852
7.10 Suretyship^173
A surety guaranteed the payment of the appearance of a third party.
In so doing, he was said to “accept the hand” (“p dr.t) of the third
party.^174 As a separate document, this kind of third-party guarantee
is limited to the early Ptolemaic period. It appears to take the place
of a promissory oath made by the contracting party. As such, there
are three types: (1) guarantee of payment, (2) guarantee of appear-
ance of a person to remain in a specified place, and (3) guarantee
of a person to remain in a place and perform certain work (a “per-
formance bond”).7.11 Temporary Transfer^175
Some transactions record the temporary conveyance of property, using
the same term as that for lease, s ̇n. The language of the contract
and most of the terms of the conveyance resemble a sale, not a lease
contract. In a document from the later second century B.C.E., a
priest conveyed a vacant building plot in the temple estate on which
he could build a house to a pastophorospriest for a period of ninety-
nine years.^176 This kind of conveyance was similar to the conveyance
of heritable building rights for the same length of time.^1777.12 Certain pledges of performance or forbearance were formalized
in specific contracts (“Verpflichtungsurkunden,” s§n tm s¢y, lit., “docu-
ment of not hindering”) in which a party promises to perform work
or to refrain from interference with another party.^178 One such docu-
ment from the Middle Demotic period is found in the family probate
dispute from Asyut in the second century B.C.E. in which the husband
of the appellant agreed not to approach the disputed family land.^179(^173) Sethe and Partsch, Demotische Urkunden.. .; De Cenival, Cautionnements...
(^174) The first occurrence of the term is found in P. Rylands 9 (512 B.C.E.,
El-Hibeh).
(^175) Pestman, Recueil.. ., vol. 1, 94–101; vol. 2, 100–10; Manning, Conveyance.. .,
204–06.
(^176) P. Warsaw 148.288 (119 B.C.E., Thebes).
(^177) Taubenschlag, Law.. ., 270. Pestman, Recueil.. ., vol. 2, 103, tentatively argued
that the transaction masked an illegal conveyance since the priest appeared to be
acting as a private person conveying temple property.
(^178) Zauzich, Die demotischen Dokumente, 102–3; El-Aguizy, “Demotic Deed.”
(^179) P. BM 10589 (175 B.C.E.), Shore and Smith, “Two Unpublished Documents.. .”
Cf. P. Mattha 6:3–11.
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