Narmer Palette
Humans have practiced capital punishment by beheading for millennia. The Narmer Palette (c. 3000 BCE) shows the first known depiction of decapitated corpses. The terms "capital offence", "capital crime", "capital punishment", derive from the Latin "caput", "head", referring to the punishment for serious offences involving the forfeiture of the head; i.e. death by beheading.