Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
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Sealed envelope containing tokens inside and impressions of the same tokens on the outside surface
Function as a personal account of a steward etc
Simple tokens – grain and cattle
it was customary to call the scribe to the temple, palace, or private domain to record commercial
transactions, irrespective of their volume
Written accounts of transactions were signed by the transaction parties, witnesses and the scribe
11 Monitoring Performance
Had bookkeeping procedures
Form of balancing entry
Compared actual against theoretical amounts
Nissen et al.(1993) suggested
This checking of actual against theoretical was perhaps the most important accounting operation
introduced furing that period of time.
Later, record labour performance and balancing it
12 Ancient Egypt
Hierarchical Accountability
13 Ancient Egypt
Predominantly state-controlled economy
the state played a major role in administration, the economy, civil life, and the military. Although
accounting and writing emerged at least two centuries before the unification of Egypt, it was not until
the emergence of Egypt as a centralized state that accounting practices began to be used on a more
systematic basis.
Much of the economic activities belonged to the royal, or public, domain
Although there was always some scope for private activities.
14 Ancient Egypt
Pharaoh considered a god ruling on earth on behalf of other gods in the sky
Bureaucracy with various layers of administrators
Scribes who were trained in writing and arithmetic
Economic domains of the state and temples oversaw large projects
Building, renovating tombs, temples, palaces, and royal workshops, in addition to land cultivation,
bakeries and breweries, and the manufactory of textiles and metals
Impost (or “tax”) was assessed and levied against crops
collected by the scribes to be stored in granaries for use as future rations for the royal palace and to
the Pharaoh's subjects.
15 Ancient Egypt Economy
The State as Redistributive system
a centrally-based bureaucracy that collected from its subjects only to redistribute to them later
Temple also important
owned major economic resources
Private sphere also exited
individuals were able to make things
Exchanged through semi-barter transactions with other goods in designated places that functioned as
local markets, at a mutually agreed price
Scribes recorded these exchanges
who also served as a witness to the transaction
a money of account system functioned as a common denominator
which converted baskets of different commodities into value equivalence and recorded these values
in accounting books.
16 Accounting for the public domain: the royal palace and the temples
TWO influential institutions
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