A survey of Demotic legal manuals has recently been published by Lippert (2004: 147-66), to which may be added unpublished fragments from Tanis. None of the material is well preserved. The most extensive manuscript is the Hermopolis Code (third century bc) with the remains of ten columns, while other substantial fragments are P. Berlin 23757 (third century bc), the Tebtunis Legal Manual (first century bc), and the so-called Zivilprozefordnung (third-second century bc). Among the smaller fragments, P. Carlsberg 236 (third century bc) derives from the 44th column of a legal manual that was evidently quite substantial, while the Zivilprozefordnung seems to have reference to a 42nd chapter or column.
There are indications that some of these manuals could relate to the great codification of Egyptian law up until the 44th Regnal Year of Amasis that was decreed by Darius I to be recorded in both Egyptian and Aramaic (Lippert 2004: 167-75; pace Redford 2001). The Hermopolis Code may well preserve part of this, and the Tebtunis Legal Manual and P. Berlin 23757 could be copies of an extensive commentary on this corpus. The status and long transmission of the codified corpus is demonstrated by the fact that Darius’ decree is mentioned in a papyrus from the third century bc (Spiegelberg 1914: 30-2), perhaps citing the introduction to a legal manual, and that Amasis was remembered as the last great native lawgiver even as late as the first century bc (Diodoros 1.94). It is important for the understanding of the legal manuals that - contrary to what is sometimes assumed - aspects of traditional Egyptian law were still in effect as late as the Roman Period; hence these manuals do not merely preserve old knowledge. A specific example of the intensive use to which a legal manual might be put is provided by the Tebtunis Legal Manual, one of the oldest documents in the Tebtunis temple library, which was used over a period of about two hundred years and repaired and strengthened with patches in several places.
World History
