Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East - Hardcover

Nissen, Hans J.; Damerow, Peter; Englund, Robert K.; Etc.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226586596 ISBN 13: 9780226586595

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

This work brings together current scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the fourth millennium BC, this script, called proto-cuneiform, survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets, excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets was not to record language but to monitor the administration of local economies by means of a numerical system. Using the latest philological research and new methods of computer analysis, the authors have deciphered much of the numerical information. In reconstructing both the social context and the function of the notation, they consider how the development of our earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the concept of number and the administration of household economies. "Archaic Bookkeeping" should interest specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history, the history of silence and mathematics, and cognitive psychology.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1994
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226586596
• ISBN 13: 9780226586595
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar