2.3.5.5 Being administrative as well as judicial bodies, the courts
were not mere arbitrators but had coercive powers. They also had
attached officers charged with executing their orders, for example,
¢alzu¢luat Nuzi, redûin Babylonia, and “msw n qnb.tin New Kingdom
Egypt.- L
3.1 Parties
Women appear to have had access to court as litigants in all periods,
although their interests were often represented by a male member
of the family. Slaves appear in litigation in the same way as free
persons in the Neo-Babylonian period, when they acted as agents
for the great merchant houses. In the documentation of earlier periods,
however, slaves are rarely litigants in court.^24 Children are not attested
as parties. Litigants appeared in person, but in some periods the
possibility of a representative is mentioned (Egyptian rw≈.w; Old
Assyrian ràbißu; Nuzi pu¢u). It is doubtful if an advocate in the modern
sense is meant: the Egyptian representative may have been an official
who assisted the party in the preparation of his case, while the Nuzi
term (lit. “substitute”) suggests a representative for an absent party.3.2 Procedure
If there was any distinction in procedure, it was not between crim-
inal and civil cases (which are anyway anachronistic categories; see
8 below) but between private disputes and cases involving vital inter-
ests of the state or the public, such as an offense against the king
or the gods.3.2.1 In private disputes, the plaintiffappears to have been respon-
sible for securing his opponent’s appearance in court. Nonetheless,
the court could summon a party to court, and at Nuzi there is even(^24) Slaves do appear frequently in the Neo-Sumerian court records but only on
the issue of their status—claiming freedom or being claimed as slaves. The Hittite
Instructions to the Commander of the Border Guard order him, on his circuit
through the towns under his command, to judge the lawsuits of male and female
slaves and single women (iii 31–32).
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