BB-046 / Punishment
Flaying
The Act
The skin was removed from a living or recently killed person, sometimes in strips, as a form of execution, post-mortem humiliation, or trophy-taking. Accounts exist from Assyrian, medieval European, and other contexts.
The Response
The practice was never standardized in most legal systems and largely disappeared with the decline of spectacular corporal punishment. It remains known primarily through historical and artistic records.