num_pages: 248
description: This volume contains annotated English translations of fifty selected legal documents originally written in the Coptic language dating from the mid-sixth to the mid-eighth centuries. They include land transfers sales wills property divisions and intergenerational disputes. The choice of which language to use in recording their transactions was significant for the documents' framers and the introduction sets these Coptic texts in their historical contexts of the changing society of Egypt first under Byzantine rule then under Islamic rule. Since the originals are in a language not known to most classicists or medievalists making the documents available in English will enable them to be read studied and appreciated by a wider audience.
language: English
title: Coptic Legal Documents: Law as Vernacular Text and Experience in Late Antique Egypt (Volume 377)
publisher: ACMRS Press