Dinheiro Na Mesopotamia e Egito Antigo

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doi:10.1006/cpac.2001.0500Critical Perspectives on Accounting(2002)13, 333367

RETHEORIZING ACCOUNTING, WRITING AND

MONEY WITH EVIDENCE FROM

MESOPOTAMIA AND ANCIENT EGYPT

MAHMOUDEZZAMEL* AND KEITHHOSKIN

*Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Wales, UK andWarwickBusiness School, University of Warwick, England, UK

Drawing on historical evidence form Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, this papertheoretically examines the relationship between accounting, writing and money.We develop Foucaluts work on practices and Derridas work on the logic of thesupplement to advance the argument that writing emerged as a supplement toaccounting, money emerged as the double supplement to both accounting andwriting, with accounting itself being a supplement to prior ways of numberingand valuing, and so accounting is part of a play of supplements. Accountingsimultaneously named and counted objects as commodities, and in so doingit conferred a precise (denominated) value upon them: a value producing arecontextualised action, as items could, beyond the here and now, be called up,checked and demanded in precisely the amount denominated. The paper argues

that as supplementary technologies, accounting, writing, and money of accountenact new power and knowledge relations which produce a transformation in theforms that power and knowledge can take. From its genesis, accounting, thoughtechnically simple, was never theoretically primitive. We develop this thesis firstby re-examining recent findings on the role played by accounting in making possiblethe genesis of counting and writing, and demonstrating the theoretical complexityof accountings role as the supplement that produces further supplements. Thepaper then suggests that the invention of accounting, writing and money made itpossible to enter a world of transactionality and this represented a double break:(i) a breakfroma world in which equivalence and value reciprocity are meaninglessbecause of the absence of money; and (ii) a break intoa world where equivalenceand value reciprocity are always enacted through supplementarity.

c 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Accounting Before Writing: The Emergent Problem of The Supplement

Mathematics and writing have, it has become clear in recent years, a close symbioticrelationship. Born at the same time, their destinies have always been closely linked, evenif the latter has to a large extentand long sinceliberated itself from the demands of

Received 20 May 2000; revised 13 December 2000; accepted 25 March 2001

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334 M. Ezzamel and K. Hoskin

the former. For a society to develop a mathematics that goes beyond simple counting, amaterial support of some kind is essential; without writing, the limitations of the humanmemory are such that only a limited degree of numerical sophistication can be achieved.In those two most ancient literate societies that are Mesopotamia and Egypt, the inverseis equally true; writing was invented, in part at least, for the purposes of numericalaccounting. In the development of writing in these societies during the late fourth andearly third millennia BC, material needs and in particular the need of record-keepingplayed a central role. In the case of Mesopotamia . . . the archaeological discoveries ofthe last few decades have allowed us to follow the development, virtually from scratch, ofthese first writing systems. The material support is clay, virtually indestructible, and thefirst documents are accounts. It was thus the need to measure, divide and distribute theirsocieties material wealth that gave birth to the first writing systems (Benoitet al., 1992,p 3; original emphases).

This paper is part theoretical, part historical. Its theoretical concern is to re-ask

the age-old question: what is accounting? Historically, it attempts to answer thisquestion by returning to the earliest known stage in accountings development,which covers, however surprisingly, the period beforethe invention of writing. Weexamine historical evidence from Mesopotamia which shows how token accounting,before writing, was used to denote and record objects, in association with the movefrom hunter-gathering to agriculture, around 8000 BC: how it was then involvedwith the development of the first cities and states, around 4500 BC, and with theinvention of the cuneiform writing system (Schmandt-Besserat, 1978, 1992; seealso Mattessich, 1989). Drawing on evidence from ancient Egypt, we explore how,after the invention of writing a first form of money emerged, within the accountingdocuments (which were now written) as money of account (Cerny, 1954; Janssen,1975).

These significant developments raise two main questions. First, there is the

question of what this accounting before writing may be. Secondly, there is thequestion of what money is, once it is admitted that it may have emerged asan extension of this early accounting. These are questions which, we believe,have rarely been considered. Therefore, the adequacy of our answers is of lessimportance than the fact of their raising, not least because they then lead onto further questions. There is, for example, the relation between accounting andthe economic, once we accept the possibility that accounting had a constitutiverole, along with writing, counting and money, in constructing the very categoriesof economic activity in literate culture. There is also the issue of how modes ofknowledge interplay with forms of power; for, by understanding how accountingoperates before writing, we may derive a new perspective on power-knowledgeinterrelations from before the genesis of literate civilization.

Our aim is to promote an understanding of accounting both as a means ofrecording transactions via numerical linguistic and money signs, and as the meansof making possible the invention of writing and money. We argue that accountingshould no longer be treated as something secondary to writing, a tool serving simplyto turn the wheels of such aspects of literate culture as business or economics.In this paper, accounting is refused any reductively simple definition, whether astechnology representing a pre-existing value, language of business, or form ofeconomic inscription. Instead, the paper develops an alternative way of explainingaccountings role, in its own right, inthe genesis of writing and literate culture1.


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Accounting, writing and money 335

Given the emphasis of previous scholars on the power of writing as medium (e.g.McLuhan, 1962; Goody, 1986), and the argument that writings invention initiatedcivilization and the state, and even transformed human consciousness (Ong,1982, p. 78), it is understandable if the potential theoreticalsignificance of tokenaccounting should be virtually ignored. As our opening quotation implies, this maybe because such an accounting was considered so technically elementary as toappear no more than a simple counting born of the need of record-keeping.That the first documents should be accounts: the italics say it all. However, justbecause this accounting was technically simple does not mean that it is theoreticallyso. Here our concern is that the invention of writing has systematically foreclosed onthe possible theoretical significance of this prior accounting. This significance cannow nonetheless be appreciated, in that here was a technology of naming, countingand valuing objects: a technology which came as (a) a visible sign system beforewriting, (b) a form of abstract numbering before counting, and (c) a technology ofdenominated valuing before money2.

Following this lead, we propose a base-line understanding of accounting (uponwhich the arguments in this paper are based). First, that accounting is apracticeofentering in a visible format a record (an account) of items and activities. Secondly,that any account involves a particular kind of signswhich both nameand count theitems and activities recorded. Thirdly, that the practice of producing an account isalways a form ofvaluing: (i)extrinsicallyas a means of capturing and re-presentingvalues derived from outside for external purposes, defined as valuable by someother agent; and (ii)intrinsically, in so far as this practice of naming, counting, andrecording in visible format in itself constructs the possibility of precise valuing.

We argue that moneys genesis was as money of account, in contrast to traditional

approaches which view it as a response to demands for a medium of exchangeor store of value. We examine how the first money emerges as a precipitateand extension of token accounting, and how, in that process, it goes beyond thestewardship functions of the tokens to operate in exchange relations too, evenin the state-controlled, non-market economy of ancient Egypt. We also considerhow money of account enabled accounting records to confer on the commoditiesa new kind of denominated value. Under previous forms of exchange, as barter orgift (Sahlins, 1974), value equivalence was reached when the parties involvedwere reciprocally satisfied (usually via over-reciprocation, rather than a balancemeasured by some outside yardstick). With money of account, a yardstick wasconstituted which made balance seems the natural form of exchange valueequivalence, to be exceeded only exceptionally. Once invented, this money confers

economic meaning and power in its own right. But before we explore theseconsiderations in detail, we develop a theoretical framework to help capture thesignificance of the finding that a putatively simple accounting not only comes beforebut also contributes to the development of writing and money.

Our framework draws on, but also extends, the work of Foucault and Derridaby seeing their approaches as complementary, in the way adumbrated by Said(1978). First, to explain accounting and money as practice, we draw initiallyon Foucaults work, which indicates that we may best understand the historicaldevelopment of the grand metaphysical abstractionssociety, the state, the self


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by concentrating on how, in general, humans engage in, and are shaped by,practices. To stipulate more closely what sortof practices may have such profoundeffects we recuperate Derridas (1976) logic of the supplement. Derrida pursuedthe seemingly paradoxical logic of how something apparently secondary couldsupplant what is taken as primary, so that the secondary becomes central anddominant while remaining unnoticed. His particular interest was in how writing,generally considered secondary to speech, becomes primary in structuring culture,the self, ways of thinking and principles of truth. The supplement (e.g. writing) beginsas a mere afterthought, indeed a superfluous addition, yet as it supplements itsupplants. Initially something extra, writing fills what in retrospect can be seenas a void. So the supplement proves central, but, as we argue later, it does so onlythrough remaining secondary.

