Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Calendars
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Chapter 1 Introduction and historical framework
- Chapter 2 The historical development of the form, content, and administration of legal documents
- Chapter 3 The languages of law
- Chapter 4 The family
- Chapter 5 Capital
- Chapter 6 Sale
- Chapter 7 Leases
- Chapter 8 Labor
- Chapter 9 Slavery in Greco-Roman Egypt
- Chapter 10 The judicial system in theory and practice
- Concordance
- Suggested reading for introductions to papyrology in English
- Glossary of technical terms
- Works cited
Chapter 10 - The judicial system in theory and practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Calendars
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Chapter 1 Introduction and historical framework
- Chapter 2 The historical development of the form, content, and administration of legal documents
- Chapter 3 The languages of law
- Chapter 4 The family
- Chapter 5 Capital
- Chapter 6 Sale
- Chapter 7 Leases
- Chapter 8 Labor
- Chapter 9 Slavery in Greco-Roman Egypt
- Chapter 10 The judicial system in theory and practice
- Concordance
- Suggested reading for introductions to papyrology in English
- Glossary of technical terms
- Works cited
Summary
Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of the relationship between state institutions and the administration of justice. It is a complex topic that changed greatly over the period covered by this volume. There is, thus, considerable development both in terms of bureaucratic practice and also in terms of legal theory. In the case of legal procedure regarding trial proceedings, the Roman evidence is perhaps the fullest. For the Ptolemaic period the process is reasonably clear from the few court records we possess but we have to guess at some of the details.
In ancient Egypt the king was the center of all state institutions, and the guarantor of Maat, that crucial concept of the Egyptian state and of Egyptian law. The term has aptly been translated by Assmann (2002) as “connective justice.” This sense of justice stressed balance or political order, and indeed the concept runs through both state institutions and private morality, binding the king to officials and to all people in Egypt. The concept of Maat and the king as the guarantor of justice prevailed, at least through the second century bc, when the ruling dynasty claimed legitimacy through Egyptian kingship and institutions such as the laokritai.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab ConquestA Selection of Papyrological Sources in Translation, with Introductions and Commentary, pp. 470 - 540Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014