Early History of Accounting

Accounting has existed for many centuries. We cannot know, of course, when humans began keeping accounting records in their heads, but symbols recording transactions between tribes have been found to date back to 5000 BC. The Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia kept such records on clay tablets beginning about 3200 ВС, and more than 3,000 years ago scribes in Babylonia and Egypt actually received what in effect was formal accounting training in schools. Persia under Darius (521-486 ВС) had government scribes who performed "surprise audits" of the accounts of the provinces, and similar audits were made in the Hebrew civilization, in which the chief scribe was the second highest position in government. However, in ancient Greece (c. 1400 ВС) it became customary to use slaves as scribes and auditors; it was assumed that statements from slaves, who could be tortured, would be more reliable than those from freemen, whom the law protected from such drastic verification techniques.

Accounting later became more prestigious in Greece, however, and records of construction costs of government buildings were carved on the structures. (One such tablet indicates that the Parthenon cost 469 silver talents, or about $2 million at today's prices. By comparison the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt cost 1,500 talents, according to accounting records inscribed on the pyramid and reported by Herodotus.) In the Roman Empire in about 200 ВС, quaestors in the territories were responsible for supervising the local government accountants. The quaestors' reports to Rome were given in person and heard by an examiner, a practice that gives us our modern-day term auditor (from Latin audire, to hear). In the Byzantine Empire Constantine (early fourth century AD) founded a public administration school in which accounting was taught. The Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne (642-814 AD) continued the Roman and Persian examples of government accountants and auditors; after his death this group was disbanded, and the disintegration of the empire soon followed.

Accounting declined in the Middle Ages but was revived in Italy during the Crusades. Full-blown double-entry bookkeeping appears in Genoese records of 1340, and the Office of Exchequer (from an Old French word meaning a counting table covered with a checkered cloth) developed in England. In the 15th century branches of the Medici Bank were required to submit annual balance sheets to the main office in Florence. In 1631 an accountant was sent from Holland by the financial backers of the settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the colony's increasing debt; the new Americans thus experienced their first audit.⁴

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