The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law

The first comparative history of ancient law written collaboratively by an international team of ancient historians and legal experts.

The first volume of its kind in the field of comparative ancient legal history. Written in an accessible and clear-cut style by a collaborative team of world-renowned scholars, it provides general and specialist audiences with a fresh, original, framework for exploring key themes and concepts in ancient law and history.The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law is the first of its kind in the field of comparative ancient legal history. Written collaboratively by a dedicated team of international experts, each chapter offers a new framing and understanding of key legal concepts, practices and historical contexts across five major legal traditions of the ancient world. Stretching chronologically across more than three and a half millennia, from the earliest, very fragmentary, proto-cuneiform tablets (3200–3000 BCE) to the Tang Code of 652 CE, the volume challenges earlier comparative histories of ancient law / societies, at the same time as opening up new areas for future scholarship across a wealth of surviving ancient Near Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Greek and Roman primary source evidence. Topics covered include 'law as text', legal science, inter-polity relations, law and the state, law and religion, legal procedure, personal status and the family, crime, property and contract.