J. Bauschatz, Law and Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt

Law and Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt
AUTHOR: John Bauschatz
DATE PUBLISHED: October 2013
AVAILABILITY: In stock
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781107037137
Cambridge University Press

This book examines the activities of a broad array of police officers in Ptolemaic Egypt (323–30 BC), and argues that Ptolemaic police officials enjoyed great autonomy, providing assistance to even the lowest levels of society when crimes were committed. Throughout the nearly 300 years of Ptolemaic rule, victims of crime in all areas of the Egyptian countryside called on local police officials to investigate crimes; hold trials; and arrest, question, and sometimes even imprison wrongdoers. Drawing on a large body of textual evidence for the cultural, social, and economic interactions between state and citizen, John Bauschatz demonstrates that the police system was efficient, effective, and largely independent of central government controls. No other law enforcement organization exhibiting such a degree of autonomy and flexibility appears in extant evidence from the rest of the Greco-Roman world.

1. Introduction: the place of police

2. The officer corps – police administration and hierarchy: the Phylakitai

3. The officer corps – police administration and hierarchy: civil and military police

4. Agents of appeal: petitions and responses

5. Busting and booking: arrest, investigation, detention, resolution

6. The strong arm of the law: security and muscle

7. Conclusion.

John Bauschatz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on Greek and Roman social history, Greek papyrology, Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and crime in antiquity. He has been named a National Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America (2013–14) and has published in such journals as The Classical Bulletin, The Classical Journal, Syllecta Classica and Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.