We use this framework to develop our argument of seeing accounting andmoney as secondary practices and supplements. We understand accountingas a technology of valuing and consider how, even before writing, accountingengendered modes of knowing and exercising power. To that end, we first evaluatethe role of accounting in the displacement of hunter-gathering by an agrarian systemand the initiating of a form of literally eco-nomic discourse across much of theMiddle East from 8000 BC onwards. We consider the development of complextokens, from around 4400 BC as enabling the generation of more extended formsof discourse and knowledge-based power through the development of the city(or polis), manufacturing and governmental activity, followed by the emergence ofcounting and writing around 3100 BC.

We follow this by examining how money of account functions as a new valuingsign, and as a standard of value. In ancient Egypt, items begin to be valued through

the use of monies of account by being named and counted as worth so many kharof grain, or deben of copper, silver or gold (see later)i.e. the measuring is done interms of a standard, recognised measure, already in use, as a commodity accountwhich now, in signifying the worth of other entities in a precisely denominated way,appears to have a value in itself. These monies of account then become employedin a whole range of economic contexts: in stewardship accounts, in exchangetransactions, in recompense contracts, and in legal disputes. Thus it is arguablethat, beyond writing and counting, another kind of new sign, enacting a new anddistinct kind of signifier-signified relation, is hewn out of accounting. As a signifier,the money sign follows on, like writing and counting, from the accounting token,in being a visible sign and an outside yardstick, which denotes and denominates.But it is more directly derived from accounting in the way that it more directly

disseminates (while transforming) accounting-based value. For not only were thekhar measures of grain, and the deben measures of metal originally signifierssupporting an accounting practice, they also derive or ground value as signifiedsthrough having been objects rendered valuable via accounting.

Practices, Signs and Supplements: Beyond Derrida and Foucault

Both Foucault and Derrida have pursued, in their differing ways, very similaragendas, critically appraising how our ways of acting, thinking and speaking develop


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and change over time, and identifying internal contradictions in our modes ofsupposedly reasoned explanationregimes of truth for Foucault, logocentrismfor Derrida. Both have challenged cultural hegemony and the received wisdom ofenquiry which aspires to the condition of science when dealing with texts. It is thisemphasis on textuality, or their attempt to make visiblewhat is customarily invisiblein a text, namely, the various mystries, the rules, and the play of its textuality(Said, 1978, p. 674, original emphases) that is a striking commonality betweenthe two. There is, however, a crucial difference: Derridas analysis resides (more orless) totally within the text, whereas Foucault connects the text with an extratextualreality by making it assume its affiliation with institutions, offices, agencies,classes, academics, corporations, groups, guides, ideologically defined parties andprofessions (Said, 1978, p. 701). While noting these differences, we build on thecomplementarities between Foucault and Derrida to theorize accounting, writingand money as practices and supplements.

Practices: supplementing foucault

Foucault, particularly in his late work, (e.g. 1984a; 1984b) argued that practicesare neither purely social phenomena nor properties of individuals: instead, theyfunction both socially and within the self. This view provides an internally coherentexplanation of the genesis and operation of social forms, knowledges and powers,while applying reflexively to how we ourselves act and think. As Foucault put it in aninterview (see Kritzman, 1988, pp. 3537, our emphasis):

what different forms of rationality offer as their necessary being can perfectly well be shownto have a history; and the network of contingencies from which it emerges can be traced.

Which is not to say that these forms of rationality were irrational. It means that they resideon a base of human practiceand human history; and that since these things have beenmade, they can be unmade, as long as we know how it was that they were made.

Foucault (1977, 1984a,b) identified some disciplinary practices, such as surveil-lance, judgement, writing, examination, and the care of the self. We, in turn, havesuggested that accounting is a practice in this sense (Ezzamel et al., 1990; Ezza-mel, 1994a; Hoskin & Macve, 1994; Carmona et al., 1997, 2002). However, what islacking is a more systematic understanding of precisely what kind of practices areinvolved at any time, and over time, in producing particular truth-games3. Mean-while, Derrida, in his early work culminating inOf Grammatology(1976) developeda possible way forward for understanding practices more systematically, with hisrecognition that supplements are always secondary. He (ibid, p. 146, original em-

phases) quoting Rousseaus terms, observes how, in Rousseaus Emile, pedagogy,though supposedly a supplement to Nature, is that which makes human nature(and a level of insight beyond the animal) possible. So the supplement proves tobe indispensable with the result that: all education, the keystone of Rousseauistthought, will be described or presented as a system of substitution [ suppleance]destined to reconstitute Natures edifice in the most natural way possible.

So it can be that, for Rousseau, writing had been the simple supplement to thespoken word (1976, p. 7). But this supposed simplicity is always compromisedin Rousseaus text, by the play of supplementarity. Writing is never a simple


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supplement because it only has its effects through the interplay with pedagogicpractice. And so, Derrida seemingly has the opportunity to show that writingsinvention is the occasion for an extended play of supplementarity, where a newcommunicative practice interplays with a new pedagogy as required to ensure thatthe visible sign system would be effectively learned and retained across time andspace. But Derrida instead takes up from Rosseau a view of writing in which ithas a more restricted, if still significant, double effect, in itself. First, he sees itas having restructured speech and thought, and launched what we conventionallydescribe as civilization (see also Havelock, 1962; McLuhan, 1962). But second,writing eluded notice to become the blind-spot at the heart of what Derrida callslogocentric thinking. So Derrida does not take the seemingly short step to a theoryof secondary practices where pedagogy and writing (along with their reciprocalpractices, learning and reading) would be seen as interplaying to produce our waysof reasoned acting and thought. Instead, he focuses increasingly on writing aloneas primary supplement, whose proper appreciation will correct the longstandingfailure of Western reason to understand itself in adequate terms. Thus he developshis famous argument that, in the Western tradition of reason, writing has beenoverlooked in favour of speech. For speech has been privileged as the hot lineto meaning and truth, conceived since the ancient Greeks as residing in theLogos4. This philosophical devaluing of writing, this metaphysics of presence,(Derrida, 1976, p. 49), means that we have inherited a logocentrism which is alsoa phonocentrism. Consequently Derrida (ibid, p. 4, original emphasis) proposesa corrective meta-analysis where writing is given full value. In the formulation heproposes early on inOf Grammatology, this meta-analysis is seemingly to be posedas the science of writinggrammatology

In his subsequent work, Derrida looks to some deeper version of writing, e.g.arche-writing, as means to reasons recourse from the failure of logocentrismas phonocentrism. He remains oblivious, however, to the extent to which ageneral grammatocentrism has displaced phonocentrism as the axis around whichlogocentric thinking revolves. Derrida fails to build on the possibility opened upin his analysis to develop the logic of the supplement idea in a way that willenable a thinking beyond the weaknesses of logocentric thinking. Instead, herejects the logicof the supplement idea, in favour of the idea that supplementarityoperates via a graphic of the supplement. It is against this ultimately writing-centred approach that we now wish to resuscitate the idea that our reasoning andthinking is structured at the level of supplements (among which writing is, since itsinvention, one), which have a general logic of operation of being at the centre while

remaining secondary. It is here, we argue, that the case of token-accounting canintervene. First, as the supplement which contributed to the development of writing,token accounting suggests that anywriting-centred understanding of practices isquestionable. Secondly, token accounting draws attention back to the secondarystatus and range of supplements at play in the logic of the supplement5.

Towards a new logic of the supplement

Either writing was never a simple supplement, or it is urgently necessary to construct anew logic of the supplement. (Derrida, 1976, p. 7)


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Thus Derrida claims at the outset of Of Grammatology: but by the end ofthe book he is pronouncing on the impossibility of formulating the movement ofsupplementarity (ibid, p. 314). The urgent necessity has seemingly evaporatedas Derrida discovers serious theoretical objections. First, given that formal logicis developed only within literate culture, writing as supplement cannot have alogic, for it would be subject to something that it has itself produced. Secondly, iflogocentric reason is the product of supplementarity, a reasoned understanding ofsupplementarity cannot be generated within logocentrism. In that case, the adventof supplementarity must be nonrational as the origin of reason must (and notsimply irrational like an opacity within the system of rationality). . . (ibid, p. 259).

