Papyrus Leopold II

It throws light on the practices followed at ancient Egyptian courts: eliciting confessions by beating with a double rod, smiting their feet and hands, reconstructing the crime on site, and imprisonment of suspects in the gatehouse of a temple.

During this period regional leaders, foreign dignitaries and administrative representatives found themselves with more power as Pharaohs attempted to control civil order.

In 1935 the missing upper part was found by the Belgian Egyptologist Jean Capart in the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire at Brussels,[14] and given the name Leopold II papyrus.

[15] The Amherst-Leopold Papyrus is of great importance in helping understand the culture of ancient Egypt "and give[s] us more detail than we could ever have recovered from purely archaeological evidence.

"[2] The document shows us the prevalence of tomb-robbing in ancient Egypt and the rewards it offered, and demonstrates why people would perform the difficult and dangerous act of robbing a tomb.

The acts in robbing tombs, such as taking away funerary gifts and destroying coffins or even the bodies of the deceased, was thought to endanger their passage into the afterlife, and could be the reason for using such a violent and painful punishment.