The city of Gortyn is located in southern Crete, and was one of the greatest and most famous cities in Crete. It served as the capital of the Province of Crete and Cyrene after the Roman conquest of the region in 67 B.C., and the extensive ruins at Gortyn attest to both its greatness and importance in ancient times. Gortys was the name of a traditional hero-founder of the city; however, the true origins of the city are still somewhat uncertain. It survived until 824 A.D., when it was finally destroyed by Arabs.

In 1884, an archaeologist by the name of F. Halbherr began excavating a site near a mill by a stream; almost three decades earlier, a fragment of inscribed stone had been found at the site. In the channel of the stream, Halbherr found four more columns of inscriptions; it was determined that the leftmost column was the end of the entire inscription, and that it continued to the right. However, Halbherr initially could not obtain permission to excavate the accompanying region; once he was finally able to persuade the owner of the field to allow him to excavate, he discovered 8 more columns of inscriptions, excellently preserved. Upon further examination, the team discovered that the columns were part of a thick, circular wall, which if completed would have had a diameter of more than 100 meters. Archaeologists determined that the wall was part of the foundation of a 1st century B.C. theater; it is now generally thought to be that of the Roman Odeion at Gortyn.

a fragment of one of the columns of the Gortyn law code [link]

Each column of the discovered inscription is cut into four layers of stone which measure at approximately five feet in height. The entire inscription is close to 30 feet long; with each column consisting of between 53 and 56 lines, it amounts to more than 600 lines. The stones were numbered with the greek letters alpha to gamma, and then a sequence of numbers from 1-30. The writing of the inscription is boustrophedon, meaning that the lines read alternately from left to right and right to left. The first line of each column begins right to left, and the inscription continues from there. Evidence suggests that the majority of the inscription was completed by a single engraver, with the final parts being added by a different hand.

The inscriptions that were discovered were found to contain a law code, now termed the Law Code of Gortyn, alternately referred to as "The Great Code" and the "Queen of Inscriptions". Crete had traditionally been an early home of law; the law code reflects a deep Minoan influence although the dialect of the inscription and the origins of the city are Dorian Greek. The code is traditionally dated to sometime in the mid 5th century; it covers a phenomenal variety of topics in its lines. Marriage, Divorce, Adoption rules, inheritance rights, the social status and treatment of slaves, the sale and bequeathment of property, as well as rape and other crimes are all addressed in the code; there is a notable lack, however, of legislation on homicide.

The Law Code of Gortyn is justifiably termed one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of our time. It provides a unique view of codified law; specifically, it is telling evidence of the gradual evolution and codification of decrees from the centuries preceding it. Fragments of other legal codes have been found scattered around Crete; however, no code is as completely preserved or thorough as that of Gortyn. The Great Code itself represents a culmination of earlier legal development, showing evidence of emendations and corrections itself. Neither should the monumental structure of the code be overlooked; as Whitley remarks, "it is, in a sense, the Gortynian equivalent of the marble temples of mainland greece, a Gortynian counterpart to the Parthenon." Similar to these great monumental buildings, the code not only represented the ideals of a community, but it also reflected the significant weight of the law to a largely illiterate population. In its entirety, it represented the immutable majesty of the law (Whitley 660).

References

Whitley, J. 1997. Cretan laws and Cretan literacy. Am J Archaeol. 101(4): 635-61

Willetts, Ronald F. 1967 . The Law Code of Gortyn. Walter De Gruyter and Co.: Berlin

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Greek Archaeology