Rules of Court – Ancient and Obese

The first photograph shows part of a Code of Civil Procedure from Egypt in the 3rd century BC. At that time, Egypt was under Macedonian rule. In 332 BC, the Persian rulers were ousted by Alexander the Great. Following his death in 323 BC, one of his generals, Ptolemy, took control of the country. He founded a dynasty that ended with the death of Cleopatra. (This explains why the belief that Cleopatra is an Egyptian name is incorrect. It is Macedonian.)

The pictured Code of Civil Procedure is written in Demotic, one of the 3 scripts on the Rosetta stone. It is written on papyrus and held in the Egyptian collection of the Altes Museum, Berlin.

The second photograph shows less ancient, but perhaps more obese, Rules of Court. These are from Saxony (the southern part of the old East Germany) and date from 1573 to 1659. The book is very thick and must have kept Saxon lawyers in beer and bratwurst for years! The volume is held at Schloss Weesenstein, south east of Dresden.

Andrew Lyons