TAKING INTO ACCOUNT HISTORIES OF ACCOUNTING IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST: SCRIBES, CUNEIFORM TABLETS, AND HISTORIANS

Although the cuneiform documentation of the Ancient Near East is mainly composed of administrative texts, written by palaces, temples or private individuals, accounting practices as such do not generally attract the interest of Assyriologists. They traditionally prefer to subordinate their study to quantitative history or archival analysis. However, the program of concrete history of abstraction proposed by Jean-Claude Perrot invites us to investigate this historical object in the perspective of a total history, where the economic factors could explain the social and the political ones. This implies having a reflexive approach to the conception of accounting by historians, but also by management science professionals, and an emic approach that takes into consideration the modes of intellection, the relationship to materiality and the social and political motives of the Ancients.