Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Legal History

Topics are- The Sphinx and the Pyramids of Gizeh, seen at sunset
Khephren .The Mastaba of Khomtini in the Necropolis of Gizeh The Great Sphinx of Gizeh partially uncovered, and the F)Tamid of TetiniSnkhu, sitting before the funeral repast ....
The fagade and the stele of the tomb of Phtahshopsisu at Saqqara
Stele in the form of a door, and the statue of the tomb of Mirruka offerings in procession ....•••
A representation of the domains of the Lord Ti, bringing to him their
sacrifice and offerings.....
The representation of the Lord Ti assisting at the preliminaries of the
The birth of a king and his double .
The adult king advancing, followed by his double
The goddess adopts the king by suckling him .
Pharaoh in his harem .....
Different postures for approaching the king
Pharaoh gives solemn audience to one of his ministers
The queen shakes the sistrum while the king offers the sacrifice Island and Tem^ile of Philse . ,
Men and women singers, flute-players, harpists, and dancers from the tomb
ofTi
The dwarf Khnumhotpu, superintendent of the royal linen
The packing of the linen and its removal to the white storehouse Measuring the wheat and depositing it in the granaries
The staff of a government officer in the time of the Memphite dynasties
^'sirniri, of the Fifth Dynasty ......
The crier announces the arrival of five registrars of the Temple of King
Statue of Amten found in his tomb ......
The funeral stele of the tomb of Amten, the " Grand Huntsman "
Hunting with the boomerang and fishing with the double harpoon in a marsh or pool
Prince Api, borne in a palanquin, inspects his funerary domain A dwarf playing with Cynocephali and a tame Ibis .
In a Nile boat
War-dance performed by Egyptian soldiers before a battle Two blacksmiths working the bellows
Stone-cutters finishing the dressing of limestone blocks
A workshop of shoemakers manufacturing sandals . The house of a great Egyptian lord ....
The baker making his bread and placing it in the oven
Stele of Situ, representing the front of a house . A street in the higher quarter of modern Siut .
A hall with columns in one of the TweKth Dynasty houses at Gurob
Woman grinding grain .......
Mural paintings in the ruins of an ancient house at Kahun
One of the forms of Egyptian scales..... .
Two women weaving linen at a horizontal loom
Scenes in a bazaar
Part of the modern village of Karnak, to the west of the Temple of Apit
The levying of the tax : The taxpayer in the scribe's office
Levying the tax : The bastinado .....
Levying the tax : The taxpayer in the hands of tlie exactors
The colossal statue of Prince Thothotpu being dragged by the Corvee Colored sculptures in the gallery of the Palace at Thebes
Two fellahin work the shadouf in a garden
The Pyramid of Snofrui at Medum ....
The cutting and carrying of the harvest
A barbarian Moniti from Sinai.....
Two refuge towers of the Hiru-Shaitu, in the Wady Biar
"View of the oasis of Wady Feiran in the Peninsula of Sinai
Genneh and Wady Maghara ......
The high castle of the miners— Ilait-Qait— at the confluence of Wadv
Nofrit, lady of Medum ......
The court and the two stela? of the chapel adjoining the Pyramid of Medum
Alabaster statue of Kheops .....
The triumphal bas-reliefs of Kheops on the Rocks of Wady Maghara
Sphinx ........
Khuit, the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, the Sphinx, and the Temple of the
The ascending passage of the Great Pyramid .
Alabaster statue of Khephren
The Pyramid of Khephren, seen