In other words, reason must begin from non-reason, since any other explanationof its genesis will be self-contradictory. However, given Derridas concern to avoidthis vicious circle, his proposed solution is perplexing, precisely because it is soimmanently writing-centred, and hence self-contradictory in turn. Halfway throughOf Grammatology he abandons the term logic; introducing a substitute term,graphic (ibid, p. 165): What about the voice within the logic of the supplement?Within that which should perhaps be called the graphic of the supplement? Thismove, arguably, enables him to construct a framework where writing can comebefore logic; however, it does so at a serious cost. First, the status of the supplementas essentially secondary is destabilised, as writing becomes the prime supplement:If supplementarity is a necessarily indefinite process, writing is the supplementpar excellence, since it marks the point where the supplement proposes itself assupplement of supplement, sign of sign, taking the place of a speech alreadysignificant. . . It marks the place of the initial doubling. . . (ibid, p. 281). But thisimplies that writing is first among equals; for such a supplement then becomes a

First Mover, and so undermines the idea of the supplement, as secondary, fromthe outset. Secondly, using the term graphic ultimately locates the supplementin some determinate way withinwriting. To forestall this danger, Derrida (pp. 5657, original emphases) draws a distinction between writing as historical form (thevulgar concept of writing), and as originary arche-writing which, by coming beforeboth speech and writing, and by being located outside time is that very thing whichcannot let itself be reduced to the form of a presence. . . the original, natural etc.language. . . had itself always been a writing.

But why does Derrida make such a move? Our view is that it derives directlyfrom his thesis that logocentrism has failed, as reason, by being a phonocentrism:wherefore, the reasoned move is to reverse writings suppression by positing anarche-writing before writing, and conceiving of a graphic, rather than a logic, of

the supplement. However, given Schmandt-Besserats work, we can point out that,empirically, what comes before writing is not another writing but token accounting:while, theoretically, the problem remains that, to posit a writing before writing,even an invisible one beyond time and presence, still threatens a vicious circle.In contrast to Derridas views, we argue that there is neitherprior presence, norinvisible writing, except as logocentric constructs emanating from the alphabeticsupplement to earlier forms of writing, and further that this writing was not a primarysupplement. We may then recuperate a logicof the supplement which gets beyondthe limits of logocentric reason, by not seeing both logic and the supplement as


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practices relate8

. In the remainder of this paper we use historical material drawnfrom Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to analyse the specific ways in which suchpractices interact horizontally, at a given time, and vertically, over time.

Accounting and the Development of Writing

Here, we consider how the emergence of the accounting supplement was central tothe transition from a world that was essentially aneconomic to one where the circleof the economic began to turn. Accounting constituted a new way of valuing whichmade possible a new social world and a new relation to space and time.

Accounting tokens and writing

Evidence from Mesopotamia (Schmandt-Besserat, 1978, 1992) offers a dramaticnew explanation of the invention of cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing around3100 BC as a spin-off from an earlier token accounting system. The tokens,shaped into simple geometrical forms (cones, spheres, etc.), first appeared around8000 BC, in the Fertile Crescent, one of the earliest settlements with evidence ofagricultural cultivation (see Appendices A and B for various types of tokens). Theythen proliferated in number and were made into more complex shapes, often withholes and indentations, and became widely disseminated across the area from theEastern Mediterranean to the Indus river. Schmandt-Besserat draws the connectionbetween their invention and the shift from hunter-gatherer to agriculture across this

region. The tokens, she stresses, were used for stewardship purposes, in relation toidentifying and securing a surplus for maintenance of the farming system over time;they were not used at this point in trade or exchange. But also, clay tokens alwaysfunctioned as linguistic-numerical signs, i.e. each token bothnamedandcountedaspecific quantity of a particular designated item (e.g. one jar of oil). Linguisticallythey stabilised separate visible designations for object sets (cones, spheres andovoids, see Appendices A and B) which could be circulated and identified acrossa group who shared the code. Numerically they embodied, as Schmandt-Besserat(1992, p. 189) suggests, a principle of cardinality, i.e. the final word of the seriesrepresent[ed] the number of the set. For example, seven incised ovoids stood forseven jars of oil. This visible sign system was neither purely linguistic (i.e. writing)nor purely numerical (i.e. abstract counting), even though it was a system from

which sign systems incorporating separate linguistic and numerical signs could bederived. Instead it was a system where each token operated as a distinct sign(ibid, p. 161), and where token collections constituted texts conveying a particularsignificance so long as (a) they were maintained in some stable formation and(b) there were people who understood the sign system, i.e. who could read thesesign-based texts.

Then, from some time after 5000 BC, the first city-based states appear, and againthe accounting tokens are found in these sites, particularly where some treasuryfunction existed. These tokens contain a large proportion of the more complex cones


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between them. The system could then proliferate, both through adding new signs,so expanding the complexity of the signifiers and what is signified via the chain ofsigns, and also through multiplying chains of signs.

Challenges to Schmandt-Besserats thesis

Schmandt-Besserats thesis received both criticism (Lieberman, 1980; Powell, 1981;Michalowski, 1993; Zimansky, 1993; Daniels, 1996) and support (e.g. Hallo, 1992;Morrison, 1992; Rudgley, 1998). Lieberman questioned whether the meanings es-tablished for cuneiform word-signs in her earlier work could be extrapolated also tothe earlier three-dimensional tokens. He suggested that at best tokens operated as

a purely numerical system of counting, with non-numerical signs emerging only withwriting. However, her recent work (1992) identified the earlier envelops impressedwith non-numerical tokens, and with the tokens inside, so answering this objection,and has systematically expanded the range of evidence reviewed, so making thecase for linking the tokens . . . to the clearly intelligible logograms. . . substantiallystronger (Hallo, Foreword to Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, p. x).

More recent critics call for a careful assessment of her, at times, over-enthusiastic,interpretations. For example, Michalowski (1993) notes her novel insights but raisesthree main objections. First, because the archeological context of most tokenscannot be established, her contention that these tokens found in a variety of cultureswere used for the same purpose for millennia must be tempered down. This isa concern shared with Zimansky (1993, p. 516) who also finds it incredible thattokens could have had uniform meanings over such a vast area and for so long.

Secondly, Michalowski questions her chronology on the grounds that Althoughit can be demonstrated in general that the envelopes found in certain placesantedated the first writing, we still do not know that this was the case in thesouthern Mesopotamian city of Uruk, which is where the first writing is documented(p. 997). Yet he acknowledges that there can be no doubt that both the knownenvelops and the impressed tablets for the most part precede the first evidenceof [cuneiform] writing (p. 997). Thirdly, Michalowski argues that her interpretationof proto-cuneiform led her to pronounce that writing is the outcome of abstractcounting. Alternatively, he suggests that proto-cuneiform did not have signs forabstract numbers; the symbols that represent numbers combined the number andunit of measure and were always part of a specific measuring system that wasrestricted to specific sets of items (p. 998). None of these criticisms, however,

undermines the general thesis that token accounting had a major impact on thedevelopment of writing.Zimansky (1993) argues that given the life style of the region the sheep token

should have been most common; yet there were only 15 examples covering seventhousand years compared to the large number of tokens said to signify nail andwork, build. He surmises (p. 516): Is it really credible that these early villagerswould leave more evidence of keeping accounts on nails and work days than live-stock? While not wishing to enter this debate in detail, we see nothing incredibleabout a greater urge to keep accounts for nails, work, build than live-stock; for


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it could be that keeping track of who has done what and of (bottleneck) specialistitems such as nails was deemed essential for ensuring that an equitable allocationof reward is provided for the settled oiko-nomic life, rather than worrying aboutthe plentiful supply of sheep. Clearly, the corrective evidence provided by thesecritics must be brought to bear on Scmandt-Besserats work. This evidence howeverdoes not alter our main thesis, as even her critics acknowledge that: (i) tokenaccounting predates writing; and (ii) the inventors of proto-cuneiform drew on tokenaccounting, but not necessarily on purely abstract incised signs, among othercommunicative devices.

The significance of accounting tokens

If tokens are accepted as signs constituting texts, the implications are considerable.When theories of the sign such as Peirces or Saussures are referring to visiblesigns, one does not have to presume that they must be referring to writing.Manufactured from clay into abstract geometrical forms, and serving both to nameand count commodities, tokens constitute symbols whose relation to objects canbe determined only via interpretation (cf. Damerow, 1988, p. 145). Their ongoingcomprehension would have required, in the terms that Peirce endorses, the constantapplication of convention and habitin other words, a constant investment in thesupplementary practices of teaching and learning (Peirce, 1957). In addition, themeanings alluded to particular token signifiers that could be anticipated to havevaried (whether slightly or radically) across time and space, just as the names givento them orally would have varied across different linguistic groups. In all these ways,tokens would have functioned as signs in just the way that written signs do under

the Peircean approach.Tokens similarly qualify as signs under the Saussurean model. Signification can

be generated from the differences between the tokens, so long as their manufactureenables difference (and identity) to be discriminable by the readers of the tokentexts. Tokens may (as Schmandt-Besserat suggests) have signified collectivities,e.g. a herd rather than an animal, there is no numerical specificity embedded. Astokens began to be translatableintowriting, they became sites for an interpretationimpossible before writingthus reinforcing Derridas point that any origin of meaningis indefinitely deferred.

