How Long Did Ethelbert's Laws Exist?

Ethelbert's laws were issued around the year 602 or 603 according to the best estimates. None of the original manuscripts survived the centuries. The first copy we have is a later copy from a collection of Old Anglo-Saxon laws compiled in the 12th century. So that later version of the original document wasn't actually written down in the alphabet used in Kent around the year 600. Most of the surviving Old English texts come from the last three centuries of the Old English period.