The Administration of Justice in Old Kingdom Egypt

The Old Kingdom, with its highly centralised bureaucracy focused around a royal administrative core, seems to have had clearly defined institutions which dispensed justice in this core.

2.1 The Great Enclosures: hwt-wr. t and hwt-wr. t-6

Of all Old Kingdomjudicial structures, the most significant appear to have been the hwt-wr.t (great enclosure) and the closely related hwt-wr.t-6 (six great enclosures). The relationship between these two is unclear, and will be dis­cussed in greater length below, but what seems beyond doubt is that they were venues for the process of wd’-mdw with a sizable staff involved in the procedure. This is deducible from the wide range of titles linking wd’-mdw to these places, which high officials of the Old Kingdom have left in their tombs or on seal im­pressions, as shown below (table 1).

From this variety of attestations, which is exceptionally broad by the stand­ards of Old Kingdom evidence, one can conclude that a range of different ac­tivities associated with wd’-mdw occurred in both the hwt-wr.t and the hwt- wr.t-6, even if it is impossible to determine the exact functions associated with any given title. The picture would have been clearer if the connections between the two institutions were better understood, but this continues to be a matter of debate. The hwt-wr.t-6¹⁵ is generally considered the more senior institution as

table 1 Old Kingdom titles indicating connections between wd’-mdw and the hw∙l-wr.l"

15 Even the translation is controversial: while this study has chosen �six great enclosures’, an alternative translation of �great enclosure of the six’ has also been proposed.

table 1 Old Kingdom titles indicating connections between wd'-mdw and the hwt-wr.t^a (cont.)

a For publications of individual attestations of these titles, see the following (listed with refer­ences alluding to wd'-mdw m hwt-wr. t at the top, those alluding to wd'-mdw m hwt-wr. t-6 com­ing next, etc.): Giza Archives. â€?Akhetmehu G2375’. 2019, available at: http://www.gizapyr amids.org/view/people/asitem/items@Akhetmehu%2o(G%2O2375):6o9/o?t:state ⅛w=49807c1f-6999-482c-874b-80f7570be2d1); Gaston Maspero, â€?Trois annees de fouilles dans les tombeaux de Thebes et de Memphis’. Memoires publies par les membres de la mission archeologiquefranςaise au Caire 1 (1889), 202; Silvio Curto, Gli Scavi Italiani a El-Ghiza (1903) (Rome: Centro per la Antichita e la Storia dell’Arte del Vicino Oriente 1963) 55-58; Jacques de Morgan, Fouilles a Dahchour en 1894-1895 (Vienna: Adolphe Holzhausen 1903) 13; Georges Daressy, â€?La necropole des grands pretres d’Heliopolis sous l’Ancien Empire’. Annales du Ser­vice des Antiquites de l’Egypte 16 (1916), 199-204; Cecil M. Firth & Battiscombe Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries: Excavations at Saqqara: Text (Cairo: Institut frangais d’archeologie orien­tale 1926) Vol.

Empire (Brussels: Editions Safran 2008) 35-36. The present writer finds the translation â€?six great enclosures’ preferable, as it is by no means clear who â€?the six’ would be, and the its overseer was invariably also the highest administrative official in the land - the Vizier f^,.ty).^u' However, not all Viziers were linked to the hwt-wr.t-6, and there are no texts giving an insight as to what happened there.^{[58] [59] [60] [61] [62]} The hwt-wr.t also poses problems of understanding, as it too is rarely mentioned outside of titles. One possibility is that it was an institution of the administrative core en­compassing a much wider range of bureaucratic functions which are currently not well understood, but an alternative stance holds that it was a somewhat more specialised law court?⁸ In any case, judging from prosopography, the hwt- wr.t was frequently not directly overseen by the Vizier, and so seems to have occupied a lower administrative rung than the hwt-wr.t-6.^w Overall, while solv­ing the debate around the differences between the hwt-wr.

With this in mind, it is naturally tempting to ask what actually happened in these Old Kingdom institutions. While the hwt-wr. t-6 is not attested in any texts outside the context of titles, the hwt-wr.t is not entirely absent, and this yields valuable clues. In the Decree of Neferirkare for the Temple of Abydos, a docu­ment primarily concerned with the Pharaoh giving privileged tax status to a temple, the hwt-wr.t is mentioned in the following contexts:

Ir s nb n st Itty-Jy hm.w-ntr nb. (w) nty.w hr tht-ntri w'b.t(t)-sn hrs m st tw r r,^,-'.wy hn^r k,^,t nb. (t) n.tst m,^,'-k sw r hwt-wr.t dy [r k;t...] mt sk it bdt

As for any man of the district who will seize any priests who are as­signed to the divine land, upon which service is carried out in this district, for any corvee labour and any work of the district, you shall lead him to the great enclosure (hwt-wr.t). He will be put [to work. extracting?] granite and harvesting barley and emmer.

Ir s nb n st ιt-ty∙Jy mr.t nt.thr ιht-ntn n.t st r r,^,-'.wy hn< k,^,t nb. (t) n.t st m; the Old Kingdom, as will be illustrated below.

2.2 The Broad Court - wsh.t

In Egyptian, the term wsh.t (â€?broad court’) is usually used to denote a large open court or roofed hall in a temple,2⁴ but in the Old Kingdom it appears to also have been a significant venue for judging in the administrative core. Three titles - unfortunately all attested only once - explicitly link it to judging (table 2).

Furthermore, six other Old Kingdom officials having the title hrp wsh.t (â€?di­rector of the broad court’), also held separate titles featuring wd'-mdw, which strengthens the probability of a tie between the broad court and justice?⁵ One

table 2 Old Kingdom titles indicating connections between wd’-mdw and the wslι.l"

a For publications of individual attestations of these titles, see the following: Margaret A.

possibility is that the wsh.t was seen as a location where a god made decisions, which would fit both a context of religious ceremony appropriate for a temple and potentially justice too. Evidence supporting this comes from Sinai Inscrip­tion 13, which appears to explicitly mention a god making a decision in writing in a wsh.t:

di.t h(r?) ntrgm∙ti^c,^,.t m wsh.t n.tNhn-rw m ss ntr d(s?)f

Causing by the god that stone be found in the broad court (wsh.t) of the Nhn-rw sun temple in writing of the god himself.^{[69] [70]}

Clearly the meaning of this is not that stone be found in the wsh.t - it would be nonsensical to suggest that a temple court would be turned into a quarry. Rath­er, the inscription subsequently records that a quarrying expedition to the Sinai occurred as a result of this event, which means that the only logical infer­ence can be that the god was somehow perceived to give written orders in the wsh.t.27 For a place where divinely-backed decisions like this were made to also be a judicial venue would be entirely logical, especially given that Egyptian society exhibited fluid boundaries between religion and justice. It would con­stitute an appeal to the legal authority of the divine, most likely in an imposing location itself serving as a physical manifestation of the power of the state. Indeed, in a broader context of empire, Old Kingdom Egypt would certainly not be the only polity with imperial characteristics to exploit the nexus be­tween religion and justice in this way, as will be shown by subsequent contri­butions in this volume.

The case for the wsh.t acting as a judicial space is further strengthened by an explicit, albeit solitary, mention of it in a letter about legal proceedings.

sbtkk-n swt ss∙k n sn∙k lm m wsh.t n.t Hr ml nt.t wnn Is ss∙k sn∙k lm m ht w nfr∙n w,^,h h,^,ty-^c pn w lr∙n∙f r t?

However, you commended me in the broad court (wsh.t) of Horus, as it will be that you and I are therein together, (so that) this Count cannot deny the robbery which he committed.^[71]

The connection to the god Horus, one of the principal deities of the Egyptian pantheon, again underlines the function of the broad court as a place of reli­gion and justice simultaneously. Overall, it does not seem to have been quite as prominent in judicial matters as the hwt-wr.t discussed previously, but it was nonetheless another definable institution operating in this sphere, and pos­sessed its own staff of officials.

The presence of the wsh.t further highlights the complexity of justice in the Old Kingdom administrative core, wherein no one institution appears to have fully dominated proceedings. The highly centralised nature of the Old King­dom state, concentrating in one place a large number of high officials occupy­ing a range of roles and probably initiating a variety of disputes, is likely to have necessitated this vast legal apparatus. However, as this state became weaker and ultimately collapsed, with provincial elites becoming more prominent, a new system would eventually emerge in its place. In this lies a lesson for many other polities prone to multipolarity and fragmentation.

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