L’expertise médico-légale dans l’Antiquité : le témoignage des papyrus grecs

Abstract

Among the bulk of Greek papyri that was retrieved from Egyptian sands, 31 documents dating back to Roman times and to the early Byzantine period contain the reports of inspections conducted by one or several experts on the bodies of men, women and children of all social conditions, who were still living as regards the majority of them and had fallen victim to either attacks, fights, accidents or diseases. Those reports are part and parcel of administrative proceedings which, such as they could be retraced, included four kinds of documents: the petition, the order, the medical report and, when there was a lawsuit, the reports of proceedings. The aim of this paper is to present these proceedings, which definitely constitute the earliest testimonies of a forensic approach, by illustrating each step with a commented example and by paying special attention to the experts conducting the inspections as well as to their medical reports.

Keywords

• Greek papyri
• forensic expertise
• law
• Roman and Byzantine Egypt
• public doctor