The development of early constitutional thought

The idea of a 'constitution', written or unwritten, has long been central to academic discourse in political, legal and intellectual history, as well as dominating current affairs. Despite this, studies in this area have so far not meaningfully extended to ancient history and archaeology predating Greece and Rome, and it remains a common view that societies from earlier periods lacked meaningful 'constitutions' worthy of study. This may be true in a very narrow sense, as such ancient societies did not have clearly defined, written provisions about the procedural aspects of government which we frequently associate with the constitutions of many modern states. However, this does not mean that these societies could not have core principles of government which can be deemed early forms of 'constitutional' thought, and study of which can be of profound significance in deepening our understanding of the evolution of socio-political ordering principles across the millennia.

The proposed project will make a fundamental contribution to the above research need by shedding light on the development of the very earliest intellectual precepts which may be associated with a 'constitutional' approach to running a polity (i.e. a set of well-formulated expectations tied to a sustained notion of good government, alongside an indication of the rights and obligations incumbent on those governing). The societies to be studied are Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, both of which produced sophisticated textual accounts describing how people should order and govern themselves in the second millennium BCE. For Egypt, these include royal decrees (e.g. Nauri Decree, Horemheb Decree) didactical compositions discussing the right way to behave in society (e.g. Instruction of Ptahhotep, Instruction of a Man for his Son), works of narrative jurisprudence (e.g. Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, Contendings of Horus and Seth) and detailed descriptions of criminal trials prosecuted by the State (e.g. Tomb Robbery Papyri, Turin Judicial Papyrus). For Mesopotamia, these include compendia of royal judicial verdicts (e.g. Codex Hammurabi, Codex Eshnunna), a hymn addressing the topic of imprisonment (Hymn to Nungal), wisdom literature about good conduct (e.g. Instruction of Shupe-Ameli, Sumero-Akkadian proverbs) and various legal teaching tools designed to illustrate to trainees how justice operated, such as the widely-published Old Babylonian model contracts.

Through close reading of these texts, the project will construct a new holistic understanding of how these varied aspects of law and its implementation intermeshed to form an overarching legal landscape which in modern scholarship might be termed an incipient 'constitution'. Particular attention will be drawn to the balance of power between the King - nominally absolute in both Egypt and Mesopotamia - and other sources of authority such as provincial officials, local priests, or individuals designated specifically as judges. By comparing Egypt (a unitary state with only occasional periods of fragmentation) to Mesopotamia (a system aspiring to unitary statehood, but where fragmentation was the norm), the project will throw into relief how different political realities could affect the emergence of constitutional models in the earliest literate societies.

Alongside determining the principles along which these incipient 'constitutions' operated, the research will also explore the intellectual underpinning of these principles. Analysis of didactical and wisdom texts will be of primary importance here, painting a picture of what was deemed 'right order' and how notions of it were ingrained in trainee scribes and officials. The wisdom texts, designed to offer practical advice in day-to-day situations, can also be used to provide insights into possible discrepancies between the de jure legal landscape and the de facto reality of lived experience, giving an indication of how uncodified conventions could develop.