Accounting and control in the Persepolis fortification tablets

              Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 36, No. 2
December 2009
pp. 93-111
Gloria L. Vollmers
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
ACCOUNTING AND CONTROL IN THE PERSEPOLIS FORTIFICATION TABLETS
Abstract: The bookkeeping records collected and retained by account­ants of the Persian Empire centered at Persepolis from 509-494 B.C. are examined in this paper. A powerful bureaucracy exercised control over foodstuffs to supply an immense number of royal and state per­sonnel and workers with their ration needs. A sophisticated account­ing system facilitated this control, making visible not only the quanti­ties of food assets distributed but also the locations and individuals responsible for these distributions.
INTRODUCTION
One of the great pleasures of exploring documents of the ancient world for the accounting historian is discovering how very important accounting/bookkeeping has always been. While it may be extreme to assert, as have some, that the necessity of counting and recording led to writing, it is fair to say that ac­counting (bookkeeping) preceded writing [Schmandt-Besserat, 1992; Mattessich, 1994, 1998]. For millennia, people and institu­tions have tracked their possessions for the purpose of protect­ing, maintaining, and expanding them if possible. Those with many possessions had to work harder to track them when forced to transfer maintenance of the property to others. This paper introduces the bookkeeping of the administration of the ancient Achaemenid Persian Empire which flourished between 550 and 330 B.C. through the archive of the Persepolis Fortification Tab­lets. The archive is large, and unlike others of substantial size, is completely translated [Hilprecht and Clay, 1898; Clay, 1906]. This allows scholars not conversant with ancient languages to study the tablets from their own perspective of interest.
The fallibility of memory is well-known, and it is unlikely that this weakness is a discovery of the modern era [Loftus, 2003]. While researchers study how we recreate and distort memory, the fact of the malleability and unreliability of memory must have been known throughout history. In addition to the limitations of memory, there is the fear of deliberate fraud.