Tokens as signs constituting texts may then be understood as having thetextual effects usually attributed to writing. Returning to Saids understanding ofthe possible complementarities between Foucault and Derrida, textuality and its

contextualising power may now be discerned as beginning five millenia beforewriting. Social and individual transformations similar to those associated withwritings invention may at least be looked for in this earlier period. The obvious placeto start is with the shift to agriculture, and to inquire how a logic of the supplementmay be at work within these texts and beyond, in a world that is now con-textual, ina distinctive and possibly decisive new way.

It is because of the emergence of token accounting and its interplay with thesupplements of counting and writing that an agricultural way of life began tosupplant hunter-gatherer societies across the Middle East. This transformation


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was more than just a new improved mode of subsistence. Sahlins (1974) haspointed out what conflict and loss was involved in abandoning the older way oflife, and how anti-economic the world berfore agriculture was. Humans adopted anew relation to time as cyclical (to be structured into seasons and harvests), tospace as static and bounded, a place of permanent or semi-permanent dwelling(the oikos), and to value as something cumulative and divisible, to be allocated bydue process (nomos), since surplus and deficit were the stuff of survival, reflectedin careful stewardship9. This transformation involved the inversion of fundamentalvalues and the erasure of former identities: the hunter-gatherer cultures weresystematically different in their values. Sahlins has argued that the systems ofstone-age economics were not underdeveloped versions of our own (1974,p. xii) and that hunter-gathering was the Original Affluent Society (p. 1), whereits inhabitants were a form of uneconomic man whose wants were scarce andmeans [in relation] plentiful (p. 13).

One may see just how disruptive and difficult the breakthrough to the accountingand agricultural world would have been. The successful dissemination of agricultureon a wide scale depended on getting people to abandon the mobile economyof hunter-gatherers for sedentary occupation in villages, to undertake regularcalendar-based form of work with different implements, to accept the storage ofgrain for lean months and some system of its redistribution, and to begin operatingwith tokens. The question then is less how agriculture first emerged, but how itsucceeded in displacing the old practices and values. It is in this context that therole the tokens looms so large. Tokens enabled a new way of valuing, focused onconservation and stewardship. In the simple token phase, this was concerned withcounting stores of different kinds of grain (represented by spheres, cones and flat

disks) and perhaps animal numbers (represented by cylinders and lenticular disks).As linguistic-numerical signs, tokens promoted a new relation between knowledgeand power. In a given context, tokens impose a new kind of stable value on objects,by apparently representing, to those familiarwith the code, a linguistic-numericalequivalence (literally, a measure for measure) between signs and objects. Thus,even before writing, the token system constructed and imposed value upon a givennumber of objects. Moreover, accounting supplemented this simple valuing. On theone hand, it maintained a visible record of past transactions completed (or not), andso conserved value from the past; on the other it offered a visible sign of the levelof future obligations to be met, thus projecting value into the future. In such waysit constructed a new organization of: (i) time, in terms of continuing stewardshipfor obligations past, and future planning to meet obligations yet to come; and

(ii) space as delineated, since it required a secure and segregated storage-space forobligations rendered (and their records), and some designation of the space fromwhich each subject should produce the value demanded. In short, as Schmandt-Besserat (1992, p. 170) argues, the emergence of tokens was not a mere corollaryof farming, but rather of the social structures which derived from agriculture: themeans, furthermore to the creation of an elite overseeing a redistributive economy.But this did not necessarily signal the emergence of distributive justice, i.e. takingfrom some and giving to others. Instead, as a subsistence economy, administeredby accounting, it took from some but kept from others, until it had provided first for


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the men with access to greater power, those whose rewards are so visible in theirfunerary sites.

Given the above, writing becomes token accountings supplement. At the sametime, tokens could onlymake sense through a play of other supplements. Alwayshighly context-dependent, ambiguous and difficult to decode, tokens in use reliedupon the supplementary support of oral discourse and pedagogy. As a sign-system, tokens could only have produced signification at the level of what Foucaultidentified as the order of discourse. Moreover, as Damerow (1988, p. 150) hassuggested, appreciation by the ancient scribes of the context-dependent meaningof tokens across time and space would have required an intensive pedagogic andintellectual investment in both learning and working with the sign system. Thosewho became learned in the new technology discovered through its use the meansto articulating new desires, such as differential power and status, and restricting thenew knowledge to themselves.

We argue that there is no prior presence, e.g. the invisible arche-writing, behindsigns, such as tokens, as the guarantee of meaning. Instead, they are supplementsand the product of a play of other supplements. Similarly, as linguistic-numericalin format, the token-system is a mutually independent sign-system. Like writing,it does not mirror speech; instead, at the synchronic level, it generates significationthrough its difference from speechspecifically through being a system of linguistic-numerical signs, which have no origin as such in speech or writing, but at the sametime are intertranslatable with them. In addition, diachronically, it is, like writing, ameans for extending and transforming the range of things that had been said in aworld of pure orality.

Token accounting, we argue, subverts the grammatocentric claim that writing

is, in any sense, the archetypal sign. For token accounting comes before vulgarwriting, as the means of the latters invention; and simultaneously it compromisesany idea of a prior invisible or arche-writing, since token accounting occupies theplace where such a sign would go, without being writing. Token accounting opens upthe possibility that sign-systems may generate signification according to the logic ofthe supplement. Freed from the presupposition that writing is always already-there,we may begin to view it as supplement to token accounting, and to see also how theinvention of writing made as significant a difference as accounting. This statementis concerned with both the written and the spoken without privileging either; andit recognises that no specific order of discourse is self-generating, since therewill always be specific practices forming the controlling, selecting, organizing (andoccasionally redistributing) procedures that structure its production. This also clears

the space for linking accounting to traditional great divides in human experience:the successful economic move into agriculture, that way of life that is underpinnedby the stable oikos or home, and the regulated distribution (nomos) both of land,and breeding stock; the appearance of the state, or polis, as central collector ofa surplus, defined by accounting, and then utilisable for rule within and conquestwithout: the invention of literate culture and within that culture of that new instrumentof value: money.

Token accounting enacted a first form of accountability from those whomit touched: not a detailed modern accountability for every aspect of human


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performance, but an accountability from subjects for the value to be delivered orconserved, which would be appraised in due season. The results of this valuingare manifest in the surviving artworks of the early Uruk kingdom, which depict,time and again, lines of worshippers bringing to the temple the products of theirfields and orchards (Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, p. 176); and which alternativelysignal in the depiction of floggings of citizens the administering of sanctions toMesopotamian delinquents (ibid, p. 180). Such art reminds us that the sanctionswere usually greatest on the powerless, but the accountability system operated alsoon the powerful, insofar as the accountants were responsible for attaining for theruler the value demanded from each subject. Accounting, as a technology of valuing,retains this distinctive role from before literacy down to today. But once accountingis supplemented by counting and writing, the possibility of constructing a definablemonetaryvalue emerges (see Ezzamel, 1997).

Such a valuing is what is embodied in the new supplementary term, money, whichemerges in its first form as money of account so soon after the invention of writing.Accordingly, in the next section we consider the role played by money of account inthe other ancient writing culture, Egypt, in order to underline how quickly and widelythese new power-knowledge technologies became disseminated and embedded.Here, in an equation where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, accounting+ counting + writing = money and accounting becomes even more indispensable.

Money Forms and Value Reciprocity

The distinctive development that we see introduced by the invention of money ofaccount is a principle of value reciprocity. Money of account constructs value bydenominating it as something other than, and separate from, either the commodityor its accounting; instead value becomes something which passes reciprocallybetween the two, supposedly guaranteeing that each is equalised in value terms.In so doing, the role of money as supplementer of value is concealed behind anapparent but deceptive power to guarantee equivalence. Moreover, the power ofmoney enables the construction of previously unprecedented levels of wealth, andthe possibility of new power relations for those with money and those without it.

