Debt in Ancient Mediterranean Societies
Editeur(s) : Démare-Lafont Sophie
Editeur(s) : Démare-Lafont Sophie
Lending and borrowing are the two sides of what is probably the most ordinary and widespread legal act in all times. Yet, such a common situation raises a lot of legal questions that are still on the agenda in many modern legal systems. The practice of credit has been studied at length, especially for ancient societies: specific loans connected with commercial law, rates of interest and the problem of usury, debt cancellations and their implications, have been the subject of many interesting and enlightening publications in the realm of social and legal sciences. The purpose of the conference held in Paris in 2015 was rather to focus on the contract itself, as attested in the deeds or in the opinions of the ancient jurists. Paying attention to the wording of the documents helps to pinpoint the lexical variations and evolutions within a given period, in relation to the types of loans or to the local traditions. The legal nature of the contract, which is still a matter of debate nowadays, was also discussed in the past. The formulary of the documents related to debts, as well as the words and concepts used by the jurists to analyze them, reveal their own ideas about the multiple ramifications of an apparently basic and mundane act, that eventually became a template for all kinds of legal or administrative operations. These are the main lines of research addressed by the contributions gathered in this volume, based on the primary documentation of the various legal cultures in Antiquity.
Collection : Hautes Etudes Orientales
Table of contents
Introduction
Sophie Démare-Lafont
A survey of the history of the loan contract formula in Mesopotamia
Aaron Skaist
The hubullum-debt in the Old Babylonian period and its trace in the loan contract documentation
Antoine Jacquet
Uses of the debt note’s pattern in the Neo-Assyrian documentation
Pierre Villard
Le contrat de prêt et ses variantes de l’Ancien au Nouvel Empire égyptien
Burt Kasparian
Commodity loans bearing 50 % interest? Local variations in Ptolemaic contracts
Katelijn Vandorpe
Demotic loans with mortgage in their legal-historical context. From the Ptolemaic period “Kaufpfandurkunde” to the Roman period bilingual loan with mortgage
Sandra Lippert
A handbook of Greek formulae in legal documents from Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt: a pilot
Uri Yiftach
La parakatathèkè dans le droit de l’Égypte ptolémaïque
Bernard Legras
The Byzantine Egyptian debt acknowledgement in transition from Greek to Coptic. Was Dioscorus of Aphrodito responsible?
Elizabeth Buchanan
Loans in an island society: the astynomoi-inscription from Tenos
Michele Faraguna
Per una nuova interpretazione di Demostene 32, “Contro Zenotemide”
Alberto Maffi
Advances of money made by financial magistrates in Hellenistic cities
Christoph Samitz
Le droit à l’assaut de la bienfaisance : Paul et l’action contraire du commodat (Dig. 13, 6, 17, 3)
Philippe Cocatre-Zilgien
Lending, lien, and the rent of storage rooms in the Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum
Fabian Klinck
Index of sources
Index of ancient words"
Publishers