Abstract
This is a brief exposition of (I) the characteristic features of sale in Egyptian law, especially of the fundamental distinction, which appeared very early, between reciprocal contracts intended for immediate execution, for which the model is sale, and unilateral contracts with an implicit delay, such as loans, and of (2) the main lines of evolution of sale contracts. To a basically oral law was added the practice of documents, which developed from the New Kingdom, but especially with the notarized acts of the Kushite and Saite periods. If the notion of consensual sale existed in germ from the Old Kingdom onwards, it was in the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties that a conscious conceptualization of legal relations and the identification of different juridical strains associated with agreement between parties appeared. This brought radical modifications in the redaction of formulae, between those of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and the early years of Psammetichus I, and those of the following reigns. This major development, underlined by the change in script, became apparent in the course of Psammetichus I's reign, spreading gradually from north to south, from Year 8 at Memphis to Year 21 at El-Hibeh, but much later at Thebes: P. Vienna 12002 (cow sale, Year 25) and P. Turin 2120 (sale of land, Year 45), for example, still belong to the earlier group, and are still in abnormal hieratic. Appendices list the documents on which the study is based, and classify the diagnostic formulae.
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