But before proceeding with our analysis, we wish to make three clarifications.First, for most of her history (probably until c 400 BC; see Lloyd, 1983, p. 328)ancient Egypt was an economy without coinage; hence forms and uses of money

of account cannot be straightforwardly interpreted in terms that become taken forgranted given the existence of coinage. To mark this distinction we shall talk of Egyptinitially as a non-coinage economy. Secondly, when we discuss the relationshipbetween money and reciprocity we wish to emphasize that the emergence of anew form of reciprocity is tied to the accounting-writing-money shift. Our pointis that the invention of money changed the form that this reciprocity took, fromobject reciprocity to a new kind of valuereciprocity, where the principle of monetaryequivalence takes precedence. Thirdly, although most of the evidence we draw upondates back mainly to two eras; the Eleventh Dynasty (2005 BC; James, 1962, or


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1986 BC, Goedicke, 1984) and the Nineteenth Dynasty (1305 BC) onwards, thegenesis of accounting and money in ancient Egypt dates back to at least 3300 BC 10,but relevant evidence from earlier periods is sparse (see evidence from the SecondDynasty, 2890 BC, Edwards, 1971; Kemp, 1983; the Fifth Dynasty, Smith, 1971).The evidence drawn from 2005 or 1986 BC relates to the use of money of accountfor the purposes of monitoring a private estate, and that drawn from 1305 BConwards relates to semi-barter transactions, valuation of inventories of personalwealth and allocation of the fruits of joint work.

In this evidence, as always, money plays a double game. First, it appears as thebenign supplement, embodying the new possibility that value exists in a separatedenominable form and simply making space for itself as numeraire to act as themeasure of that value. But secondly, money is also the dangerous supplement.Beneath the apparent surface where equivalence reigns and money is just atransparent medium, the play of difference is at work: from the production oflittle remainders and marginal inequalities, through the generation of interest andprofit, to moneys own re-writing into new and more complex instruments. Moneyconstructs the very idea of value while constantly re-writing and supplementingvalue. We argue that in this ultimate sense the transition to a coinage economy is

just one early, though significant, step in a process that pre-dates coinage, and thelate Egyptian world, just before the conquest by Alexander, shows certain changingrelations to money, largely due to the impact of coinage.

Non-coinage money and the economy of ancient Egypt

According to the traditional view, the exchange use of money is postulated as the

essential criterion, disturbingly not only in modern, but also in primitive society(e.g. Firth, 1957). Under this view, the use of money as a means of payment,as a standard of value (money of account), or as a means of hoarding wealth isnot sufficient for it to qualify as true money; its use as a medium of exchangeis assumed to unify the system by allowing a logical linking up of these variousfunctions. Yet, as (Polanyi, 1977, p. 104) observes, this view assumes an originalsituation of barter and an operation suited to facilitate it; namely, the acquisition ofmoney objects in order to exchange them for the desired goods, a scenario whichfinds little support in the history of money. Polanyi (1977, pp. 108109) has alsoemphasised the separate origins of money uses:

Analysis of the data offered by primitive and archaic society reveals that the exchange useof money cannot claim to have given rise to the other money uses. On the contrary, thepayment, storage, and accountancy uses of money had their separate origins and were

institutionalized independently of one another.

We discern a deep-seated prejudice in the traditional view against the role ofmoney as a money of account, which goes back in time. Foucault (1974, p. 170)offers a telling example in which the money of account role was seen in thesixteenth century to conceal the essence of monetary functions: in France, theStates General of 1575 asked for and obtained the suppression of accounting units(which introduced a third definition of money, a purely arithmetical one, in additionto the definition by weight and that by nominal value: this supplementary relation


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concealed the sense of monetary operations from those who did not understandit). . . With the r ise of mercantilism, the seventeenth century witnessed a reversalin emphasis towards the exchange role and away from measure (standard value)and price (substitution/store of wealth) as the main functions of money that wereprevalent during the sixteenth century:

Whereas the Renaissance based the twofunctionsof coinage (measure and substitution)on the double nature of intrinsic character(the fact that it is precious), the seventeenthcentury turns the analysis upside down: it is the exchange function that serves as afoundation for the other two characters (its ability to measure and its capacity to receive aprice thus appearing asqualitiesderiving from that function) (Foucault, 1974, p. 184,original emphases).

Polanyi (1968, p. 166) seeks to address this reversal of the role of money bydefining it independently of markets as being derived from the specific uses ofpayment, standard of value, store of wealth, and means of exchange. The vitalfeature of money objects, which could be [s]hells, coins, feathers, measures ofbarley, banknotes, or innumerable other interchangeable things (Polanyi, 1977,p. 102) in all these uses is their quantifiability.

For Polanyi, money uses are defined by two criteria; the situational context inwhich the use arises, and the operation performed with the money objects. Payment,he contends, is almost as ancient as human life. Defined as the discharge ofobligations by handing over quantifiable objects (1977, p. 102), obligations donot arise from economic transactions but rather from institutional arrangementssuch as those of bride-price, blood-money and fines most commonly associatedwith primitive societies. The standard use of money he sees as accounting driven,since it seeks to quantifiably equate, through some common denominator, amounts

of different kinds of goods for specific purposes so that apples and pears canbe summed up in a meaningful way by relating them to the standard (1977,p. 103). The situational context in which this use arises relates either to barter or tothe storage and management of staples. The operation to be performed involvesattaching numerical tags to the relevant objects. Hence, in the case of barter,reciprocity of exchange is attained through the quantification and summation ofthe goods to be exchanged. In the case of the management of staples, such asthose linked to the palace or the temple, quantification and summation facilitatesstewardship book-keeping, planning and budgeting. Polanyi (1968, p. 167) hassuggested that this pivotal importance of money as a standard for value (moneyof account) underpinned the flexibility of ancient Egypts redistributive system:

The equating of such staples as barley, oil, and wool, in which taxes or rent have to be paid,

or, alternatively, rations or wages may be claimed, is vital since it ensures the possibilityof choice between the different staples for payer and claimant alike. At the same time theprecondition of large scale finance in kind is created, which presupposes the notion offunds and balances, in other words, the interchangeability of staples.

But such uses do not imply that there will be one unitary system for assigningvalue: pre-coinage cultures used various kinds of special monies for specialpurposes, and hence, [e]arly society knows of no all purpose money (Polanyi,1977, p. 98). For example, in eighteenth century Whydah cowriemoney was usedfor statistical enumeration and damba beans were used as a gold weight and


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as a device for accountancy. Similarly, in eighteenth century Dahomey pebblecounts were used for statistical purposes, and quipustrings were used by the Incafor census counting, measurement, and accounting (Polanyi, 1968; Goody, 1986,1987). In such cultures different objects, both physical and symbolic, are employedin the construction of money, and different money uses can be constituted andinstitutionalised independently of one another.

This pattern of monetary forms is totally borne out in ancient Egypt. During theTwentieth Dynasty (New Kingdom) to which much of the evidence on transactionsthat we examine here relates, there were three main special monies: the deben,the sniwand the khar. The deben(91 grams) was the type most frequently used,especially from the Nineteenth Dynasty onwards, and it compared the value of acommodity with a given weight of copper, silver, or gold. The sniw (7.6 grams)compared the value of a commodity with an object of silver, and it has an obscureassociation with a seal-sign. Cerny (1954) has suggested that the sniwmay haveborne an inscription to indicate this weight or the name of the issuing authoritythereby implying that it was a coin, but this proposition has been rejected bymost Egyptologists primarily on the grounds that no such coins have ever beenexcavated in Egypt. It seems therefore that the sniw, like the deben, was usedas a unit of value, and that it was phased out during the first half of the reignof Ramesses III, i.e. around 1170 BC. One sixth of the sniw was called the hinwhich was used as a measure of value only in the case of sesame oil. The khar(76.88 litres) measured the value of a commodity compared with a quantity of corn,and a quarter of it was known as the oipe, and one tenth as the hekat; these weremost frequently used to price basketry.

The evidence suggests that these monies were special monies in Polanyis

sense united only by their quantifiability and being able to function in a particularuse. For example, there was a preference for the use of the khar to value graincontainers and also low value items, deben of copper to value expensive items,and debenof silver and gold to value yet more expensive items. The observedgreater frequency of the use of specific commodities in exchange, e.g. oils, sandals,basketry, garments and other small objects, was not exclusively due to theirpopularity with the average household: they were also used as change moneyto make up for differences in the value of expensive items exchanged such as oxenand coffins. In addition a detailed account like Account VIII from the HekanakhtePapers (discussed below; see also Janssen, 1975, pp. 101111) readily mixesentries denominated as bundles of flax with entries denominated in khar, withoutreconciling them via one superordinate system (e.g. denominating everything in

kharequivalents). At the same time there was an underlying principle of coherencevia the principle of intertranslatability between these special monies11.In a non-coinage economy, money did not have any easy ability to circulate and

be traded in itself, the special quality conferred by coinage and even more by post-coinage monetary instruments. But it particularly functioned as numeraire(standardof value/money of account) and became adapted to function as a medium whichenabled exchange to take place while retaining a definable value over time. It wasalso capable of being a store of value in the form of bullion (silver, gold, grain, andother valuable things).


