Accounting Historians Journal Volume 11 Article 5 Issue 1 Spring 1984 1984 Significance of ancient Mesopotamia in accounting history Douglas Garbutt Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal Part of the Accounting Commons, and the Taxation Commons Recommended Citation Garbutt, Douglas (1984) "Significance of ancient Mesopotamia in accounting history," Accounting Historians Journal: Vol. 11 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol11/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Archival Digital Accounting Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Accounting Historians Journal by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Garbutt: Significance of ancient Mesopotamia in accounting history The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 11, No. 1 Spring 1984 Douglas Garbutt CONSULTANT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA IN ACCOUNTING HISTORY Abstract: The article draws attention to the vast archive of accounting records from ancient Mesopotamia available to historians, and the advances in Assyriology which have taken place since the revival of interest in the origins of recorded his- tory. Understanding of the materials has been advanced, in part, by specialists from other fields, such as mathematics and astronomy, yet accounting historians do not seem to have been attracted to the problems of interpreting the elegantly simple records and the societal context within which they were made and used. To exemplify the challenges facing the accounting historian, the author consid- ers evidence on the Dreham archive, the temple as a financial institution, and the use of loans, interest and banking. Finally, the author suggests that the records of Ancient Mesopotamia offer a rich field of research in accounting history. Ancient Mesopotamia and Modern Iraq There is some confusion in the terms applied to the civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia. The name, which is Greek, means the land between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates—which rise in the mountains of Turkey and flow south to the Gulf where they meet at the Shatt-el-Arab near Basra. The Euphrates takes a longer course, and almost joins the Mediterranean near Jerablus, but it then takes a vast curve inland. At Baghdad the two rivers nearly meet; only twenty miles separate them. Babylonia covered the southern half of modern Iraq to the Gulf of Basra, and was centred on the ancient city of Babylon, a city ferociously denounced in Jeremiah 50 to 52 because Nebuchad- nezzar took the Jews to captivity there. Babylonia was divided into Akkad in the north and Sumer in the south. Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian are Semitic languages akin to Hebrew and Arabic. Sumerian has so far resisted all attempts to relate it to any language living or dead.1 Famous Sumerian cities were Ur, Uruk, Nippur, and Kish. The author is grateful to Professor D. J. Wiseman of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professor R. H. Parker of the University of Exeter, and Mr. David A. R. Forrester of the University of Strathclyde for their helpful comments. The author makes the usual confession of responsibility for such errors as remain. Published by eGrove, 1984 1 Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 11 [1984], Iss. 1, Art. 5 84 The Accounting Historians Journal, Spring, 1984 The northern half of modern Iraq is the real Mesopotamia, al- though that term is often applied to the whole of Iraq. Its ancient name was Assyria and it is there that one may see the ruins of Nineveh, Ashur, Nimrud, and Khorsabad. Cities and the Rivers The twin rivers of Mesopotamia are often compared in importance to the Nile, although they play a very different role. Rainfall in Iraq averages an unreliable 10 inches per year. The rivers are the main sources of water. The Nile floods the plains in spring and deposits alluvial silt which fertilizes the soil each year before the planting. Its annual flows are stabilised by the huge lakes in East Africa. The Tigris and Euphrates rise in remote mountains, have no lakes to regulate their flows and are less predictable. In the north they flow through a limestone plateau where their courses have changed little over centuries. To the south, however, they meander over a vast alluvial plain and, from time to time, change course. The rivers flood in April to June which is too late for the spring crop and too early for the summer. Agriculture, therefore, has depended for thou- sands of years on effective irrigation and, if no artificial drains are installed, the irrigated land draws up salt from the water table and can rapidly become sterile, necessitating a move to fresh land. Many of the major centres were continually rebuilt on the ruins of the preceding generations. This process, carried on for thousands of years, determines the picture of Iraq today outside the great city of Baghdad. There, the landscape is dotted with about 10,000 mounds or "tells," few of which have been excavated. These few have yielded up a great treasure of historical records. Curiously enough, the nomadic Bedouins know each tell by a name that is usually related to a known historical place. Not that the picture is unchanging. The Iraqi Government is en- gaged in a large programme of reconstruction and the traveller is entranced by the restored walls of Nineveh, the buildings of Nimrud, and the Grecian-style buildings of "Arab" cities of the north, Hatra and Samarra. In the south, the traveller may walk along the brick built proces- sional way of Babylon, approached through the reconstructed trium- phal archway, the Ishtar gate, decorated with bulls and dragons in brightly coloured glazed bricks and leading to Marduk's ziggurat, the famous Tower of Babel. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol11/iss1/5 2 Garbutt: Significance of ancient Mesopotamia in accounting history Garbutt: Significance of Ancient Mesopotamia in Accounting History 85 The Development of Assyriology Western European interest in ancient Mesopotamia, its peoples and its culture sprang in the first place from Biblical studies and the rediscovery of the monuments of ancient Egypt. These led to a search in Mesopotamia for evidence of the long-lost civilizations of Babylon, Ur of Chaldees, Assyria, and Nineveh, all of which are mentioned in the Bible. In 1842, Botta discovered Khorsabad, and two years later Layard excavated at Nimrud. The emphasis then was on discovering and removing antiquities with little regard to the surroundings in which they were found. The first three quarters of the nineteenth century have been called the "heroic" period of the new science of Assyriology. During this period, various systems of writing using cuneiform signs were deciphered and a group of texts known as "the royal inscriptions" were translated. Most of what we know of Mesopotamian history came from these records. At the same time, objects of silver, gold, copper, impressive statues, reliefs, and grandiose architecture were excavated and dispersed to private collections and museums throughout the world. Included in these objects were clay tablets found throughout the Near East and Egypt, many of which are ac- counting records. The story of the Rossetta stone is well known. Just as exciting was Rawlinson's copying, at great peril, the inscription in Old Per- sian, Babylonian, and Elamite which Darius the Great had engraved on a cliff face in Behistan in Western Iran. From this, Rawlinson, Hincks and Oppert opened the door to an understanding of the Akkadian and Sumerian languages. Akkadian is so well understood today that it is taught in a number of universities; Sumerian is al- most completely understood.2 The establishment of British and German exploration groups in the second half of the nineteenth century was accompanied by a more professional archaeological approach to excavation with a growing emphasis on stratigraphy and environmental evidence.3 In the twentieth century, excavations have been conducted by French, Italian, and American groups, all of whom have a distinguished and continuing participation in exploration, discovery, and interpretation of the materials. There is, also, a strong group of Iraqi scholars, and the Iraqi Government now sponsors and controls the processes of exploration and restoration. During a visit in 1977, I was informed that there were five main explorations in progress, one of which I was able to observe at work in Babylon. In the past one-hundred-and-sixty years, Assyriologists, aided by a few from other disciplines, have been at work translating and in- Published by eGrove, 1984 3 Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 11 [1984], Iss. 1, Art. 5 86 The Accounting Historians Journal, Spring, 1984 terpreting the vast evidence on the kings, merchants, scholars, and ordinary people of ancient Mesopotamia,4 their defeats and vic- tories, their achievements and preoccupations and, especially, their economic life. In sheer volume, the records are unrivalled, and they also extend over a much longer period—about 3,000 years—than is generally appreciated. The chronology of the main rulers of Meso- potamia from 2400 B.C. to 700 A.D. is now much clearer than it was, and is accurate within ±64 years for dates before 1500 and ±1/2 years for dates after 900 B.C.5 (with the exception of the Par- thian Dynasty). It is now established that the Old Testament reports fairly accu- rately on the period after 800 B.C. and sheds some light on the pre- vious three centuries.6 Another measure of the progress made in Assyriology may be gauged from Boyd's reference7 to the Laws of Hammurabi of Baby- lon discovered at Susa. Hammurabi appears in Genesis 14 as Amraphel King of Shinar and was a contemporary of Abraham. Boyd quotes the dates of Hammurabi's rule as 2285 to 2242 B.C.