'Spreadsheets of empire': red tape goes back 4,000 years, say scientists after Iraq finds [View all]

Source: The Guardian

‘Spreadsheets of empire’: red tape goes back 4,000 years, say scientists after Iraq finds

Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets show extraordinary detail and reach of government in cradle of world civilisations

Dalya Alberge
Sat 15 Mar 2025 11.37 GMT
Last modified on Sat 15 Mar 2025 11.39 GMT

The red tape of government bureaucracy spans more than 4,000 years, according to new finds from the cradle of the world’s civilisations, Mesopotamia.

Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation.

These were the state archives of the ancient Sumerian site of Girsu, modern-day Tello, while the city was under the control of the Akkad dynasty from 2300 to 2150BC.

“It’s not unlike Whitehall,” said Sébastien Rey, the British Museum’s curator for ancient Mesopotamia and director of the Girsu Project. “These are the spreadsheets of empire, the very first material evidence of the very first empire in the world – the real evidence of the imperial control and how it actually worked.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/15/stone-tablets-mesopotamia-iraq-red-tape-bureaucracy