiers during the 1720s, describes the various forms of executions practised as follows:
According to one source, these hooks in the wall as an execution method were introduced with the construction of the new city gate in 1573. Before that time, gaunching as described by de Tournefort was in use. As for the actual frequency of throwing persons on hooks in Algiers, Capt. Henry Boyde notes that in his own 20 years of captivity there, he knew of only one case where a Christian slave who had murdered his master had met that fate, and "not above" two or three Moors besides. Taken captive in 1596, the barber-surgeon William Davies relates something of the heights involved when thrown upon hooks : "Their ganshing is after this manner: he sitteth upon a wall, being five fathoms high, within two fathoms of the top of the wall; right under the place where he sits, is a strong iron hook fastened, being very sharp; then he is thrust off the wall upon this hook, with some part of his body, and there he hangeth, sometimes two or three days, before he dieth." Davies adds that "these deaths are very seldom", but that he had personally witnessed it.
Hanged by the ribs
A slightly variant way of executing people by means of impalement was to force an iron meat hook beneath a person's ribs and hang him up to die slowly. This technique was in 18th-century Ottoman-controlled Bosnia called the cengela, but the practice is also attested in 1770s Dutch Suriname as a punishment meted out to rebellious slaves.Bamboo Torture
A recurring horror story on many websites and popular media outlets is that Japanese soldiers during World War II inflicted bamboo torture upon prisoners of war. The victim was supposedly tied securely in place above a young bamboo shoot. Over several days, the sharp, fast growing shoot would first puncture, then completely penetrate the victim's body, eventually emerging through the other side. However, no conclusive evidence exists that this form of impalement ever actually happened.History
Antiquity
Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East
The earliest known use of impalement as a form of execution occurred in civilizations of the ancient Near East. The Code of Hammurabi, promulgated about 1772 BC by the Babylonian king Hammurabi specifies impaling for a woman who killed her husband for the sake of another man. In the late Isin/Larsa period, from about the same time, it seems that, in some city states, mere adultery on the wife's part could be punished by impalement. From the royal archives of the city of Mari, most of it also roughly contemporary to Hammurabi, it is known that soldiers taken captive in war were on occasion impaled. Roughly contemporary with Babylonia under Hammurabi, king Siwe-Palar-huhpak of Elam made official edicts in which he threatened the allies of his enemies with impalement, among other terrible fates. For acts of perceived great sacrilege, some individuals, in diverse cultures, have been impaled for their effrontery. For example, roughly 1200 BC, merchants of Ugarit express deep concern to each other that a fellow citizen is to be impaled in the Phoenician town Sidon, due to some "great sin" committed against the patron deity of Sidon.Pharaonic Egypt
During Dynasty 19, Merneptah had Libu prisoners of war impaled to the south of Memphis, following an attempted invasion of Egypt during his Regnal Year 5. The relevant determinative for ḫt depicts an individual transfixed through the abdomen. Other Egyptian kings employing impalements include Sobekhotep II, Akhenaten, Seti, and Ramesses IX.Neo-Assyrian Empire
Evidence by carvings and statues is found as well from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The image of the impaled Judeans is a detail from the public commemoration of the Assyrian victory in 701 BC after the siege of Lachish, under King Sennacherib, who proceeded similarly against the inhabitants of Ekron during the same campaign. From Sennacherib's father Sargon II's time, a relief from his palace at Khorsabad shows the impalement of 14 enemies during an attack on the city of Pazashi. A peculiarity about the "Neo-Assyrian" way of impaling was that the stake was "driven into the body immediately under the ribs", rather than along the full body length. For the Neo-Assyrians, mass executions seem to have been not only designed to instill terror and to enforce obedience, but also, it can seem, as proofs of their might that they took pride in. Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II was evidently proud enough of his bloody work that he committed it to monument and eternal memory as follows:Paul Kern, in his Ancient Siege Warfare, provides some statistics on how different Neo-Assyrian kings from the times of Ashurnasirpal II commemorated their punishments of rebels.
Although impalement of rebels and enemies is particularly well-attested from Neo-Assyrian times, the 14th-century BC Mitanni king Shattiwaza charges his predecessor, the usurper Shuttarna III for having delivered unto the Assyrians several nobles, who had them promptly impaled. Some scholars have said, though, that it is only with King Ashur-bel-kala that there is solid evidence that punishments like flaying and impaling came into use. From the Middle Assyrian period, there is evidence about impalement as a form of punishment relative to other types of perceived crimes as well. The law code discovered and deciphered by Otto Schroeder contains in its paragraph 51 the following injunction against abortion: