Understanding Changes between the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom
This chapter has so far identified five major changes in the provision of justice in Ancient Egypt. Before attempting to explain why changes of this kind came about, it will be helpful to recapitulate in list form exactly what these changes entailed:
1.
Formalised judicial institutions formerly situated in the Old Kingdom adÂministrative core, most notably including the hwt-wr.t-6, hwt-wr.t, and wsh.t, all died out in the Middle Kingdom.2. The concept of hp, which might denote codified law or at least some sort of writing influencing judicial decisions, appeared in the Middle KingÂdom having been entirely absent in the Old Kingdom.
3. Judicial officials became far more specialized: whereas in the Old KingÂdom they invariably held a plethora of roles in other fields alongside jusÂtice, in the Middle Kingdom focus on justice only became commonplace.
4. Judicial scribes appear to have become significantly more prominent in the Middle Kingdom compared to the Old Kingdom.
5. The key term for denoting judicial activity shifted from wd'-mdw in the Old Kingdom to sdm in the Middle Kingdom.
To understand these changes, it will be necessary to attach prime importance to the role of the First Intermediate Period. As already noted above, this was a period of extreme political decentralisation between the Old and Middle KingÂdoms, akin to the fragmentation of an empire. The problem one faces, howevÂer, is the impossibility of directly tracking these evolutions in the provision of justice: very few texts are preserved from the First Intermediate Period, owing both to its short chronological span and the general reduction in the production of non-perishable material culture at a time when royal authority was very weak. Consequently, the best that one can do is construct a hypothesis of what may have happened, based on the state of the judicial system before and after, and also the generally known socio-political dynamic of the First Intermediate Period given in the section on historical background above.
When studying Ancient Egyptian legal evidence, it is easy to ignore the posÂsibility of other types of justice also existing alongside the formal, bureaucratic elements which have been preserved in the textual record. However, it would be entirely logical to assume that starting with the Old Kingdom there must have been some additional, probably oral-aural forms of adjudication operatÂing at local levels, since it is inconceivable that the courts of the administrative core could have regulated every dispute in the land. These relatively informal forms of justice might not have left any written record, but they were nonetheÂless there.[92] [93] The existence of an Egyptian term seemingly denoting a local council with judicial powers, the dd.t,52 as early as the Old Kingdom, supports this view further. If so, it is likely that the Old Kingdom provinces, far removed from the administrative core, had some sort of legal practitioners operating there even if they were initially hidden from view. In the First Intermediate Period, with the collapse of centralised judicial institutions, these local legal practitioners became the principal source of legal authority for all disputes, and this would presumably have necessitated their training to a more formal, literate level. At the same time, as the provinces became wealthier due to their newly acquired ability to retain local revenue, opportunities for giving these people such training would probably have inÂcreased. This increase in scribalism would have heralded the replacement of the old wd'-mdw concept, originally associated with high officials passing judgÂment, with sdm, originally associated with lower-ranking officials recording information. These new officials, based in the periphery, were not senior courÂtiers with a plethora of other duties, instead having roots in informal local jusÂtice and therefore being more narrowly specialised in legal matters. With the return of centralised power in the Middle Kingdom, these new, specialised judicial officials could become effective tools in the efforts of the newly re-established state to increase its control over the provinces. This chapter shows that not only is it possible to trace significant structural changes in the provision of justice from the Old to the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, over seven centuries, but also that the available information can be marshalled into a theory explaining the changes on the basis of existing knowledge surrounding contemporary political events. Much remains unknown. Above all, the informal sphere of justice in the provinces, which may have been far more significant to most of the non-elite population for large parts of this period, remains fundamentally understudied. As it is highly unlikely that any ancient texts describing this aspect of justice will emerge, the circumstances in which informal justice operated are likely table 5 The evolution of Ancient Egyptian justice from true legal pluralism to a unified pluralistic legal system, c. 2500-1800 bce Formal/bureaucratic justice Informal/oral-aural justice -Defined judicial core -Royal and temple institutions of justice centred on Memphite region (e.g. hwt-wr.t, wsh,t) -Dominated by wd'-mdw - Officials typically of very high rank, often with long title strings and engaged in multiple spheres of activity -Occurs throughout the country -Very weak link to royal institutions, if any - relies on village councils and judgÂments at temple portals -However, some relatively specialised practitioners focusing on local justice matters do already exist τ≡ O ∙1-H ≡ α HH 0 •«H -Defined judicial core collapses -Centralised zz institutions shut -Elements of informal, local justice begin to / formalise and / take over the niche vacated by the collapsing core -Continues as before at a local level, probably with expandÂed capacity and additional material resources due to the collapse of centralised judicial institutions -Local judicial practitioners attain greater responsibilities as there is no longer an administrative core with high officials judging cases -There is no longer any significant structural distinction between the original core and peripheral justice systems -The judicial institutions which had dominated the Old Kingdom core die out entirely, remaining only in purely honorific titles/epithets -The old distinction between wd'-mdw and sdm is abandoned; the former becomes functionally extinct and the latter acquires dominance -A plethora of specialised judicial officials emerges, holding relatively standardised titles and perhaps sharing a common professional identity -Hp-law emerges, possibly pointing to overarching legal principles -However, this unified system is still internally pluralistic: it has both recorded and unrecorded justice, even if the two are conceptually related Legend to table 5 Key - Justice systems Original core justice system Original peripheral justice system ------------------------------------- Notional boundary between formal and informal justice to remain unknown - with only educated guesswork possible on the basis of ethnography. Finally, the problem of selective preservation of evidence must be highlightÂed. As the overwhelming majority of Egyptian settlements were located by the Nile delta or floodplain, a large number of sites have been destroyed by subseÂquent changes in river course. In addition to this, many of the better preserved sites have been subjected to systematic looting, both in ancient and modern times, and this problem has become more severe in recent years in view of ongoing political unrest. Consequently, any investigation into judicial evoluÂtion must acknowledge that it is working with but a highly fragmentary selecÂtion of data, which is in particular heavily slanted in favour of inscriptions on stone rather than those on perishable material, such as papyrus. Dating is also a problem. While it is usually possible to derive approximate dates for artefacts on the basis of existing typologies associated with certain styles and particular periods, the same cannot be said for identifying findspots. As very many of the key inscribed stelae were discovered in the nineteenth century, long before the emergence of modern recording methods, it is now unknown where they were found. The same is true for objects obtained by museums on the antiquities market - a practice discontinued by most institutions today, though its impact continues to be felt. That such challenges are, of course, present in equal measure for the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom material makes it all the more significant that vast differences are clearly visible in spite of such deficiencies in evidence. In turn, all this has far-reaching implications for the broader study of legal evolution in the context of complex, multi-polar states. While Egypt of the Old and Middle Kingdom is not universally referred to as an â€?Empire’ in modÂern scholarship, it certainly had imperial characteristics in that it consisted of a patchwork of smaller political entities which could at times be independÂent. This quasi-imperial state saw high levels of centralisation, followed by fragmentation, followed by recentralisation once more. Legal concepts and officials adapted to these changing political realities, taking on new forms to fill power vacuums and taking on new responsibilities and identities as strucÂtures of unitary power re-emerged. Thus, Ancient Egypt provides us with a valuable lesson in how legal thought and practice could develop over the longue duree in a context of political flux, as tides of what may be termed â€?Empire’ came and receded. The key dichotomies this presents - namely difÂferences between core and periphery, as well as formally constituted and inÂformal law - are all highly pertinent to the study of legal development in later imperial states too.
