Legal Documents of the Hellenistic World: Papers from a Seminar Arranged by the Institute oc Classical Studies, the Institute of Jewish Studies and the Warburg Institute, University of London, February to May 1986.

• Author: Bagnall, Rogers S.
• Position: Review

Edited by MARKHAM J. GELLER and HERWIG MAEHLER, in collaboration with A.D. E. Lewis. London: THE WARBURG INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 1995 Pp. xiv + 254 (paper).

The editors of this volume wish to contribute to the comparative study of the several legal systems current in the Hellenistic period. The seminar papers published here were given in spring, 1986. No explanation of the delay in publication is offered, and those authors who remark on the matter indicate that only their footnotes have been altered since writing. This is thus something of a time capsule, a feeling strengthened by the frontispiece showing most of the authors, plus other participants (the latter nowhere fully listed, and in the caption given only surnames). Although Joseph Meleze-Modrzejewski's opening paper was invited as a broad introduction, he disclaims any such attempt, and no other synthesis or response is provided, not to speak of any sense of the discussion at the seminars or at the concluding conference What we have, therefore, is the separate papers (plus indexes: subjects, persons, sources); anything more is up to the reader.

These papers are no doubt less homogeneous than the organizers intended. To the extent they do what they were supposed to, they consist of descriptions and printed examples of actual documents of various types, along with some analysis. Papers like this mainly present acquired knowledge and generally held views rather than original insights, but they have perhaps aged less than the other papers, even though the latter are inherently more interesting as scholarly articles. To take the papers seriatim:

Meleze-Modrzejewski describes the Ptolemaic situation as consciously pluralistic, with the kings protecting their subjects' legal heritage The Demotic "code" of Hermopolis (he thinks "priestly casebook" the best description) is one key example, the Septuagint's translation of the Torah the other. They are, he argues, alike in being collections used for particular communities in Egypt.

Family law, in a broad sense, occupies most of the other papers concerned with Egypt. Ranon Katzoff uses four contracts connected with marriage to illustrate the basic persistence of Greek classical norms into the Roman period, albeit with some significant changes, perhaps most notably the effective replacement of ekdosis in most cases with the woman's direct role in contracting the marriage. He also discusses P. Yadin 18 as a basically Jewish marriage...