“Plus ça change…”: Legal Continuity, Change,
and Resistance to Change in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Maryline G. Parca (University of llinois-Urbana/Champaign)

Hellenistic Egypt was a land of legal pluralism, and the division of the power of jurisdiction between Greek courts for Greeks and Egyptian courts for Egyptians lay at the center of the judicial organization fashioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus about 270 B.C. The Greek dicasteria dispensed justice among the members of the local communities of settlers, be they of Greek or of another non-Egyptian nationality. The Egyptian courts administered justice among Egyptian nationals, in the Egyptian language, and following native legal principles. The two sets of courts were thus guided by rules that reflected their respective legal tradition. In a royal decree promulgated in 118 B.C. (P.Tebt. I 5), however, the competences of Greek and Egyptian tribunals were redefined: this decree provided that language of the contract (not the nationality of the parties) now determined which court would handle the case. In short, the Ptolemaic legal system grew into a mixture of legal usages coming from various national groups, indiscriminately used by all.

In Roman Egypt all—except for Roman citizens and the citizens of the autonomous Greek poleis Naucratis, Alexandria, Ptolemais, and later Antinoopolis—were called Aiguptioi and enjoyed the status of Egyptians in the eyes of the law. To the Romans, the body of rules observed by the mass of Egypt’s population were simply the “law(s) of the Egyptians,” indigenous laws and laws of Greek origin lumped together. Until the Constitutio Antoniniana, the majority of Egypt’s population thus lived outside the purview of Roman law. When, in A.D. 212, Roman law was officially applied to the entire population, it acted as an overlay on existing practices and only partially prevailed over time.

Greek documentary papyri abundantly illustrate how, in matters of private and family law, the coexistence of various legal traditions could be a dynamic instrument of social change as well as a tool of resistance. While papyri of the Ptolemaic period show that Greek practices were still observed (such as the requirement that a woman have a legal guardian), they also document the influence of Egyptian practice on the legal practice of the newcomers. Thus, a Macedonian woman gives herself in marriage (P.Giss. 2, 173 B.C.) rather than being given away by her father, as is the Greek custom, and a mother acts as guardian of her orphaned son (SB XVI 12720, 142 B.C.), an impossible appointment in Greek legal practice. Texts from the Roman period similarly attest to the tension between competing legal traditions. In her petition to the Roman authorities (P.Oxy. II 237, A.D. 186), Dionysia challenges her father’s claim of continuing control over his married daughter and his intention, based on that right, to take her away from her husband. When the father invokes ancestral Greek practice, the daughter turns to the promise of Roman law. She quotes to her advantage earlier judgments in the Roman courts that invalidated the unconditional exercise of paternal authority by Greek fathers and liberated married daughters from parental authority. Lastly, a third century contract between two women, both Roman citizens bearing Egyptian names, shows that the claim to Roman legal status is no impediment to practices shunned by Roman citizens. The agreement to perform work in lieu of interest on a loan (SB IV 7358, A.D. 277-282) may conceal a father’s de facto sale of his daughter into service to pay off a debt.