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Money of account and the constitution of value reciprocity

The shift we identify in reciprocity in ancient Egypt is from a focus on reciprocalexchange of objects to reciprocity of values. The distinction we have in mind is per-haps best clarified via a literary source, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, whichdates back to the Middle Kingdom (Simpson, 1973)12. The story tells of a peasantcalled Khunanup from Wadi Natrun who had to travel to Herakleopolis in MiddleEgypt to get some provisions for his family. He set off on his journey after loadinghis asses with sufficient supplies of bread and beer, and the commodities he wasto exchange for the provisions. As he went through the district of Per-Fefi he cameacross a man called Nemtynakhte standing by the riverbank. Nemtynakhte liked thelook of Khunanups asses and sought to engineer a trick to take them over withoutpayment. The riverside path, which was at the front of Nemtynakhtes property, was

narrow, being the width of a loin cloth. Nemtynakhte spread a cloth over the pathso that its fringe rested on the water and its hem on the barley. As Khunanupattempted to take his asses across the public path Nemtynakhte warned him that hewas going to tread on his cloth. As the peasant went higher, closer to the barley, toavoid treading on the cloth one of the asses filled his mouth with a wisp of barley.Nemtynakhte, being an influential tenant of the High Steward Rensi, immediatelydeclared that he would take away the ass for eating his barley. To this Khunanupreplied My way is good, and one (wisp only) has been damaged. It is for its (thewisps) price that I will buy back my ass if you take possession of it/for a (mere)filling of its mouth with a wisp of barley (Simpson, 1973, p. 33, our emphases).

The story encapsulates two different paradigms of exchange, suggestive of thedifference between oral and literate cultures. Under one paradigm (Nemtynakhtes)

there is simple damage and restitution (object reciprocity), resolved by a pure (ifcompelled) exchange of objects: the ass for the wisp of barley. Khunanup on theother hand embodies the new alternative paradigm made possible by the inventionof writing and money. Exchange now entails value reciprocity, in this view achievableonly through the third term, money. So in place of the forced barter of objects, aprice is put on the damage, which means that the relatively powerless Khunanupcan reinterpret the claim for damages in money terms. As soon as Nemtynakhte ispresented as pricing the ass at a wisp of barley Khunanup can buy back his assfor the same price. Clearly the story is fictitious and symbolic. But what it symbolisesis how the invention of money changes the rules of the exchange game. Valuationis constituted to embrace and reconcile both sides of a transaction. Objects becomecommodities, such that if one transacting party compels an exchange of a particularitem at a specific price, no matter how ridiculous it seems to those not involved inthe exchange, the other transacting party can insist on a prioriclaim to buy backthe same commodity for the same price13. In this way, as reflected in Khunanupsclever reply, a principle of valuereciprocity across individuals can be constituted.More significantly, this principle of value reciprocity established in the above storythrough compelled exchange is easily extended to the more general case of normalexchange of willing parties.

The broad impact of value reciprocity on ancient Egypts non-coinage economyis illustrated more clearly by reference to the types of transactions which


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emerged then. The evidence we use below covers transactions from the Thebannecropolis village of Deir el-Medina, over a period of 150 years14. Janssen (1975)identifies eight types of formulae, which for him characterise economic transactionsin ancient Egypt and which we group here into three broad categories: exchange,recompense and inventory lists. The first category relates to transactions whichinvolve the exchange of goods, appropriately valued, between two parties; a sellerand a buyer. The most frequent example of this is the format what A gives B inexchange forP, with A and B being the transacting parties and P the commoditysold by B to A. Strictly speaking each of A and B is both a seller and a buyersimultaneously, for as A buysP s/he alsosellsanother commodity to B in exchange.Reciprocity is observed through the construction of a value for each commodityusing the medium of money of account and the exchange of commodities ofequivalent values between the transacting parties. Consider, for example, thefollowing transaction which was reckoned in debensof copper (Cerny, 1954, p. 907):

Year 5, third month of the summer season, day 20. Given to Hay by the chief policemanNebsmen: 1 head of cattle, makes 120 deben, Given to him [i.e. to Nebsemen]: 2 pots offat, makes 60 deben; 5 mss-shirts of smooth fabric, makes 25 deben; 1 dress of Upper-Egyptian cloth, makes 20deben; 1 hide, makes 15 deben.

So, the two sides involved in the transaction are brought into equilibrium (120debeneach) via the debenas the money of account. Even though no money hasexchanged hands, for both Hay and Nebsmen the transaction is complete as whathas been given and received has been matched in value. Janssen (1975, p. 510)also refers to transactions which reflect pure barter exchanges where no explicitmoney values are mentioned; for example the transaction from Ostr. Michael. 13:

1. What draughtsman Neferhotpe gave to Haremwia.

2. One wooden stela of Nofreteroy, may she live, while he gave to me.

3. One chest in exchange for it. Further: (I) decorated two coffins for him.

4. On the riverbank (?) and he made one bed for me.

Yet, in the above transaction, when no money values are explicitly mentioned,the parties to the transaction still inhabited a world which thought in terms of valuingcommodities subject to exchange via a money of account. Some notion of valuation,and hence value reciprocity, is likely therefore to have been embedded in theseobjects exchanged. Indeed, Cerny (1954, p. 907) goes further in suggesting thatthe indication of the metal (i.e. the deben, etc) is sometimes omitted, undoubtedly

because it was known to the contracting parties.The second transaction category relates to paying craftsmen for specific objects,e.g. furniture, they were commissioned to make. The technical word frequently usedwas to recompense for making things, and this typically covered both the costs ofthe parts used and the wages for the craftsmen. For example, the necropolis scribeNesamenope wrote to the chantress of Amon, Mutenope (Wente, 1990, p. 176):

And you are to tell the laborer Ahautinefer, Give me a debenof tin. As soon as he givesit to you, I will compensate Onery with adebenand fivekiteof tin for the job of the fifteenpieces of weaponry that I told him to make.


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Payment, in the form of commodities, to a craftsman to recompense him for hiswork implies that value reciprocity was achieved through the equalisation of themoney values of the goods given by the client with the money values of the parts andthe labour offered by the craftsman. Having the facility of translating commoditiesinto one common denominator, ancient Egyptian scribes were able to record notonly transactions for which the exchanged commodities were of equivalent value,but also credit indebtedness. An example is the transaction recorded on Hier. Ostr.50, 1 (Janssen, 1975, pp. 506507):

Amount of money.. . of the workman Penne which is with Shemedei: 7515 deben ofcopper. Come to him (i.e. Penne) 54 deben. His remainder (still to be given to him: 22,in order to complete the amount of money of Shemedei. She has brought to Penne in all(kinds of) money: 54 debenof copper. Her remainder to complete it: 22.

That only 54 debenhave been paid out of 76 leaving 22 debenunpaid is reinforcedby the scribe stating it twice to stress the indebtedness of Shemedei to Penne.

The third transaction category relates to inventory lists detailing the economicactivities as well as credit position (store of wealth) of the Palace, temples, or estateof a specific individual, perhaps as a measure of prestige but more frequently forcontrol purposes, or for valuing the contents of a house of a couple who haveseparated (i.e. legal purposes, see Ezzamel, 1994b).

What comes across particularly strongly in the transactions discussed above isthe emphasis upon underlining the mutual satisfaction of both parties by insistentlynaming them in the form A and B: e.g. Penne and Shemedei. The impressionproduced is of a value which is located in the space between, and agreed by, theparties involved. This underlines an emphasis on maintaining value reciprocity toensure successful transacting. A clearer example of this is contained in a letter,dating back to the Eighteenth Dynasty, in which a man called Mentuhotep engagesanother called Ahmose as an agent to oversee the building of a house (Wente,1990, p. 91):

. . . let payment for the site of the house be given to its owner. Have him put in a good mood,mind you, lest he dispute with me when I return.

