Budget Calculation in the Light of an Unpunished Cuneiform Text from the Akkadian Period
Abstract
The ancient Akkadian Era provides us with a rich archive about the economic and commercial activities in this era. Akkadians have immortalized these activities by archives that clarified the perfect central management and the economic prosperity that prevailed in the country, the thing that paved the way for a vast extending prospect for study.
Some of these important texts are the archives of accounting records in which the Sumerian term (nig2 Kas7) was found, with its Akkadian counterpart (nikkassu) which literally means 'account', and which was translated by the researchers into 'the balanced account ' or the budget accounts.
This term was of great importance as far as the interpretation of the economic system of Mesopotamia is concerned especially at the end of the third Millennium BC. This is exactly the same historical period to which this type of texts (balance calculations texts) goes back to.