Hittite Law Moot 2022

This year saw the Oxford University Bar Society run what seems to have been the world’s first Hittite Law Moot, with probably the largest number of legal minds working simultaneously on the same Hittite legal issue in the last three thousand years. Forty-two Oxford students signed up to provide advocacy either for or against Mursili, a man appealing against a ruling by the Magistrate of Nesa that he had acted in contravention of several interlocking laws and thereby rendered himself ritually unclean. After examination of skeleton arguments, the six best teams on paper proceeded to oral semi-finals at Christ Church on the morning of Sunday 12th June. The two teams selected for the final that afternoon were Ryan Jacobs and Ioannis Karanasios, appearing for the Appellant, and Rhys Duncan and Harry Chan for the Respondent. By the generosity of Professor Wolfgang Ernst, the finalists met in the Old Library of All Souls College, at the Court of the eminent Hittitologists Professor Philomen Probert and Dr. Michele Bianconi, and the commercial barrister Mr. Rory Forsyth. The submissions compelled the judges to long deliberation; the final decision was for the Respondents, with the award of Best Advocate to Rhys Duncan, who received a copy of van den Hout’s A History of Hittite Literacy, which will stand him in good stead for future interpretation of the laws of the King before appellate courts. Mursili’s ritual impurity is upheld and he must pay a fine into the royal treasury. 

- Nicholas Stone, Harris Manchester College.