Abstract
The author of this book, Mahmoud Ezzamel, a Professorial Fellow of Cardiff University, UK, and currently Professor of Accounting and Management Control in the Business School of Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, Spain, has published on contemporary issues in accounting and on accounting history in an array of journals. As sole author, or with colleagues, he has a substantial body of work examining aspects of accounting, social order and control in ancient civilizations, particularly Egypt (e.g., see Carmona and Ezzamel, 2006, 2007; Ezzamel, 1994, 1997, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2005, 2009; Ezzamel and Hoskin, 2002).
In this book, Accounting and Order, Ezzamel’s main purpose is to theorize the role of accounting inscriptions in producing and sustaining order in Ancient Egypt, where the world was conceived as consisting of three realms: the cosmos, the earth, and the netherworld.
In addressing this objective, the book is divided into five parts. Part I is intended to provide a background concerning relevant aspects of ancient Egypt, the notion of order, and the scribes who inscribed the material analyzed in this book. Part II consists of three chapters which examine the relationship between accounting, order and the gods. It engages with the theoretical debates on order, accounting, rituals and performativity, and commences the interrogation of ancient Egyptian inscriptions. Part III contains seven chapters on accounting inscriptions relating to a number of key state institutions: taxation, the fleet, the palace funerary temples, mining, state projects and bakeries. Part IV deals with accounting inscriptions intended to order the private domain; in particular private estates, the household, and semi-barter exchange. Part V provides an overview of the key arguments in the book and explores a number of possible themes through which the relationship between accounting, order and performativity might be theorized.
In summary, the ancient Egyptian accounting inscriptions and images examined in this book are suggestive of a notion of order, whether cosmic or worldly (social, political, religious, and economic), that emphasizes non-random organization into patterns.
This book argues that accounting has several attributes pertinent to the construction of order in the three realms. Even in its most ancient forms, such as those found in ancient Egypt, accounting is endowed with numerical organization that creates an ethos of order.
This book is extremely original and I have never read anything that came close to its subject matter. It is also very readable and is certain to be a very valuable resource for the academic accounting community and historians in particular.