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1.4 Administrative Orders
An old feature of the legal system, these were contained in letters
from the king to officials. These were issued in our period either in
Aramaic or in Greek and then probably translated into Demotic.^191.5 Petitions
Another old feature of the Egyptian legal system is the right of pri-
vate persons to petition high officials and even the king himself. Such
petitions (mkmk) were addressed to an official in letter form and were
often a first resort in resolving disputes.^20 The tradition continued
under Ptolemaic and Roman rule, when the use of enteuxeiswritten
in Greek were common. The collection of ostraca known as the Óor
archive^21 and P. Rylands 9^22 may have been composed in prepara-
tion for petitions that would initiate a legal dispute.1.6 Transcripts of Trials
A copy of an official court record of a family probate dispute tried
before a local tribunal of priests has come down to us from second
century B.C.E. Asyut (Upper Egypt).^23 Along with contracts used as
evidence in the case, the document recording the verbatim exchange
between the judges and both parties to the dispute (over inherited
land) gives the outlines of administrative procedure, oral argument,
and the use of evidence in civil cases in Ptolemaic Egypt.1.7 Private Legal Documents
There were two distinct forms of legal agreements in Demotic: (1) a
so-called s§-text (derived from the Demotic word for “writing”); and
(2) the “'t, derived from the Demotic term for “letter,” called therefore
the epistolary form.^24 These come in the main from two separate(^19) The so-called Karnak Ostracon is one such example.
(^20) Zauzich, “Die demotischen Dokumente,” 96; Hughes, “Memoranda...”
(^21) Ray, Archive of Óor.
(^22) Vittmann,Papyrus Rylands 9.. ., esp. 678–93.
(^23) P. BM Siut 10591. Other accounts of trials are discussed by El-Aguizy, “Judi-
cial Document.. .,” Thissen, “Prozeßprotokolle.. .,” and Johnson, “Ptolemaic
Bureaucracy...”
(^24) The s§document was usually long, narrow, and took the following form: reg-
nal year of the king, and names of eponymous priests during the Ptolemaic period,
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