Yes, but it brings up some questions: 1) Unlike the tally stick mentioned by another commenter, this seems easy to forge (find a similar piece of parchment; us

Yes, but it brings up some questions: 1) Unlike the tally stick mentioned by another commenter, this seems easy to forge (find a similar piece of parchment; use a knife to cut it identically; bribe the original scribe to write something new). 2) Given a mismatch in either the text or the cut of the two copies, what happens? Clearly the law can't simply prefer one party by default, or that party has no incentive not to forge a document (even poorly). Even given an illiterate populace, I'm surprised the modern system of sign/countersign/notarize wasn't used earlier.