Accounting for Alimentary Items in Third Millennium Southern Mesopotamia: Some Notes on the Role of Waxed Boards in the Historical Development of Early Mesopotamian Bookkeeping

The paper focuses on practical aspects in managing alimentary items in ancient Mesopotamia, as emerging from a narrow selection of cuneiform sources from the late third millennium BCE. The documents are important in that they refer to procedures internal to the administrative system, which are usually not apparent in the final records. The explicit mention of logistics steps in the extant archival material is mostly motivated by unusual, contingent situations: the transfer of data from early records, computations based on primary sources now lost, the need to check for mistakes in the current files, etc. Albeit scanty, the evidence points to a complex scenario, rich in technical terminology, and with emphasis in the use of perishable media (wooden boards). Although these facts are not a novelty in cuneiform studies, they have not been adequately stressed in modern literature. The outcome of this short survey invites us to reflect on the current methodological framework for understanding ancient accounting practices for the management of food resources, and how they sit with the production of archival material.