Law To Levantine peoples (Iron Age) (Archaeology of Ancient Egypt)

Law

Principles

"The king," explained the vizier Rekhmire, is "the god (on earth) by whose guidance men live." Indeed, Tuthmose III defended his rule as such that "ma’at will deserve its place," meaning that order would be perfectly maintained and justice correctly exercised during his reign. The vizier was the chief legal official in ancient Egypt. Yet the office of vizier is described by the king as "bitter as gall" because he is the "hard copper enclosing the gold of his Master’s house." Thus, the structure of the legal administration must at the same time shield the king and other important officials and also serve the populace as a whole. For the Egyptians had the concept that justice was the same for everyone, the ultimate goal being "to place everyone in his rights." In his teaching (sb3yt), the king expresses two fundamental and compulsory principles: (1) dealing with each case according to the specifications of the law; and (2) handling each case according to its own integrity. As another text shows us, each case was considered "according to its ma ‘at’ leading one to conclude that ma ‘at is relative.

In fact, the concept of ma ‘at is much more than that of simple justice. It consists of both practical and ideal justice. It is a model to which one aspires rather than a set of instructions or formalized law code. Ma ‘at requires continuous exertion to achieve the best possible justice, balancing all the particularities of a case. Ma’at is a proactive rather than passive concept of justice, which is enlightened by a harmonious application of the rules (hpw). Our sources emphasize that a concern for harmony, moral integrity and equilibrium should be the object of the law. Yet neither the rules (hpw) themselves nor the rights enjoyed by the populace are ever expressly defined in the Egyptian sources.


The royal instructions end with the decisive recommendation "do not do whatever you desire in cases about which you should have the knowledge of the laws to be applied." Such knowledge presupposes some specialized preparation by judges. This text also indicates that the vizier and his subordinates enjoyed a right of interpretation and that the Egyptians appreciated the situation in which laws were either imprecise, incomplete or even non-existent. Egyptian justice was public and records were available for consultation.

Laws

While there were certainly legal rules (hpw), their nature is uncertain. It seems inconceivable that nothing would have been legally codified in such a remarkably centralized country, where everything else was recorded in writing and where according to the classical tradition "written laws" were in existence from the beginning of its history.

Due to King Horemheb of the 18th Dynasty, we know something about how laws were made in ancient Egypt. In a royal edict, Horemheb indicated that current abuses in terms of tax collection were unacceptable and issued decrees in order to reform the situation. These rules (hpw) did not exist before Horemheb had taken the initiative; they were not the product of some sort of a common consensus in the country, since the king targeted specific abuses for reform. Neither were they the product of deliberate jurisprudence, since the decrees do not refer specifically to the judgment of legal tribunals. The whole legal system must have relied on similar laws, traces of which are evident in the well-known decrees of immunity from the end of the Old Kingdom. By creating exemptions in a society in principle without privileges, an infringement is made on what may be called the common rights of that time.

Although no actual law code for pharaonic Egypt has yet been discovered, there are some clear pieces of evidence that such a code had existed. For example, during one troubled period it is described how laws were thrown into the street, trod underfoot and ripped to pieces. This means that they must have been written down, although they were not necessarily codified. In addition, the vizier is said to examine legal cases in terms of the law "he keeps in his hand." This must have been a roll of papyrus that the magistrate had at his disposal for consultation during a trial. Furthermore, the discovery of the Hermoplis Code and the publication of Carlsberg Papyrus 302 (the judicial manual of Tebtunis) provide evidence for judicial codes from the end of ancient Egyptian history. According to this tradition, the actual existence of a pharaonic law code may date prior to the reign of Amasis (26th Dynasty), back to the reign of Bocchoris (Bakenrenef) of the 24th Dynasty.

