Expanding the History of the Just War: The Ethics of War in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

This article expands our understanding of the historical development of just war thought by offering the first detailed analysis of the ethics of war in ancient Egypt. It revises the standard history of the just war tradition by demonstrating that just war thought developed beyond the boundaries of Europe and existed many centuries earlier than the advent of Christianity or even the emergence of Greco-Roman thought on the relationship between war and justice. It also suggests that the creation of a prepotent ius ad bellum doctrine in ancient Egypt, based on universal and absolutist claims to justice, hindered the development of ius in bello norms in Egyptian warfare. It is posited that this development prefigures similar developments in certain later Western and Near Eastern doctrines of just war and holy war. Kingdom (2055-1650 BCE), and New Kingdom (1552-1069 BCE). 3 During this time the Egyptians suffered and repulsed invasions as well as pursuing imperialist policies of their own in Nubia (modern southern Egypt and northern Sudan), Libya, and Syria-Palestine. 4 At the level of international relations, the Egyptian state engaged in warfare and diplomacy with a variety of states and peoples over the course of its long history. There existed no "international organizations, law codes or jurists" between the third and first millennium BCE, but there did exist "a recognizable international legal community" in the area from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates (Ziskind 1967, 202-3). 5 Within this international legal community, Egypt developed its own distinctive ethics of war; yet scholars have given little attention to the emergence of Egyptian just war thought. 6 The ethics of war in ancient Egypt was founded upon three tenets of Egyptian culture that displayed remarkable longevity and consistency: 1) the cosmological role of Egypt; 2) the divine office of the pharaoh; 3) the superiority of the land of Egypt and its inhabitants over all other lands and peoples. These ideological foundations led the Egyptian political elite to develop an ethics of war that possessed elements analogous to later Western concepts of proper authority and just cause: so-called ius ad bellum criteria. The relationship between war and justice in Egyptian culture was so intimate that we can identify an ancient Egyptian just war doctrine. Egyptian pharaohs claimed exclusive possession of legitimate authority and just cause in warfare. In contrast, while the conduct of Egyptian warfare followed a small number of norms, the development of in bello restraints are invisible to the historian. 7 3 Dates should be taken as approximate. The dating of Egyptian dynastic periods and the reign-lengths of pharaohs remains subject to debate: I have followed the date system used in Morkot (2010). 4 See Supplemental Information: Appendix 2 "Note on ancient Egyptian warfare." 5 Munn-Rankin (1956); Ziskind (1967, 43-4, 203). The attempt to reconstruct an ancient Near Eastern legal system goes back to Selden (1640). For subsequent early attempts, see Ziskind (19...

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