Coptic Legal Documents: Law as Vernacular Text and Experience in Late Antique Egypt (review)

This book marks a decisive stage in the journey of Coptic legal texts from the province only of the specialist to the possession of all who would use them to better understand the late antique and early Islamic world. MacCoull provides an English translation of fifty-one Coptic legal texts (though at p. xx it is claimed that there are fifty), dating between the sixth and eighth centuries c.e., and coming largely from the Upper Egyptian towns of Aphrodito and Jeme. In doing so, she performs a priceless service to the study of the society that brought forth these texts. That these "mini-narratives of human lives" (xx) are now easily available to Anglophone students who can neither navigate the original texts nor make easy use of Walter Till's German translations is a particular boon. Most of these, especially those from P.KRU, appear here in English for the first time and place at the disposal of both the non-specialist and the student many of the most important legal texts from late Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt.

As summarized by MacCoull herself, "the pieces here comprise wills, agreements, donations (of property and of persons), sales, pledges, inheritances and their partitions, [and] neighbors' and relatives' disputes" (xxxii). Samples only of the "child-donation" texts are included: it is to be hoped that someone soon accomplishes the task MacCoull leaves to "a younger scholar well versed in the currently fashionable matters of gender and property" (xx) of providing a full translation and study of this corpus. Many of the texts concern monastic settlements (or have monks as one party), but many others document the inhabitants of Jeme and Aphrodito themselves, and allow an insight into the life of these late antique villages.

A sixteen-page introduction sets the scene, beginning by stressing the importance of a "bottom-up" view of legal practice in late Roman and early Islamic Egypt, and providing a brief historical overview of the world of the documents. An introduction to the legal texts themselves (xxiii-xxix) underlines the conscious linguistic choice that lies behind the use of Coptic for these texts, sketches out their format and formulae, and perceptively reflects on their function. "The worlds we come to see" (xxix-xxxii) highlight the major personalities and locations and social structures that emerge in these documents. "Workpoints" (xxxii-xxxiv)—the title is borrowed from Lawrence Durrell—places the texts in a wider context and invites the reader to consider the ultimate fate of the culture represented in them. Frequent citations from studies that provide interesting parallels from other traditions (especially the medieval West) are both illuminating and welcome, given the longstanding isolation of work on Coptic documents from allied disciplines, which MacCoull shows is now in thorough reversal: Egypt "has now been integrated into the normal historical discourse about late antiquity" (xxx).

The texts are presented chronologically rather than thematically: while this separates formulaically and practically related documents, it highlights the development of formula and practice as one reads through the collection. The first nine documents are comprised largely of texts from the sixth- and seventh-century Aphrodito archives, interrupted only by the earliest two Theban texts in the collection (P.KRU 105 and 77). The remainder of the book is occupied with translations of Theban documents, forty of the 123 documents in P.KRU and four from P.CLT (which concern the West Theban Monastery of Paul). The collection begins with P.Cair.Masp II 67176r +P. Alex. inv. 689, drawn up in 569 C.E., and ends on the cusp of Abbasid Egypt with P.KRU 54 (748 C.E.). Each entry begins with the p-siglum of the text and a title, followed by its date and place as well as the parties involved, its object (i.e. the property, sum of money, person, etc...