Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of the relationship between state institutions and the administration of justice. It is a complex topic that changed greatly over the period covered by this volume. There is, thus, considerable development both in terms of bureaucratic practice and also in terms of legal theory. In the case of legal procedure regarding trial proceedings, the Roman evidence is perhaps the fullest. For the Ptolemaic period the process is reasonably clear from the few court records we possess but we have to guess at some of the details.

In ancient Egypt the king was the center of all state institutions, and the guarantor of Maat, that crucial concept of the Egyptian state and of Egyptian law. The term has aptly been translated by Assmann (2002) as “connective justice.” This sense of justice stressed balance or political order, and indeed the concept runs through both state institutions and private morality, binding the king to officials and to all people in Egypt. The concept of Maat and the king as the guarantor of justice prevailed, at least through the second century bc, when the ruling dynasty claimed legitimacy through Egyptian kingship and institutions such as the laokritai.