ABSTRACT

This study deciphers provocative features of the Achaemenid Empire’s accounting system. In particular, it investigates the accounting and bookkeeping mechanisms, practised in that era (in what is present-day Iran), and the major social and physical duality characteristics of these mechanisms. The research employs the techniques of summative content analysis to examine accounting clay-tablets found in the fortifications of the Persepolis. The tablets date back to the thirteenth to the twenty-eighth year (509–494 BCE) of the rule of Darius the Great of the Achaemenid Empire. The findings reveal the development of an elaborate accounting system that represented physical duality (transfer of actual physical commodities in the scheme of input-output analysis) as well as social duality (transfer of ownership, investing and/or lending and borrowing within the input-output system). The use of tokens to record, classify, and analyse accounts, to establish control and accountability, and to allocate resources suggests that our present-day systems are grounded in the knowledge transmission of earlier eras.

摘要

本研究破译了阿契美尼德帝国会计系统的挑衅性特征。特别是，它调查了那个时代（在今天的伊朗）实行的会计和簿记机制，以及这些机制的主要社会和物理双重特征。该研究采用总结性内容分析技术来检查在波斯波利斯防御工事中发现的会计泥板。这些石板可追溯到阿契美尼德帝国大流士大帝统治的第十三年至第二十八年（公元前 509-494 年）。研究结果揭示了一个复杂的会计系统的发展，该系统代表了物理二元性（投入产出分析方案中实际实物商品的转移）以及社会二元性（所有权转移，投入产出系统内的投资和/或借贷）。使用代币记录、分类和分析账户，建立控制和问责制，以及分配资源表明，我们当今的系统是建立在早期时代的知识传播基础上的。