Archaic bookkeeping : early writing and techniques of economic administration in the ancient Near East
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Archaic bookkeeping : early writing and techniques of economic administration in the ancient Near East
University of Chicago Press, c1993
- Other Title
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Frühe Schrift und Techniken der Wirtschaftsverwaltung im alten Vorderen Orient : Informationsspeicherung und -verarbeitung vor 5000 Jahren
Available at 16 libraries
Note
Original German ed. published in c1990 by Verlag Franzbecker as exhibition catalogue
Bibliography: p. 163-165
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This work brings together current scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the fourth millennium BC, this script, called proto-cuneiform, survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets, excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets was not to record language but to monitor the administration of local economies by means of a numerical system. Using the latest philological research and new methods of computer analysis, the authors have deciphered much of the numerical information. In reconstructing both the social context and the function of the notation, they consider how the development of our earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the concept of number and the administration of household economies. "Archaic Bookkeeping" should interest specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history, the history of silence and mathematics, and cognitive psychology.
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