Crime and punishment, criminal law and its administration, are areas of ancient history that have been explored less than many other aspects of ancient civilizations. Throughout history women have been affected by crime both as victims and as offenders. Yet, in the ancient world customary laws were created by men, formal laws were written by men, and both were interpreted and enforced by men.

The first comprehensive survey of the world's oldest known legal systems, this collaborative work of twenty-two scholars covers over 3,000 years of legal history of the Ancient Near East. Each of the book's chapters represents a review of the law of a particular period and region, e.g. the Egyptian Old Kingdom, by a specialist in that area. Within each chapter, the material is organized under standardized legal categories (e.g. constitutional law, family law) that make for easy cross-referencing. The chapters are arranged chronologically by millennium and within each millennium by the three major politico-cultural spheres of the region: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia and the Levant. An introduction by the editor discusses the general character of Ancient Near Eastern Law.

Law in the Ancient World examines the legal philosophy, legal institutions, and laws of the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Ancient documents, accounts, and literature provide the basis for a wide perspective of law and the procedural features of these ancient legal systems. VerSteeg delineates and analyzes the elements of ancient laws, explaining how social, religious, cultural, and political forces shaped both procedure and substance. The book is comprised of four units: I. Early Mesopotamian Law; II. Law in Ancient Egypt; III. Law in Classical Athens; and IV. Roman Law. Each unit has three chapters, and the first chapter in each unit begins with an overview which provides essential historial background. Next, each initial chapter considers the role of law in society, exploring law in the abstract, the theoretical bases of justice. The middle chapters in each unit trace the development of the ancient judicial systems, distinguishing the various types of judges, courts, and procedures that were employed to make justice available to both citizens and foreigners. The third chapter in each unit reconstructs the substantive laws, including sections detailing Personal Status, Property, Family Law, Inheritance & Succession, Torts, Criminal Law, and Contracts & Commercial Law. A variety of sources, such as early law collections, land records, wills, sales documents, court chronicles, works of ancient literature, accounts of ancient trials, and great codes such as Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis illustrate the sophisticated, often subtle, and complex nature of law in the ancient world.

The ancient Greeks invented written law. Yet, in contrast to later societies in which law became a professional discipline, the Greeks treated laws as components of social and political history, reflecting the daily realities of managing society. To understand Greek law, then, requires looking into extant legal, forensic, and historical texts for evidence of the law in action. From such study has arisen the field of ancient Greek law as a scholarly discipline within classical studies, a field that has come into its own since the 1970s. This edited volume charts new directions for the study of Greek law in the twenty-first century through contributions from eleven leading scholars. The essays in the book’s first section reassess some of the central debates in the field by looking at questions about the role of law in society, the notion of “contracts,” feuding and revenge in the court system, and legal protections for slaves engaged in commerce. The second section breaks new ground by redefining substantive areas of law such as administrative law and sacred law, as well as by examining sources such as Hellenistic inscriptions that have been comparatively neglected in recent scholarship. The third section evaluates the potential of methodological approaches to the study of Greek law, including comparative studies with other cultures and with modern legal theory. The volume ends with an essay that explores pedagogy and the relevance of teaching Greek law in the twenty-first century.

A topic fundamental to understanding the ancient world

Pocock explores the relationship between the study of law and the historical outlook of seventeenth-century Englishmen.

This Companion volume provides a comprehensive overview of the major themes and topics pertinent to ancient Greek law. A substantial introduction establishes the recent historiography on this topic and its development over the last 30 years. Many of the 22 essays, written by an international team of experts, deal with procedural and substantive law in classical Athens, but significant attention is also paid to legal practice in the archaic and Hellenistic eras; areas that offer substantial evidence for legal practice, such as Crete and Egypt; the intersection of law with religion, philosophy, political theory, rhetoric, and drama, as well as the unity of Greek law and the role of writing in law. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among specialists.

An engaging look at how ancient Greeks and Romans crafted laws that fit--and, in turn, changed--their worlds

This book draws on contemporary legal scholarship to explain why Athens was a remarkably well-ordered society.

Indigenous peoples are increasingly making requests for the return of their ancestors’ human remains and ancient indigenous deoxyribonucleic acid. However, some museums and scientists have refused to repatriate indigenous human remains or have initiated protracted delays. There are successful examples of the return of ancient indigenous human remains however the focus of this book is an examination of the "hard" cases. The continued retention perpetuates cultural harm and is a continuing violation of the rights of indigenous peoples. Therefore this book develops a litigation Toolkit which can be used in such disputes and includes legal and quasi legal instruments from the following frameworks, cultural property, cultural heritage, cultural rights, collective heritage, intellectual property, Traditional Knowledge and human rights. The book draws on a process of recharacterisation. Recharacterisation is to be understood to mean the allocation of an indigenous peoples understanding and character of ancient indigenous human remains and ancient indigenous DNA, in order to counter the property narrative articulated by museums and scientists in disputes.