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

The Guardian

15-03-2025

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.'
Girsu, one of the world's oldest cities, was revered in the 3rd millennium BC as the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic god Ningirsu. Covering hundreds of hectares at its peak, it was among independent Sumerian cities conquered around 2300BC by the Mesopotamian king Sargon. He originally came from the city of Akkad, whose location is still unknown but is thought to have been near modern Baghdad.
Rey said: 'Sargon developed this new form of governance by conquering all the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia, creating what most historians call the first empire in the world.' He added that, until these latest excavations, information on that empire was limited to fragmentary and bombastic royal inscriptions or much later copies of Akkadian inscriptions 'which are not completely reliable'.
Of the new discovery, he said: 'It is extremely important because, for the first time, we have concrete evidence – with artefacts in situ.' He has been astonished by the detail in those records: 'They note absolutely everything down. If a sheep dies at the very edge of the empire, it will be noted. They are obsessed with bureaucracy.' The tablets, containing cuneiform symbols, an early writing system, record affairs of state, deliveries and expenditures, on everything from fish to domesticated animals, flour to barley, textiles to precious stones.
Dana Goodburn-Brown, a British-American conservator, is cleaning the tablets so that they can be transcribed. The work is both painstaking and exciting, she said: 'People just think things come out of the ground and look like you see them in the museum, but they don't.'
One tablet lists different commodities: '250 grams of gold / 500 grams of silver/ … fattened cows… / 30 litres of beer.' Even the names and professions of the citizens are recorded, Rey said: 'Women, men, children – we have names for everyone.
'Women held important offices within the state. So we have high priestesses, for example, although it was a society very much led by men. But the role of the woman was at least higher than many other societies, and it's undeniable based on the evidence that we have.'
The jobs listed range from stone-cutters to the sweeper of the temple floor. Rey said: 'Being able to sweep the floor where the gods and the high priest were located was very important. The cities of ancient Mesopotamia in theory all belonged to the gods. The society worked for the temple state.'
The tablets were found at the site of a large state archive building, made of mud-brick walls and divided into rooms or offices. Some of the tablets contain architectural plans of buildings, field plans and maps of canals.
The finds were made by archaeologists at the Girsu Project, a collaboration between the British Museum and the Iraqi government's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, funded by Meditor Trust, a charitable foundation.
The site was originally excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries and was targeted by looters after the two Gulf wars: 'Tablets of the Akkad period were either looted or carelessly removed from their archaeological setting and thus decontextualised. So it was very difficult to understand how the administration worked.
'The key thing now is that we were able to excavate them properly within their archaeological context. The new finds were preserved in situ, so in their original context, and we can say for sure that we have indeed the very first physical evidence of imperial control in the world. This is completely new.'
The finds have been sent to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad for further study, ahead of a possible loan to the British Museum.
The Akkadian empire lasted for only about 150 years, ending with a rebellion that secured the city's independence.