Evidence does exist concerning particular sectors of ancient Egyptian law. For example, in the juridical stela of Karnak we read:

It is in conformity with the stipulations of the law that [the judiciary administration] is concerned with the disputant (even) after he had died (when he could no longer express his will), and when his case was up for renewal every year, as the law prescribes… because it is the vizier’s office (in contrast to the local administration) that has the right to proceed in such a case (admitting a delay in implementing a legally registered agreement), conforming to the stipulations of the law.

Such complete information is only given occasionally. From such texts, however, we can deduce evidence for the rules of public law. For example, the contracts of Hepdjefa of Asyut provide evidence that a governor could cancel an administrative decision made unilaterally by one of his predecessors, but he may not cancel or modify, on his own authority, an agreement made with contracting parties.

Concerning penal law, evidence from Papyrus Brooklyn 36.1446 indicates that this formed a separate legal section. In addition to the civil right to compensation of private persons when damage has occurred, Egyptian law also recognized a compensation to society at large for the trouble caused. For example, from the New Kingdom is the case of the Chief Policeman of the Theban Necropolis, Monthumes. The court granted him a month’s delay to settle his debt to a worker, with the penalty if it was not paid in this time of a hundred beatings and his debt being doubled. Already during the Old Kingdom, an official boasted about never having been "beaten." Like everybody else, he was subject to the common laws and adds (as if to justify himself) that this was because he did not take anything "by force" from anybody. He avers that he consistently behaved according to the rules with respect for other people and their property.

Centralization in Egypt went hand in hand with judicial individualism. There were no offenses without laws, no retroactivity, no responsibility for others in penal matters, nor any collective or familial responsibilities. The penalties inflicted were in proportion to the offense committed; the pronouncement of a sentence and its execution were the job of the judicial hierarchy. This hierarchy extended up to the king himself, to whom was reserved the final decision and right of approval. Once a serious case had been decided by the appropriate jurisdiction, the verdict was forwarded to the vizier; the vizier himself put the case before the king for the final decision. The king enjoyed some discretionary power about whom to punish. For example, although Sinuhe (the protagonist in a famous Egyptian tale) had committed the double fault of fleeing the country and staying in a foreign land, he was rewarded by the king on his return to Egypt.

Individual rights

Judicial individualism implies the absence of privileged intermediaries and the absence of familial influence. Like men, women in ancient Egypt enjoyed basic civil rights.

However, women did not typically study to become scribes or join the ranks of the administrative bureaucracy. Women were also at a disadvantage within the family since within a marriage a man’s share of the common property was two-thirds and he served to administer the whole. In practice this gave the husband a superior position in the household, with the wife in an inferior economic position. However, women could possess their own property which they could administer on their own. If a woman were not the legal heir of her husband, she could be made a legatee. To do so, a husband would make out a writ of disposition (imyt-pr) with the value of a will. Wives also had the right to dispose of their property by a similar unilateral writ according to the following text of law: "May everybody dispose of his property as he likes." The most ancient known writ dates to the end of the 3rd Dynasty.

From the 12th Dynasty we have evidence of a husband transmitting specific belongings to his wife (via an imyt-pi), along with an obligation for her in turn to transmit them to one of their children. If she does not fulfil her obligation (via another imyt-pi), then the belongings are to be divided among all the children. Naunakhte, the wife of a worker in the Theban necropolis in the Ramesside period, reproaches three of her eight children (two daughters and a son) for their ungratefulness toward her and takes the radical step of disinheriting them. In her will (a well-balanced writ) she includes several peculiarities; all of the wishes she expresses were sanctioned and authenticated by the local council (knbt).

Courts

Local councils (knbt) served as courts. In the New Kingdom Theban necropolis, the council was formed by workers and chaired by a "Chief Worker." Scribes acted as clerks and lawyers, being called "magistrate" (srw) during the sessions. Such local councils were competent in both litigations and notarial matters. Judging from the boundary stone J.E. 42789 in the Cairo Museum, the case was much the same from the time of the Old Kingdom (although the councils were called (ft^’then). Even people of the lowest classes, such as workers of the "Pyramid City" at the Saqqara necropolis, could possess, acquire, sell and make writs, testify in court and take the oath "As the King lives." They could do all this without being put under the tutorship of anyone or assisted by the court.

