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is mainly private law that is documented by the Demotic material.
There are very few Demotic legal texts from the Roman period, by
which time Greek became the universal language in Egypt.^101.2 Law Codes
Whether Egyptian law was ever codified remains uncertain. Unlike Near
Eastern societies, there is no preserved law code in Egyptian, although
we know of several royal reforms and/or compilations of the legal
system—those of Bocchoris, Amasis, and Darius being the most
important for our period.^11 There are several collections of legal
rules that stem from the Middle Demotic or Ptolemaic period. The
so-called “Legal Code of Hermopolis” (= P. Mattha; and now new
variants from other sites) is in fact a collection or manual which pre-
serves guidance in legal solutions for difficult or unusual cases.^12 It
would appear that this “code” is in fact a kind of handbook used
by the priest-judges in a local temple to resolve disputes over prop-
erty and served as a guide to the writing of certain legal instruments.
Also from this period is a text known as the “Zivilprozeßordnung,”
which treats the use of documents as evidence and standards of legal
proof and may have served, like P. Mattha, as a guide for priest-
judges in Thebes.^13(^10) Zauzich, “Demotische Texte.. .”; Lewis, “Demise.. .”; Bagnall, Egypt in Late
Antiquity, 235–40.
(^11) Diod. Sic. 1 94–5. For an early study of the codification of Egyptian law under
Darius, see Reich, “Codification.. .” Darius’ action was almost certainly a compi-
lation of pre-existing law rather than a reform of the legal system itself. See the
important remarks by Bresciani, “Persian Occupation.. .,” 508–9. An overview of
the problems of codification in Egypt may be found in Mélèze-Modrzejewski, “Law
and Justice.. .,” 2–6, and Pestman. “L’origine...”
(^12) P. Cairo Jd’E 80127–89130 and 89137–89143 (written probably in the first half
of the third century B.C.E., Tuna el-Gebel. Pestman, “L’origine.. .,” believes that
internal references suggest an origin in the eight century). See Mattha and Hughes,
Hermopolis...A new edition with corrections has been made by Donker van Heel,
Legal Manual...A second century C.E. Greek copy of the manual survives, for which
see Rea, Oxy. xlvi (= P. Oxy. 3285), 30–38. See the remarks by Tait, “Carlsberg
236.. .,” 94–95. For other law books, see Depauw, Companion.. ., 114. In addition
to the texts cited there, at the Fourteenth Congress of Papyrology, Oxford, a fragment
of a law book found during excavations at Saqqara was announced. See briefly Pierce,
“Demotic Legal Instruments.. .,” 261. See also Zauzich, “Weitere Fragmente...”
(^13) P. Berlin 13621 and P. Cairo 50108 recto (Ptolemaic period, Thebes). Depauw,
Companion.. ., 114–15; Mrsich, “Zwischenbilanz.. .” There is good evidence to sug-
gest that written laws were cited in trials. See, e.g., Thissen, “Zwei demotische
Prozeßprotokolle...”
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