granite of the Pharaoh Anu, in the Gizeh museum Triumphal bas-relief of Pharaoh Sahuru, on the rocks of Wady Magharah Passenger vessel under sail Head of an inhabitant of Ptianit
A sculptor's studio, and Egyptian painters at -work Avenue of Sphinxes— Karnak .
Cellarer coating a jar with pitch Baker kneading his dough .
The Sheikh-el-Beled in the Gizeh museum The kneeling scribe in the Gizeh museum The sitting scribe in the Gizeh museum Nofir, the director of granaries . Stele of the daughter of Kheops The Pharaoh Menkauhoru . The Mastabat-el-Faraun, looking toward the west fagade The island of Elephantine seen from the ruins of Syene Small Wady, five hours beyond Ed-Doueig, on the road to the Red Sea The rocks of the island of Sehel, with some of the votive inscriptions
The mountain of Aswan and the tombs of the princes of Elephantine
Head of the mummy of Metesouphis I. ..... .
Hii-khuf receiving posthumous homage at the door of his tomb from his son
The entrance to the Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara .... The sepulchral chamber in the Pyramid of Unas, and his sarcophagus
Part of the walls of El-Kab on the northern side .... The hills of Thebes, as seen from the southern end of Luxor
The second fortress of Abydos— the Shunet-ez-Zebib— as seen from the east
Temple of Tentyra— Denderah .......
Attack upon an Egyptian fortress by troops of various arms
The heavy infantry of the Princes of Siut, armed .

CHAPTER I.
THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF EGYPT
The King, the Queen, and the Royal Princes— Administration under the PAGE Pharaohs— Feudalism and the Egyptian Priesthood, the Military—
The Citizens and Country People
3
CHAPTER 11.
THE MEMPniTE EMPIRE
The Royal Pyramid Builders : Kheops, Khephren, Mykerinos— Memphite Literature and Art— Extension of Egypt toward the South, and the
Conquest of Nubia by the Pharaohs . . . . . . .151
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST THEBAN EMPIRE
The Two Heracleopolitan Dynasties and the Twelfth Dynasty— The
Conquest of Ethiopia, and the making of Greater Egypt by the Theban Kings
295
1THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION
OF EGYPT
THE KING, QUEEX, AND ROYAL PRINCES— PHARAONIC ADiMINISTRATION FEUDALISM AND THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTHOOD, THE MILITARY—THE CITIZENS AND THE COUNTRY-PEOPLE.
Tlie cemeteries of GizeJi and Saqqdra : the Great Sphinx ; the mastabas, their chapel and its decoration, the statues of the double, the sepulchral vault—Im-
portance of the wall paintings and texts of the mastabas in determining the
history of the Memphite dynasties.
The king and the royal family—Double nature and titles of the sovereign : his Horus-names, and the progressive formation of the Pharaonic Protocol—
Royal etiquette an actual divine worship ; the insignia and prophetic statues of Pharaoh, Pharaoh the mediator between the gods and his subjects—Pharaoh in
family life; his amusements, his occupations, his cares—His harem: the women, the queen, her origin, her duties to the king—Sis children : their position in the
State ; rivalry among them during the old age and at the death of their father ;
succession to the throne, consequent revolutions. VOL. II.
B

The study addresses the legal rules that allowed in Rome and in some Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, especially Egypt, women to serve as guardians or to assist the guardian of their prepubescent children. In Rome, mothers as guardians are attested during the second century by individual imperial concession, and the mother as manager in aid to the guardian is amply attested in the classical age. In Egypt, mothers could serve as guardians, appointed by a private act of the husband (since the beginning of the province until 212 AD), while in connection to the guardian (with the name ἐπακολουθήτρια) they appear only from the first half of the second century ad. the author questions the mutual influences between the two sets of rules.

Nel presente articolo si esaminano le norme giuridiche in base alle quali a Roma e in alcune province orientali dell'impero romano, soprattutto l'Egitto, la madre poteva essere tutrice o poteva svolgere fuzioni di ausilio al tutore dei propri figli impuberi. A Roma la madre tutrice appare attestata già dal secondo secolo per concessione imperiale individuale, e la madre amministratrice in ausilio al tutore è ampiamente attestata in età classica. In Egitto la madre tutrice, nominata con atto privato del marito, compare dalle origini della provincia e fino al 212 d.C., mentre, affiancata al tutore, con il nome di ἐπακολουθήτρια, è documentata solo dalla prima metà del secondo secolo d.C. In dottrina ci si è interrogati circa le influenze reciproche tra i due sistemi di norme. L'autore conclude che è legittimo ipotizzare che la scomparsa della madre tutrice egizia dopo il 212 sia stata causata dalla diffusione del diritto romano nelle province a seguito della Constitutio Antoniniana, mentre non sembra possibile rinvenire altre reciproche influenze. In particolare, si nega che la madre amministratrice romana sia derivata dall'ἐπακολουθήτρια egizia.

