page_title: Accounting
section_title: Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia
hierarchical_section_title: Accounting / History / Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia
caption_attribution_description: English: Clay accounting tokens, Susa, Uruk period. Français&#160;: Jetons de comptabilité en terre cuite, Suse, période d'Uruk.
context_page_description: Accounting or accountancy is the job of sharing financial information about a business to managers and shareholders. Accounting is often called the "language of business". Accountants are people who do accounting, and also carry out the auditing or checking of a company's books and records. In Britain, this auditing is often carried out by a qualified person called a "chartered accountant". In the United States, the professional designation is Certified Public Accountant or "CPA".
  When accountants do accounting work, they write in the books of account that belong to a company. Every time money is spent or earned, it is written in the ledger. The information in the ledger is used to prepare the company accounts monthly, quarterly and annually. These annual accounts show what money the company has taken in over time and what it has spent money on. It also shows if the company made a profit in the year, who owes the company money, who the company owes money to, and any big expensive items the company has bought which they expect to use for many years. Lenders, managers, investors, tax authorities and other decision-makers look at these annual accounts.
context_section_description: The earliest accounting records were found among the ruins of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Sumeria, which are more than 7,000 years old. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Because there is a natural season for farming and herding, it is easy to count and determine if a surplus had been gained after the crops had been harvested or the young animals weaned.
  The invention of a form of bookkeeping using clay tokens represented a huge cognitive leap for mankind.
  In the twelfth-century A.D., the Arab writer, Ibn Taymiyyah, wrote a book called Hisba. This book has details about accounting systems that were used by Muslims before the mid-seventh century A.D. Muslim accounting was influenced (changed) by Romans and Persians. In his book, Ibn Taymiyyah gives details of a complex governmental accounting system.
caption: Accounting tokens made of clay, from Susa, Uruk period, circa 3500 BCE. Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.6.6", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:14 22:02:47", "Image Artist": "Marie-Lan Nguyen", "Image Copyright": "Creative Commons Attribution", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "3196", "Image Tag 0x9216": "[1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3308", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5179", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/10", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:11:14 16:26:59", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:11:14 16:26:59", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "99417/20000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "53/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "08", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "08", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "08", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "75", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}