Goethe-Fellows

Guido Pfeifer

Professor of Ancient Legal History, History of European Private Law and Civil Law, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

2022–2026 (Goethe Fellow)

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Identification and Integration between Law and Religion: Everyday Legal Life of Jewish Exile and Diaspora Communities in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 1st Millennium BCE«

Project outline:

The (legal) historical-philological research project is guided by the question of the extent to which legal systems can give social groups of different ethnic, religious, or other characteristics a common normative framework in a foreign environment. To this end, Pfeifer deals with document texts that were written in Jewish exile and diaspora communities in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 1st millennium BC, the so-called »Al Yahudu Tablets« and the »Elephantine Papyri«. The Al Yahudu Tablets are cuneiform clay tablets in the Akkadian language in which marriage and inheritance documents as well as legal and property disputes are documented; the papyri written in Aramaic script deal with contemporary religious practice. Both groups of texts have not yet been exhaustively examined from a legal-historical perspective. Above all, however, they provide a direct insight into the everyday life of Jewish law in antiquity. (Guido Pfeifer)

Scholarly profile of Guido Pfeifer

Guido Pfeifer has been Professor of Ancient Legal History, History of European Private Law and Civil Law at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since 2007. He conducts research on the legal cultures of antiquity from Mesopotamia through ancient Greece to ancient Rome and their reception up to modern times. He is co-editor of Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte and KritV | CritQ | CRit – Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft.

Website:
Please find more information about Guido Pfeifer here.

Main areas of research:

Ancient Near Eastern Law, Ancient History of Law, Roman Law, History of European Private Law

Selected publications:

Zur intellektuellen Infrastruktur des Rechts im Alten Orient (= Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Band LVI, Nr. 1), Stuttgart: Fritz Steiner Verlag 2019.
»Das Recht im Kontext normativer Ordnungen der Welt des Alten Orients«, in: Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung, 135. Band, Wien: De Gruyter 2018, S. 1-20.
(Hg. mit Nadine Grotkamp), Außergerichtliche Konfliktlösung in der Antike. Beispiele aus drei Jahrtausenden, Frankfurt a. M.: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History 2017.
Fortschritt auf Umwegen – Umgehung und Fiktion in Rechtsurkunden des Altertums (= Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und Antiken Rechtsgeschichte 107. Heft), München: Beck 2013.
Ius Regale Montanorum. Ein Beitrag zur spätmittelalterlichen Rezeptionsgeschichte des römischen Rechts in Mitteleuropa, Ebelsbach 2002.

Guido Pfeifer

Scholarly profile of Guido Pfeifer

Information cookies