Even in the absence of an equivalent to modern markets, by emphasizingsatisfaction money of account already produced something more than a pureexchange of values. In this context it is worth noting that although price statisticsfor most commodities were available, on written record as well as in living memory,at times these served as price guides, rather than as fixed prices, but never as theso-called market mechanism associated with modern economies. As long as each

party to the transaction perceived that the agreed price was within an acceptablerange of these guide prices, they could be both satisfied (in a good mood) with theoutcome16.

However, we would argue that we are not confronting primitive inadequacyor inexactitude (if by that it is implied that this is a problem that monetaryinstruments in coinage or post-coinage forms have since overcome) as somewriters such as Janssen (1975) have claimed. On the contrary, we confront here anessential property of all money forms, the necessary production of difference andsupplementarity beneath the surface appearance of equivalence and reciprocity.


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The Deir-el-Medina transactions took place in a fairly closed local market. Manytransactions were performed from house to house as object exchanges, while themain place for bartering in the village was a square in front of the gateway, on thenorthern side of the village. In either case, the parties to the exchange would haveeither known each other socially, or at least at the business level through severalexchanges within a geographically limited domain. In this context where there wereexpected repeated encounters, money enabled marginal differences to be tolerated,as parties frequently accepted outcomes where one party paid a little more or a littleless, presumably on the expectation that differences will cancel out over time. Thismay also explain why the majority of transactions of low values (below 10 deben)were never recorded because the consequences of inaccuracies or disputes mayhave been regarded as minimal. More expensive transactions however, such asthose involving oxen, were carefully recorded:

Simple, cheap objects seem usually to have been exchanged without more ado. Whenmore expensive objects such as an ox, a coffin or a bed were purchased the parties wentto a scribe in order to avoid the possibility of any conflict afterwards (Janssen, 1975,pp. 512513).

We suggest that, again because of their knowledge of each other and theirexpectations of future encounters, the village inhabitants could afford to take alimited element of risk by performing oral, low value transactions, particularly giventhat their recording would have involved the payment of fees to the scribes. Moneyof account enabled value reciprocity to be constituted in transactions by valuingobjects, through the attachment of monetary values to different commodities,and as a consequence by the delineation of which commodities were cheap

and which were expensive; which were worth recording and which could beexchanged without recourse to documentation. Moreover, money made it possiblefor differences, for example small remainders, to be tolerated as exceptions to strictvaluation that were regularly accepted as part of the reciprocity game. We argue that

just as value reciprocity is only possible given the emergence of money of account,so too is this play of difference, and this aspect of moneys operation should not beseen as simple, concrete, or non-problematic.

Accounting and the Power of Money

In this section, we focus on two specific issues: the accounting/money relationship

and the developing power of money. Our aim is to demonstrate that even thoughmoney emerged as a double supplement to accounting and writing, once inventedmoney became a form of power in its own right.

The accounting/money relationship

Here we examine how money most clearly operates as the supplement in theform of a numeraire. We have already caught a glimpse of this in the exchange of


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goods between Hay and Nebsmen and also when the scribe calculated the balanceowing to Penne by Shemedei. But to appreciate this role more clearly, we examineAccount VIII of the Hekanakhte Papers (James, 1968, pp. 5253; Goedicke, 1984,p. 112) which summarises the production of two types of landholding; the low-landand the high-land17. The account was sent by Zat-Neb-sekhtu, along with otheraccounts sent by her friend Hekanakhte while away on business, to her agent.Although the messenger carrying the accounts was intercepted (and presumedkilled) on route so that the accounts never reached their destination, their importantimplications remain evident.

ACCOUNT VIII- THE HEKANAKHTE PAPERS

(1) List of that which is in the low-land

(2) consisting of barley: 36 khar 3 hekat exactly(3) bundles (of flax) 7000.(4) Highland barley 20 khar(5) Highland cords 1000(6) What is brought to Nefer-sebau 20(7) Imw-n-Ip 30(8) The soldierId (?) 30(9) His father. . . 35(10)P3w(?) 5(11) Women in isolation 21(12) The old one 10(13) (Man ofsnit (?) 10(14) b-k3w 10

(15) 2000 (bundles) 7 (measures) advanced(16) Remainder: 4000 (bundles) 30 (measures)(17) Highland: 8 (measures)(19) 2 measures in possession of Hunibefore he paid them.

Source: adapted from H. Goedicke,Studies in the Hekanakte Papers, Baltimore,Maryland: Halgo, Inc. 1984, p. 112.

The account uses three types of numeraire: khar and hekat (one tenth of khar)as money of account in addition to physical measures (bundles; cords). No furtherdetails are offered for the barely production of the low-land; simply a figure of36 khar and 3 hekat is stated. But the 7000 bundles of flax are accounted for byadding 1000 (line 5), 2000 (line 15) and 4000 (line 16). We have more details on

how to account for the barely production of the high-land however. Here, the totalbrought to the agent Nefer-sebau (lines 614) adds up to 171 hekat (representingthe enumeration of receipients of alimenation; Goedicke, 1984, p. 114) plus 37hekat (lines 1516) giving 208 hekat, of which 20 khar (200 hekat) are recordedas production (line 4) leaving a remainder of 8hekator measures (line 17).

A number of important insights emerge from this account in relation to the roleof money of account. First, money as a supplement was used to account for thecommodities entrusted to an agent, and for the ways in which these commoditieswere put to use. Second, once the transaction was expressed in money terms the


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logic of the supplement is made clear; money becomes both central and powerful.Now, only through the translation of the account into money (khar and hekat)can (i) the agent account to Zat-Neb-sekhtu for the way in which he managedthe disposal of the commodities, (ii) Zat-Neb-sekhtu control, at a distance, thebehaviour of her agent in money value terms, (iii) we, as outsiders, manage toreconcile the various parts of the account. But the supplementary power of moneyis most dramatic in the way in which it produces new economic relations of a kindwhich makes money itself increasingly indispensable and central, as evidenced byits ability to constitute and regulate joint ownership in ancient Egypt, by makingdivisible what was previously indivisible. An example is given in Lady Franklyn Heir.Inscription (Janssen, 1975, p. 532):

My share in the ox which he bought, makes 2 12

deben. My share in the sheep.. . which he

bought makes 1deben.

Similar arrangements were followed to mediate and record joint work, asevidenced in Ostr. Gardiner. 135 (Janssen, 1975, p. 532):

Received by the hand of deputy Hey his share (in) the.. . garment. . . (of?) Nakhtamun,3 deben, for the decorations which I made together with him on the sarcophagus ofworkman Khnemmose.

Here again, the invention of money rendered divisible joint craftsmanship whichmade it possible for two workmen to jointly execute a job and reap the reward.Value equivalence between the garment and the decoration of the sarcophaguswas made possible through the use of the supplement, the deben, and thereforethe two commodities were brought into a monetary unity. These examples offer

significant insights into the role of money and accounting in constructing, facilitatingand cementing economic activities, and in making possible the segmentation ofobjects and tasks into stakes that could be shared or contracted out. Even thosewho were not financially well off could purchase a small share in expensive objectslike an ox. Furthermore, an individual stakeholder could be bought out by one ofthe other joint owners (as in the case of the garment!) or indeed by a new party,thereby significantly enhancing the potential for greater transfer of wealth than waspossible before money. Recording transactions using the accounting/writing/moneynexus ensured that the proportions of ownership, or work, attributed to each partywere carefully documented, and that payments of equivalent values were made.

The overall implication of this evidence, we suggest, is that accounting, writing andmoney had entered into a new symbiotic relationship, but one where the conceptualcomplexities that still mark that relationship today were already adumbrated. Thepower of money to constitute economic relations, to define abstract entities, todenominate and yet never completely define value had now been set alongsidethe powers of accounting and writing.

Towards a coinage economy: the developing power of money

Here we seek to explore the impact that the invention of coinage had on the potentialof money to act as supplement. Coinage represents the writing of a standard value


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onto metal which is itself deemed to have value (according to whether it is moreor less precious). The breakthrough into coinage is usually seen as the decisivehistoric change in monetary history, for not only does it transform the scope andextent of liquidity and exchange by virtue of becoming a universal sign (Foucault,1974, p. 177), but also, in standardising exchange ratios by denominating them, itbrings a new importance to keeping accounts in units of coinage18.

Without denying that the significance and complexity of both money andaccounting are decisively expanded (and so supplemented) by the invention ofcoinage, we argue that the above explanation is not necessarily adequate to the erabefore coinage. Rather than holding that money has its first existence as the storeof value and medium of exchange, and only secondarily becomes the numeraire,our evidence suggests that it was the money of account which first emerged as asupplement to accounting, counting and writing. For now accounting did not longrest at simply accounting for objects, being able to confer upon them a countablewritten value. Money of account is thus another embodiment of the logic of thesupplement as a means to value reciprocity even before the invention of coinage,and we do not presume that money moves historically from concrete to abstract.

