Fwd: [agade] BOOKS: Law and Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt

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J. Bauschatz
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.