To study empire is inevitably to study relationships between a central core of imperial government and outlying areas peripheral to it, and this is naturally one of the dominant recurring trends in this volume.[44]

By setting - or at the very least influencing - laws in the provinces, empires across the ages sought to reВmind subject territories of their imperial authority. At the same time, they also adapted elements of indigenous provincial law which they deemed to their advantage, creating a melange of imposed and organic legal traditions.

The study of early legal development in ancient Egypt, a large polity composed of numerous micro-entities which periodically coalesced around a central core and then became fragmented again, is therefore highly instructive in our quest for understanding how law and empire interacted at the very dawn of recorded history and well over a millennium before the ascendancy of the Greeks. From a methodological perspective, such an extension of the longue duree approach answers the numerous calls to re-evaluate the timescales across which history - including legal history - is written, as argued in the last decade by scholars such as David Armitage and Jo Guldi,^[45] Edward Cavanagh^[46] and, much earlier, Fernand Braudel.^[47] The present chapter contributes to this burgeoning area of

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scholarship by shedding light in particular on the earlier phases of Egyptian legal history, which provide an especially striking example of how the processВes of fragmentation and unification could leave an indelible mark on the adВministration of the law.

In the period covered by this chapter, ancient Egypt appears to have had an elaborate and imaginative system of judicial administration, one that was ju- risdictionally accommodative of pluralism and procedurally flexible towards varying degrees of formality.

Close reading of surviving inscriptions offers glimpses, moreover, of an underlying system of legal thought developed to a high degree of sophistication. For all this, it is a striking case of but another pre- Classical legal tradition that remains neglected almost entirely by historians of law - as it has been for some time. Indeed, well over a century ago, Henry Maine was to be heard in Oxford lamenting to his pupils of the ongoing ignorance shown towards traditions of justice dating to before Classical times, observing (in remarks that are still roundly accurate) that вЂ?the haste or the prejudice which has generally refused them but the most superficial examination must bear the blame of the unsatisfactory condition in which we find the science of jurisprudenceвЂ™.^[48] More recent scholarship has usually continued to view Roman or at best Ancient Greek law as the starting point of any legal history worthy of research, at least in the European tradition, anyway; and as it was this school of thought (so the story goes) that gave rise to the international tradition of more modern times, so might readers of essays, published in a series on the history of international law, feel a certain bewilderment towards the unfamiliar methВodology and orthography of an Egyptologist.^[49] In many ways, Egyptology is herВself to blame for this unfortunate state of affairs, for, as has been aptly pointed out by Ellen Morris in her recent study of ancient Egyptian empire, a work inВcidentally itself devoid of any engagement with Egyptian law, вЂ?Egyptologists tend to write for other EgyptologistsвЂ™.^[50] This chapter is in part a response to both this critique and broader issues surrounding a lack of Egyptological engageВment with wider legal scholarship and the intellectual traditions, vocabulary, and historiography thereof. Heedful of all this, it is framed in such a way so as to introduce possibilities of studying ancient legal history away from Greece or Rome, giving an overview of how the provision of justice in Ancient Egypt evolved over seven centuries from the earliest times for which records exist and up to the peak of independent Ancient Egyptian civilisation.

This chapter covers a timespan which can be divided into three distinct hisВtorical phases: the Old Kingdom (c. 2700-2200 bce), the First Intermediate Period (c. 2200-2050 bce) and the Middle Kingdom (c. 2050-1700 bce).^[51] By way of introduction, the key political, social and economic features of each of these must now be briefly discussed, so that the changing вЂ?inter-polityвЂ™ and вЂ?intra-polityвЂ™ dynamics in which justice was evolving become apparent. As will be shown, Ancient Egyptian history was far from monolithic, and indeed it would be wrong to talk of a single Egyptian state existing throughout this time. The judiciary, if such we can call it, had to adapt to major realignments in both state administration and in the availability of resources available to it, which would ultimately lead to the emergence of a class of people who might conВceivably be termed the earliest вЂ?lawyersвЂ™ known to the world today.

It is logical to begin the brief historical overview with the Old Kingdom. This was the first of the major dynastic periods in Egyptian history, representing a time when the Egyptian state was still relatively new. At this time, it already had a broadly unitary structure, which had developed as a result of several smaller polities coming together at the end of the Predynastic Period (c. 3000 bce). Indeed, this merging of disparate parts into a whole was reflected in one of the principal titles of Pharaoh, Nb t,^,.wy (вЂ?Lord of the two landsвЂ™, representing the Nile delta in the north and Nile valley in the south). Each of these two lands, while indisputably part of a united state superstructure, to a certain exВtent retained its own symbols, traditions, and gods. Each was also further subВdivided into administrative regions, or nomes, centred around a specific town whose mayor or local governor was responsible for taxation on behalf of the central state and was appointed by it, but who had a certain degree of agency in management of local affairs, building work and temple cults.

