Egyptian law courts originated as councils of officials, which, besides acting as judges, also had other administrative tasks. Accordingly, they were known by the rather unspecific terms DADAt (Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom) or qnbt (Middle Kingdom until the beginning of the Late Period), which simply means “committee.” Their members are usually referred to as srw, “officials,” although more specific designations also occur. From the 26th  Dynasty onwards, the members of the courts seem to have been mainly, if not exclusively, priests with a specific juridical education, called wptjw, “judges.” From the New Kingdom onwards, a division into smaller local courts and great courts located in the capital(s) can be observed. Local courts dealt with minor cases of disputed property and petty crimes, which were punished with beatings, while the great courts attended to trials about land ownership, cases concerning officials, and crimes entailing heavier punishments like mutilation or the death penalty. This double system probably remained in action until the Ptolemaic Period when the local courts were integrated into a new system and the great courts were finally abolished and their role was taken over by Greek officials. Native Egyptian judicature fast declined under the Roman rule. Legal procedure changed little over time. Several laws about court procedure survive, which show that the conduct of cases was established in detail and that the judges had little scope for arbitrariness.

When considering “law” in ancient Egypt, it is necessary to try to distinguish between our modernconcepts a nd ancient aspects of Egyptian law. The word hep is most commonly translated as “law” and was used in the sense of “(single) law” throughout Egyptian history, but it also refers to any other type of binding rule. Hepu and, in Demotic, also hep can refer to the totality of laws and therefore come close to our modern understanding of “law.” Although maat is often translated as “justice,” it covered much more than legal justice, making it difficult to identify the Egyptian equivalent of “law” in its more general sense (cf. German Recht). The modern distinction between civil and criminal law is also hard to transfer to ancient Egyptian practice. There was no state prosecution for actions we would consider criminal such as theft or assault, but the injured party had to act as plaintiff. Only crimes against the pharaoh and gods, like conspiracies or theft from royal tombs or temples, were prosecuted by officials. There is no clear evidence for written laws before the Middle Kingdom and only indirect evidence for the period preceding the New Kingdom. The codification under Darius I may have been the first attempt at collecting all earlier laws still valid at that period in one single corpus. This collectionof laws continued to form the basis for Egyptian jurisdiction even during the Ptolemaic Period.

In ancient Egypt inheritance was conveyed either through the legal order of succession, favoring sonsover daughters, children over siblings, and older over younger, or through written declarations thatallowed for individualized arrangements. Adoption was the common means by which a childlessperson could acquire an heir. The initial tendency towards a sole heir (preferably the eldest son) wasreplaced by the division of parental property among all children, although the eldest son continued toplay an important role as trustee for his siblings and received a larger or better share according tothe legal order of succession. Documents used for the bequeathing of inheritance varied over time andwere gradually replaced by donations and divisions after the Middle Kingdom. Effectiveness onlyafter the death of the issuer is rarely mentioned explicitly.