There were no barristers in ancient Egypt, and instead of a single judge there was always a panel of judges. Everybody had to personally defend themselves and their interests. There may have been some sort of justice auxiliaries giving advice or perhaps members of the council who were not on the panel of judges could participate in this way. There was no official court of appeal in ancient Egypt. However, under the condition of new facts being uncovered or new testimony, a case could be reviewed by the same court in which it was tried.

As an example of the specific procedures, the following case is presented from Papyrus Boulaq 10 (Papyrus Cairo 58.092), completed from Ostracon Petrie 16. During the twelfth century BC a worker in the Theban necropolis inherited a claim from his father. Funerary equipment belonging to the father had been used, with his agreement, to bury a woman whose children then refused to recognize this debt. After the death of the other parent of the debtors, the case went to court. Writs acted as evidence to prove the facts and the right to payment of the debt. The worker supported his claim by appealing to the "law of pharaoh," which prescribed that the goods of the deceased should go to the one who conducted the funeral. One infers that he should be compensated for the expense his father had incurred. He also requested that the court "do what is good" (nfr), which indicates that he is seeking a fair solution. He evoked a precedent where during a similar dispute the court had charged the expense to the legacy of the deceased (before it was divided amongst the heirs). This case is, consequently, a decision of justice that gives more precision to the law.

Lepsius, Carl Richard

Most brilliant and productive of the generation of Egyptologists that followed Jean-Frangois Champollion, Carl Richard Lepsius (1810-84) earned his Ph.D. in classical archaeology at Berlin University in 1833. Lectures in Paris on the history of Egypt awakened his interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Lepsius’s support for the Champollion system of decipherment of hieroglyphs, expressed in a famous letter to Professor Niccolo Rosellini (Champollion’s first student), won general acceptance for that pioneering effort over others. Lepsius advanced understanding of the language by furthering the recognition of syllabic signs and pointing out more similarities to Coptic.

After four years of visiting Egyptian collections in Europe to try out his translation skills, Lepsius organized, with the help of his King and Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian Expedition (1842-5) that would survey and copy monuments and reliefs throughout Egypt and Nubia and bring back to Europe some 15,000 objects, papyri and casts, plus drawings, maps and plans. The massive epigraphic project, Denkmaler aus Agypten und Athiopien (Monuments in Egypt and Ethiopia), was published in 1859, in twelve huge folio volumes comprising 894 plates; it is still a valuable resource today.

After his death, five more volumes of text were completed from his notes by colleagues, including the Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville, and these appeared from 1897 to 1913.

During the Prussian Expedition, Lepsius excavated the "Labyrinth" at Hawara and, with another expedition in 1866, explored the eastern Delta, discovering Tanis, capital of Egypt during the 21st Dynasty. Here he found the important Decree of Canopus, a bilingual text that was a valuable means of proving the correctness of Egyptological translations.

Lepsius was appointed Professor at Berlin University in 1846 and soon after Curator at the Egyptian Museum, Berlin, the nucleus of whose collection he had assembled and whose organization he would strongly influence in subsequent years. Besides producing some 142 publications on subjects as diverse as ancient Egyptian chronology, the Book of the Dead and Nubian grammar, Lepsius edited for twenty years the German journal, Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, which continues today as a major Egyptological publication.

Levantine peoples (Iron Age)

The political and social structure of the Levant changed in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries BC. The Canaanite city-state system that predominated during the Bronze Age collapsed, to be replaced in the Iron Age {circa 1200-586 BC) by a number of regionally distributed ethnic and political groups, some of indigenous origin, others new to the region. Egypt had only limited relations with the more distant Iron Age polities, such as the Neo-Hittite states and Aramaean kingdoms of Syria, and the Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite kingdoms of Transjordan. The Levantine groups having the greatest impact on Egypt were the Philistines in the Iron Age I period (c. 1,200-1000 BC), and the Israelites and Phoenicians in the Iron Age II period (c. 1000586 BC).

After their unsuccessful assault on Egypt in the eighth year of the reign of Ramesses III (20th Dynasty), several groups in the confederation known as the "Sea Peoples" settled in Palestine. The most prominent was the Philistines (the "Peleset" in Egyptian texts). Their settlements dotted the coastal plain from just north of Jaffa to the Gaza region. The five major Philistine cities formed a political league (the "Pentapolis"); this encompassed three urban centers along the Mediterranean coast—Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod—as well as two towns inland on the Shephelah: Ekron (identified with Tel Miqne) and Gath (possibly Tell es-Safi). Philistine control over southwest Palestine quickly severed Egypt’s links to southwest Asia and was a critical factor in the demise of Egypt’s empire in Canaan in the third quarter of the twelfth century BC.

The Philistines prospered in their new homeland through agricultural and commercial activities, as well as through their technological skills (particularly in metal working). Their culture quickly mixed with that of the local Canaanites. The earliest Philistine pottery, though locally made, reflects a Mycenaean tradition in its shapes and decoration. Slightly later, the Philistines began producing a distinctive red-and-black painted pottery; this is found throughout Philistia in tombs and settlements of the late twelfth and eleventh centuries BC and exhibits Canaanite, Aegean, Cypriote, and even some Egyptian influences. The burial practices of the Philistines were also eclectic and may have included the use of anthropoid ceramic coffins, a tradition borrowed from the Egyptians by the Sea Peoples.

Philistine efforts during this period to expand to the north and east of the coastal plain resulted in a series of clashes with the Israelites. The latter people, first mentioned on an Egyptian stela dating to the fifth year of Merenptah’s reign (19th Dynasty), lived during the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC in small, unwalled settlements situated primarily in the northern Negev, the central hill country north of Jerusalem, and the hilly areas of Upper and Lower Galilee. They practiced a mixed farming and herding economy. Their cultural forebears seem to have been the Canaanites, though another origin (Shasu) has also been proposed. The pottery at early Israelite sites occurs in a limited repertoire of shapes and is largely undecorated. Unlike Philistine towns, early Israelite settlements reveal few foreign contacts: only a handful of Egyptian artifacts (mostly scarabs) have been discovered in their settlements. The conflict between the Philistines and Israelites ended in the early tenth century BC with the defeat of the Philistines by King David. Thereafter, the Pentapolis ceased to exist as a formal confederation, and Philistia declined as a military and political power.

The Hebrew kingdom was united under David and Solomon in the tenth century BC (the period known as the "United Monarchy"). Thereafter, the country split into the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Under the "Divided Monarchy," Palestine became a buffer zone between Egypt and the great powers of the Near East, especially the Assyrians and Babylonians. Ultimately, the northern kingdom of Israel perished with the Assyrian destruction of its capital, Samaria, in 721 BC, while the southern kingdom of Judah succumbed to the Babylonians in 586 BC with the capture of Jerusalem.

