by According to new finds, the bureaucracy of the government bureaucracy extends from the cradle of civilizations in the world, Mesopotamia, more than 4,000 years.
Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical proof of the first empire in history – were discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts describe the minutia of the government and show a complex bureaucracy – the bureaucracy of an old civilization.
These were the state archives of the old Sumerian site of Girsu in modern tello, while the city from 2300 to 2150 BC. BC was under the control of the battery dynasty.
“It is not unlike Whitehall,” said Sébastien Rey, the curator of the British Museum for Old Mesopotamia and director of the Girsu project. “These are the spreadsheet of the empire, the very first material evidence for the very first empire of the world – the real proof of imperial control and how it actually worked.”
Girsu, one of the oldest cities in the world, was in the 3rd millennium BC. It was hundreds of hectares at its peak and was one of the independent Sumerian cities that the Mesopotamian King Sargon around 2300 BC. BC conquered. He originally came from the city of Akkad, whose location is still unknown, but it is assumed that he was near the modern Baghdad.
Rey said: “Sargon has developed this new form of government by conquering all the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia and creating what most historians call the first realm of the world.” He added that the information about this empire until these latest excavations were “not fully reliable” limited to fragmentary and bombastic royal inscriptions or much later copies of accada inscriptions.
He said of the new discovery: “It is extremely important because we have concrete evidence for the first time – with artifacts in situ.” He was amazed by the details in these records: “You notice absolutely everything. When a sheep dies on the edge of the empire, it is noted. They are obsessed with bureaucracy. “The tablets that contain wedge -shaped symbols, an early writing system, recording matters of the state, deliveries and expenses, from fish to domesticated animals, flour to barley, textiles to precious stones.
Dana Goodburn-Brown, a British-American conservator, cleans the tablets so that they can be transcribed. The work is both tedious and exciting, she said: “People think that things come out of the ground and look like they have seen them in the museum, but they don’t.”
A tablet lists different goods: “250 grams of gold / 500 grams of silver / … Mestle cows … / 30 liters of beer.” Even the names and professions of citizens are recorded, said Rey: “Women, men, children – we have names for everyone.
“Women had important offices within the state. For example, we have high priests, even though it was a society that was led very much by men. But the role of women was at least higher than in many other societies, and it is undeniable based on the evidence we have. “
The jobs listed range from stone cutting to the sweeper of the temple floor. Rey said: “It was very important to sweep the ground on which the gods and the high priest were located. The cities of the ancient Mesopotamia theoretically all belonged to the gods. The company worked for the temple state. “
The tablets were found at the location of a large state archive building from sludge walls and divided into rooms or offices. Some of the tablets contain architectural plans of buildings, field plans and maps of channels.
The finds were made by archaeologists at the Girsu project, a collaboration between the British Museum and the State Board of the Iraqi government, which was financed by Meditor Trust, a non -profit foundation.
The location was originally excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries and according to the two golf wars by looters: “Tablets of the battery time were either looted or neglected from their archaeological environment and thus decontextualized. So it was very difficult to understand how the administration works.
“The key is now that we were able to dig them up properly in their archaeological context. The new finds were preserved in situ, so that in their original context we can certainly say that we indeed have the first physical evidence of imperial control in the world. That is completely new. “
The finds were sent to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad before a possible loan to the British Museum.
The Akkadian Empire only lasted about 150 years and ended with a rebellion that secured the independence of the city.