Jeffrey Stackert argues that the Holiness Legislation (including the traditional Holiness Code [Lev 17-26] plus outlying pieces of legislation that have typically been attributed to P) is a sort of "super law," the last of the biblical law codes which incorporates and expands upon all the older ones (Covenant Code and Deuteronomic Code).  The evidence for direct literary dependence of HL on D, however, is less strong than one would like.

I propose that a peculiar expression concluding the prologue of Hammurabi's Laws, "I established justice and equity in the mouth of the land, I made the flesh of the people content" (col. v, 20ʹ–24ʹ ),  represents a very specific visual/mimetic scribal error: Hammurabi’s scribes combined two fixed Sumerian formulae that they recalled from their scribal training.

This paper clarifies the ancient Hebrew linguistic distinctions between the penalties of capital punishment, and live human substitution, which appear in the Covenant Code. Such  differentiations are  significant for the legal history of lex talionis (the law of retaliation), where interpretations of the talionic “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” formulation among Jewish exegetes (from late antiquity until the present day) are characterized by the insistence that this represented financial compensation. In addition, it will be shown that these penalties were not unique to the laws preserved biblical scribes, but reflected broader juridical concerns present in earlier Assyrian and Babylonian legal traditions.

Exodus 21:22–25 has been the subject of extensive scholarly consideration and discussion due to its lexical and contextual ambiguities, similarities with Ancient Near Eastern laws, and marked differences with the Septuagint’s legal counterpart. Existing interpretations have not yet comprehensively resolved its ambiguities without causing incongruities with its biblical and Near Eastern context and legal parallels. This thesis offers a new solution where the ambiguous Hebrew term ’ason indicates a deliberate and malicious intent to harm. The thesis methodically examines the law’s legal context within Exodus 21 and its parallels with biblical and Near Eastern laws concerning intentionality, miscarriage, and retributive justice (lex talionis). In order to reconcile the law’s issues and ensure that the ambiguous term is applicable to its other uses within the Bible, a redefinition of ’ason as “an attack” is proposed. According to the proposed interpretation of intention, the law provides two cases of accidental and intentional assault. The suggested solution also resolves a perplexing aspect of the Exodus law in its significant deviation from its Near Eastern legal parallels in which there is only one assailant mentioned in contexts of assault-induced miscarriages. The unique specification by the biblical legislators describing a quarrel between multiple men in the law’s opening statement sets up the cases of accidental and intentional assault.

This ground-breaking research examines the biblical traditions of circumcision, corporal punishment, ear piercing, and tattooing in the context of ancient Near Eastern laws and traditions. Why, if man is created in the image of God, is his circumcision and ear piercing required? Is the punitive mutilation of women a singular phenomenon, or do such punishments reflect ancient Near Eastern legal precedents? Not least importantly, are any general principles regarding the use of the body identified in the biblical expressions of divine law?

These findings indicate that physical disfigurement functioned in biblical law to verify legal property acquisition when changes in the status of dependants were formalized.  In this context the broader function of writing, and the cuneiform script, was highly significant. These developed in Sumer and Mesopotamia for the purpose of record keeping, in order to provide legal proof of ownership, where the inscription of a tablet evidenced the sale, or transfer, of property. Legitimate property acquisition was as important  for a nation of escaped slaves, who by their own account had dispossessed the local inhabitants of their promised land. Accordingly, in biblical law, where physical disfigurements marked dependants permanently, they served to validate appropriate group membership, and further legitimated property ownership primarily on behalf of the adult Israelite male.