The Iron Age II period witnessed the growth of urbanization in both northern and southern Palestine. The principal cities in Israel (Dan, Hazor, Megiddo, Samaria, and Gezer) as well as in Judah (Lachish and Jerusalem) were large and well fortified. In addition, a line of fortresses stretched across the northern Negev as far as Kadesh-Barnea in the Sinai; initially constructed in the tenth century BC, the forts continued in use into the Iron Age II period. Israelite tombs, though not nearly as rich as those of the Late Bronze Age Canaanites, have yielded large quantities of pottery, figurines, and other small artifacts. The palaces and temples, especially in the north, were heavily influenced by Phoenician building and decorative techniques. More than 500 fragments of ivory (mostly plaques and inlays) were found on the acropolis at Samaria. These date to the ninth or eighth century BC and are thought to be products of Phoenician art; many of them are decorated with Egyptian motifs. Egypt’s influence on Iron Age Palestine was considerably less than that of the Phoenicians, and much of it was probably transmitted through Phoenician intermediaries. Examples of Egyptian influence include the adoption of the scarab form for Israelite seals and the use of hieratic numerals on Hebrew ostraca and shekel weights. Two historically important Egyptian finds from Iron Age Palestine are the fragment of a stela of Sheshonk I (22nd Dynasty), which was found at Megiddo, and part of an alabaster jar inscribed with the name of Osorkon II (22nd Dynasty), which comes from Samaria.

During most of the Iron Age, Egypt was too weak militarily to intervene in the affairs of southwest Asia. In the tenth century BC, however, an unnamed pharaoh—perhaps the 21st Dynasty king Siamen—is reported in I Kings 9:16 to have captured Gezer and given the town as a dowry to his daughter upon her marriage to Solomon. Then, shortly after Solomon’s death and the breakup of the United Monarchy, Sheshonk I led an Egyptian army into Palestine. The primary objective of this campaign may have been to prevent Israel and Judah from becoming a threat to Egypt’s northern border. The campaign, reported in I Kings 14:25-8 and 2 Chronicles 12:2-12 as well as on a topographical list and fragmentary stela at Karnak, proceeded through the central hill country to the Jezreel and northern Jordan River valleys. The army then returned to Egypt via the coastal plain. Destruction levels found at Megiddo, Gezer, Tel Batash, and many other sites are evidence of this campaign.

For a brief period in the seventh century BC, the Egyptians under Psamtik I (26th Dynasty) reasserted control over the Levantine coast as far north as Phoenicia. A campaign mounted by Neko II (26th Dynasty) against the Assyrians in Syria resulted in the death in 609 BC of the Judean ruler Josiah, who tried to halt the Egyptian advance at Megiddo. Egyptian activity in the Levant during the Iron Age came to an end in 605 BC, when Neko’s forces were thoroughly defeated by the Babylonians at Carchemish.

The homeland of the Phoenicians was the northern Levantine coast in the area of modern-day Lebanon. Ancient Phoenicia was not a unified kingdom, but a conglomeration of independent Canaanite city-states—the most important of which were centered at Arvad, Byblos, Sidon and Tyre—which engaged in maritime trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean world. The Phoenician rulers are mentioned prominently in the Amarna Letters of the mid-fourteenth century BC, while the report of the Egyptian priest Wenamen (circa 1070 BC) mentions the cities of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos.

The major western expansion of the Phoenicians began in the ninth century BC. Phoenician trading stations and colonies were founded along the northern and southern rims of the Mediterranean coast and as far west as the Iberian peninsula. The transmission of the alphabet to Greece by the Phoenicians may have occurred somewhat earlier, perhaps in the eleventh or tenth century BC (although no examples of Greek writing date before the early eighth century BC). Already in the ninth century BC, the cites of Phoenicia had to pay tribute to the Assyrians. Subsequently, during the eighth and seventh centuries BC, they were incorporated into the Assyrian empire.

Egypt maintained lively commercial and political relations with Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were interested in goods and materials for which Egypt had long been famous, such as ivory, gold and linen, while the Egyptians sought timber, oil and metals in Phoenician ports. The evidence for Egyptian-Phoenician contacts in the tenth-eighth centuries BC is considerable. Fragmentary statues of three 22nd Dynasty kings (Sheshonk I, and Osorkon I and II) come from Byblos, and numerous Egyptian alabaster vases and small finds have turned up at Phoenician sites throughout the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians adopted many features of Egyptian culture, including the use of scarabs as both seals and amulets, while Phoenician art incorporates many Egyptian motifs.

Next post:

Previous post: