고대 수메르 문명의 복식부기법

The “Token Accounting System” of the ancient Sumerian civilization (from BC 6000 to BC 1000) is regarded as the oldest method of double-entry bookkeeping system in human history. The purposes of this study are as follows. We investigate (i) the political‧economical‧social background of the token accounting system in ancient Sumerian by using the structural history analysis and (ii) the commercial transactions of Sumerian using the clay records. Our results are as follows. First, Ancient Sumerian was a society in which business activities were active. This is based on the partial private property system, a credit society in which contracts of merchants are guaranteed, an equitable community that gives equal opportunity to individuals, and marketization of Sumerian society. Second, among the hundreds of thousands of artifacts discovered in the Sumerian region, the clay tokens and clay envelopes were used as the contract of bond and debt among merchants (Schumant-Besseratt 1980) through various signals and markings on them. Third, clay tokens and clay envelopes of Sumerian were used not only for contracts but also for book-keeping purposes. In particular, the fact that the Sumerian distinguish between debt and equity reveals that there was double-entry bookkeeping system (Nissen et al., 1993). This study is different from the previous studies in that it examines the history of accounting development of ancient civilization that has been ignored in most of the empirical accounting studies. Furthermore, this study contributes to the literature by showing that the Sumerian record transaction in the form of double-entry bookkeeping system through token accounting system about 3000~8000 years ago.