In this chapter, I show that the Sortes Astrampsychi and related lot and ticket oracles from Graeco-Roman Egypt quite frequently allude to legal issues or concrete acts of judicial life. I conclude that people asked oracles for help in legal matters, or, put differently, that the oracles formed part of the Egyptian system(s) of justice. I place this aspect of the Sortes Astrampsychi in context by discussing a selection of text types such as oracles, temple oaths, and amulet decrees dating back as far as the New Kingdom (1550 BCE) and argue that we need to interpret these texts in two ways: as texts of ritual practices and as texts of Egyptian/Ptolemaic/Roman Imperial law. I present case studies from ritual texts of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt in Greek and Demotic where practitioners, mainly qualified temple personnel, acted as intermediates between humans and gods to find solutions in certain legal matters.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:33957 |
| Date | 10 May 2019 |
| Creators | Naether, Franziska |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:bookPart, info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 978-90-04-38410-1 |
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