Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets testify to the extraordinary detail and scope of government in the cradle of world civilizations. According to new findings from the cradle of world civilizations -
Mesopotamia - the government bureaucracy is more than 4,000 years old.
Hundreds of administrative tablets - the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in history - have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the intricacies of running a state and show the complex bureaucracy - the red tape of ancient civilization. These were the state archives of the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, modern-day Tello, when the city was ruled by the Akkad dynasty from 2300 to 2150 BC.
"This is not reminiscent of Whitehall," notes Sebastien Rey, the British Museum's curator of ancient Mesopotamia and head of the Girsu project. "Before us are the archives of an entire empire, the first tangible evidence of the formation of the world's earliest imperial rule. These artifacts allow us to see how power really functioned in those times."
Girsu, one of the oldest cities on Earth, was a sacred center dedicated to the Sumerian warrior god Ningirsu in the 3rd millennium BC.
At its peak, it spread over hundreds of hectares, remaining an independent Sumerian city-state until it was conquered by King Sargon of Akkad around 2300 BC. Akkad itself, its legendary capital, has not yet been discovered, but it is believed to have been located near modern Baghdad.
"Sargon created a fundamentally new system of power, subjugating all Sumerian cities and forming what is generally regarded as the world's first empire," explains Rey. He emphasizes that until recent archaeological discoveries, ideas about this era were based only on scattered, sometimes overly pathos royal inscriptions or late copies of Akkadian texts, the reliability of which remains in question.
He believes the new discovery "
is extremely important because for the first time we have concrete evidence - in situ artifacts.
They document absolutely everything. If a sheep dies on the very edge of the empire, it will be noted. They are obsessed with bureaucracy." The tablets, containing cuneiform characters -
an early writing system - record government business, supplies and expenditures for everything from fish to pets, flour to barley, textiles to gems.
Dana Goodburn-Brown, a British-American restorer, cleans the tablets so they can be rewritten. The work is both painstaking and fascinating, she says: "People just think things are pulled out of the ground and look like you see them in a museum, but they're not."
One plaque lists various goods: "250 grams of gold, 500 grams of silver, ...fattened cows, ...30 liters of beer." According to Ray, even the names and occupations of the townspeople are recorded: "Women, men, children - there are names for everyone."
Photo: theguardian.com
"Women held important positions in the state. For example, we have high priestesses, although it was a society headed by men. But the role of women was at least higher than in many other societies, and this is undeniable based on the evidence we have," he says." he says.
The occupations listed range from stone carvers to temple floor cleaners. The clay tablets were discovered in the ruins of a large-scale state archive - a building with thick earthen walls divided into separate rooms or sections. Among them there are unique artifacts: detailed architectural plans, schemes of fields and maps of the ancient irrigation system, revealing the complex mechanisms of organization of farming and construction in the Sumerian era.
These sensational finds are the result of archaeologists' work as part of the Girsu Project, a joint initiative between the British Museum and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, supported by the Meditor Trust charity.
Originally excavated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the site was looted after the two Gulf Wars. The tablets from the Akkad period were either looted or carelessly removed from the archaeological environment and thus decontextualized. It has therefore been very difficult for scholars to understand how the administration worked.
The finds have been sent to the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad for further study and may then be transferred to the British Museum. The Akkadian Empire lasted only about 150 years, ending with a revolt that secured the city's independence.