We note two changes which appear in late ancient Egypt (400 BC), in the periodfollowing the dissemination of coinage around the Greek world and leading up toAlexanders conquest. First, as money now circulates in a convenient physical formwherein denominated value is inscribed on a metal piece that is itself deemed tohave value, the location of value begins to shift, so that it is increasingly seen asresiding within monetary instruments. Money, therefore, begins to have value initself. At the same time, the nature of value reciprocity begins to change: this isestablished not so much by exchanging commodities of equivalent monetary value

between parties but by exchanging commodities formoney. In ancient Egypt thischange begins to take effect because, we suggest, of the growing cultural familiaritywith coinage.

As metal coins, money becomes the site of new problems concerning the pricerelation between the various metals employed (e.g. gold vs. silver) and also thedistortion between the weights of coins and their denominated (nominal) values.But as Foucault (1974, p. 169), when commenting on sixteenth century practices,has suggested these two series of problems were linked, since the metal appearedonly as a sign, and as a sign for measuring wealth, in so far as it was itselfwealth. It possessed the power to signify because it was itself a real mark. In thiscontext money signifies its measuring value since the sign the coins borethevalor imposituswas merely the exact and transparent mark of the measure they

constituted (ibid, p. 170)

19

.Ancient Egypt becomes a culture in transition: during the Late Period paymentsfor a whole range of transactions, including purchase, taxes and wages, continuedto be in kind. Further, as before, money of account, particularly the deben andkite, continued to be used as a medium of exchange. Although Greek and Persiansilver coins were available by then they were in the main weighed like non-coinsilver items rather than used as currency and Egyptian exchange outside the Greekcommunity remained as before the introduction of coinage. Different monies,however were used in parallel, for example Jewish mercenaries at Elephantine used


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which lies beyond the objects rendered equivalent but which joins them in a newmonetary unity by substituting value reciprocity for object reciprocity, yet whileapparently creating equivalence money is also opening up differences (e.g. smallremainders); (iii) once money was invented it soon assumed the power of thesupplement; it influenced the lives of those who seek to control others and thosewho were the target of control; it facilitated the attainment of balanced valuereciprocity; it made possible the sharing of ownership like never before; and itengendered intricate norms of joint work and work practices; and (iv) with theinvention of coins emphasis in value reciprocity shifted from the mechanical detailingof payments to the attitude of the parties to a transaction (by ensuring their mutualsatisfaction). In making these arguments we hope to displace the presuppositionthat this money was conceptually a poor and theoretically simple thing, far removedfrom the rich complexity of the monetary instruments and financial theories withwhich we operate today.

Conclusions and Implications

In this paper, we have been concerned to theorize the relationship betweenaccounting, writing and money. The historical material examined provides thepossibility for rethinking accounting, by demonstrating how it is from its genesisboth practiceand supplement. We have also argued that all forms of accounting,from the most ancient stewardship records to contemporary systems, exhibit certainattributes: naming, counting and recording carried on in some form of linguistic-

numerical signs of assemblages of entities or networks of activities. The accountingrecord is then always open to revision and reinterpretation, so long as it survives,and thus partakes in a process of valuing and revaluing. Such valuing will frequentlyhave some external purpose, of value to the recorder or some other agent; but itshould not be presumed to be purely extrinsic. For the possibility of defining (andthen revising) a precise worth is already given,intrinsically, in the practice of namingand counting, and thus constructing an accounting record. Although such valuingcan be rendered more precise, for example by using some outside denominatingmetric such as money of account or more contemporary valuation methods (e.g.DCF), the possibility of valuing is already given in the practice of recording viasigns which name and count, rather than given by the monetary measures. So,in the case of token accounting, it is not that it emerges as a sign-system which

represents a value not articulated before, but rather, as practice, it constructs avalue not feasible before whose precision is embodiedinthe tokens as signs whichboth name and count. We have explored how this early form of accounting madepossible the subsequent invention of writing, counting and money.

It is now generally accepted that grain (e.g. corn) and metal (e.g. gold) have nointrinsic value. But within the world before writing (at least, after the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture) corn was rendered valuable for use, once it became namedand counted as an object of accounting, which was the means to the establishmentand maintenance of the agricultural way of life. Similarly, precious metals had


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a value as precious once there was an elite, who operated as privileged set ofbeneficiaries of the accounted way of life, and who used them as a means tomaintain status and sovereignty whether via their inclusion in gift exchanges orvia their conspicuous consumption. In other words, the items which emerge as thesignifiers of value within the first money signs do so because they had previouslybeen constructed and perceived as stores of some kind of value, through beingnamed and counted via token accounting. This is why it is within accounting thatintrinsic value lies, since it is accounting as naming and counting practice and as avisible sign which identifies the possibility that there is a value to be signifiedin thefirst instance. But once this money of account emerges, it becomes the currencythrough which definable value is expressed.

If these arguments have any validity, new implications of the discovery thataccounting has contributed to the invention of the first forms of writing, counting andmoney swim into view. First, this form of accounting set up a frame wherein valuecould be constructed in a historically new way, as the precisely denominated moneyof account. Secondly, that this kind of monetary value, dependent for its articulationon the prior existence of accounting and writing, then made possible somefundamental presuppositions of economicsexchange as precisely denominatedreciprocity, market relations predicated on such exchange, and the engagement ofindividuals in the activities described within economic discourse as economicallyrational behaviour. The existence of money as a supplement to both accountingand writing makes it possible to invoke equivalence, a term which lies beyondthe objects rendered equivalent, but which, coming between them, joins them ina new (monetary) unity. In which case accounting would be initially constitutive ofthe very things of which it is conventionally taken as a mere secondary reflection:

monetary value, market-based activity and the logic of economic reason. Third,accounting which comes before writing, counting and money does not in some directway construct them in its image20. Yet still, accounting is implicated in making thempossible and shaping their subsequent development.

In the final analysis, what substantial relation does all this ancient history have tomodern forms of accounting, money and business? We argue that our questioningsuggests the need for a new way of seeing economic relations by redefining thenature of accounting, writing and money. Under this new way a time-honouredtradition, wherein the ancient past is simple and only the modern world is complex,is abandoned. For as the evidence presented here suggests, there was never anyprimordial simplicity; the ancient relationships of accounting, writing and moneyare already both complex and subject to the logic of the supplement which still

obtains in their modern relationships. It should no longer be assumed, even ata residual level, that money and accounting have ever simply represented pre-existing values or transactions. For the first forms of accounting, writing and moneywere central to the construction of the conceptual categories which underpinconventional economic thinking. Such key terms as transaction, equivalence andvalue reciprocity had in the strictest sense no meaning before the invention of theaccounting/writing/money nexus.

But with the emergence of this nexus, a most profound historic discontinuity tookshape in the form of a move from a world where the economic was an empty


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category to a world where it has a still-increasing power to define and commandreality. Given accounting, writing and money, it became possible to enter a worldof transactionality (where there is an economic system of transaction that isnot restricted to objects). This discontinuity constitutes a double break. First, itis a break from a world where categories like equivalence and value reciprocityare meaningless because there is no third independent term of value (money) orrecord (accounting) outside the world of objects, actions and oral communication21.Secondly, it is a break intoa world where equivalence and value reciprocity havenever from the historical outset been what they have seemed under the old simplisteview of the ancient past. For equivalence and value reciprocity are always enactedthrough supplementarity (the intervention of accounting/writing/money).

These observations, we argue, have important implications for interpreting themore recent history of both money and accounting. Thus we would suggest thatthe historical development and current operation of money will at any given timealways embody the logic of the supplement. This is clearer in the modern historyof money, from the 13th to the 17th centuries, for here is first clearly articulatedthe principle that money can always be re-written into new more complex forms,the principle which has been so freely built upon in this century (Hoskin & Macve,1986, pp. 116120). The decisive departure comes in the 13th century with theinvention of the bill of exchange whereby money no longer required the presenceof metal to convey or guarantee value. By the 16th century, bills of exchange werebeing circulated as endorsed bills (where the writing on the bill was guaranteedby further writing, on its back), and by the 17th century a further re-writing hadresulted in the endorsed discounted note (which collapses within itself a doublevalue, that explicitly written and that of the discount)

Documents

Dinheiro Na Mesopotamia e Egito Antigo