Thus, the country was not an entirely homogenous mass, but it was nonetheless a coherВent political unit, with a Pharaoh at the apex of society and a large hierarchy of officials administering the country across the nomes on his behalf. Revenue was collected from each nome to finance elaborate royal building projects, of which the largest and most famous are the Pyramids of Giza. Considerable wealth inequalities appear to have developed across the country: officials of the administrative core of the state, located in the Nile delta around the city of Memphis, constructed monumental tombs for themselves and accrued large numbers of often lucrative government offices, which they mention in their funerary inscriptions, whereas the periphery of the state has left a rather scant archaeological record and probably had very limited wealth. Even the provinВcial administrators appear to have channelled their private resources into building up their presence in and around the administrative core, rather than in the regions they were formally overseeing. Alongside this, it is also likely that there was a major disparity in literacy rates between the core, with a comparaВtively high concentration of literate administrators and scribes, and the overВwhelmingly agrarian periphery, which was probably much less literate. Overall, this period can therefore be seen as one of considerable political and economВic centralisation, even if the nature of state administration meant that individual regions still existed as distinct entities that could, given the right conditions, re-assert their claims to greater independence.

Such conditions did duly begin to emerge as the Old Kingdom wore on, with the balance of power between provincial administrators and the Pharaonic government gradually beginning to shift. Initially brought about gradually by the ongoing economic strain of very ambitious and costly royal projects, and exacerbated by a series of relatively weak Pharaohs, this process accelerated rapidly during and after the exceptionally long reign of Pepy II in the twenty- third century BCE.^[52] For much of his reign, Pepy II was almost certainly either too young or too old to rule, and the authority of the monarchy appears to have significantly weakened under his leadership.

Increasingly, provincial adminisВtrators began to see themselves as quasi-independent local magnates, still acВcountable for the management of their lands to the Crown in theory, but not in practice. They now spent virtually their entire lives in the provinces, rarely if ever visiting the rapidly-declining administrative core and handing over their offices to their designated successors without any meaningful external overВsight. These administrators-turned-magnates were now also accumulating the provincial revenues for themselves, establishing their own autonomous local courts and administrative systems. The notionally unified Pharaonic governВment, no longer getting the financial and political support of the whole counВtry, could not suppress these initiatives and eventually its authority collapsed altogether several decades after Pepy II died. It was succeeded by a period of decentralisation - in many ways not unlike the fragmentation of later empires - known to Egyptology as the First Intermediate Period.

In the First Intermediate Period, Egypt was instead divided into de facto inВdependent micro-states each clustered around the former provincial capitals. The local magnate, or nomarch, of each micro-state usually still accepted the deJure overlordship of the titular Pharaoh, but in practice had absolute control over his territory. This led to significant social and economic changes, as wealth that was previously being relinquished by the periphery now remained there in its entirety. Archaeology reveals that nomarchs and more junior provincial administrators working below them were now building far more elaborate tombs, often with complex inscriptions, and fine statuary and other artwork began to be produced in provincial centres which had operated to much lower standards in the Old Kingdom. It is therefore clear that the First Intermediate Period was a time of newly acquired wealth and opportunities for the provВinces, while on the contrary many of the old administrative institutions associВated with the formerly centralised royal administration effectively died out.

From a literacy viewpoint, this increase in the power of the provinces likely led to more people, in particular lower-level officials, developing basic reading and writing skills compared to the Old Kingdom. There was no longer a central bureaucracy, so there would have been a greater onus on local officials providВing such services themselves. Thus, the trappings of the former empire - if one were to designate the Old Kingdom as such, as is for instance the convention in French Egyptology - were now reaching the formerly subjugated periphery and reshaping the lifeways and administrative practices of the people therein.

This decentralisation ended around 2050 BCE. Over the preceding century, one of the competing micro-states, Thebes, had steadily gained influence until eventually it was able to create and lead an alliance of minor rulers which eventually conquered the whole of Egypt, initiating the Middle Kingdom. DurВing this time, the unitary state was once again restored, with an administrative core again being established in the Nile delta, but many of the changes brought about in the First Intermediate Period remained. The provinces appear to have remained rather wealthier than they had been in the Old Kingdom, and reВtained their own autonomous administrations to a greater degree than in the Old Kingdom, although they were now once again far from independent. Meanwhile, the central Pharaonic government did not engage in monumental building projects on the same scale as in the Old Kingdom, although it did once again receive revenue from all parts of Egypt and was once more instruВmental in the appointment of the subordinate local rulers. Literacy may have grown further, as this period is widely accepted as a Golden Age of Ancient Egyptian literature.^[53] ^{^[54] ^[55] Overall, while this was once more a centralised state, the differences and wealth inequalities between core and periphery had reduced substantially compared to the Old Kingdom - at least in the realm of officials and elites - and the state administration appears to have become somewhat more homogenous and bureaucratised throughout the land. While the First Intermediate Period may have ended, its effects lived on. One might say that this was an empire reconstituted after collapse, but very much mindful of the socio-economic and political legacy of what had just happened.}

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Source: Cavanagh Edward (ed.). Empire and Legal Thought: Ideas and Institutions from Antiquity to Modernity. Brill,2020. вЂ” 634 p.. 2020

To study empire is inevitably to study relationships between a central core of imperial government and outlying areas peripheral to it, and this is naturally one of the dominant recurring trends in this volume.[44]

More on the topic To study empire is inevitably to study relationships between a central core of imperial government and outlying areas peripheral to it, and this is naturally one of the dominant recurring trends in this volume.[44]: