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24 Fundamina 69 (2018)
The Emergence of Law in Ancient Egypt: The Role of MAAT

handle is hein.journals/fundmna24 and id is 71 raw text is: THE EMERGENCE OF LAW IN ANCIENT EGYPT: THE ROLE OF MAAT NJ van Blerk*** ABSTRACT In this article, the emergence of ancient Egyptian law out of religion and specifically arising from the concept of maat is discussed, as well as the important role played by religion, and specifically maat, in the ancient Egyptians' understanding and development of the law. An attempt is made to indicate that the ancient Egyptians indeed had law and to explain what the ancient Egyptians understood by law, followed by a discussion of the development of ancient Egyptian law and key jurisprudence elements of ancient Egyptian law. KEYWORDS: Ancient Egypt; emergence of Egyptian law; importance of religion; hp; hpw maat; jurisprudence; justice; balance; impartiality; tradition; precedent; custom 1 Introduction Law has existed as long as organised human society, but its origins are lost in the mists of prehistory.' The advent of writing left a record from which the living 1 See Westbrook 2003a: 1. * This article is based on ch 4 of my PhD thesis titled Aspects of succession law in ancient Egypt with specific reference to the testamentary disposition. ** Lecturer, LLB, MA, D Litt & Phil; Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa. Fundamina DOI: 10.17159/2411-7870/2018/v24nla4 Volume 24 | Number 1 | 2018 Print ISSN 1021-545X/ Online ISSN 2411-7870 pp 69-88 69

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