Ancient Archiving
The first archive existed around 4,000 B.C., in which Sumerians used clay tablets to track transactions.
C. L. Bedale and C. H. W. Johns discuss these translated tablets, summarizing them as a necessary part of life for Babylonian temple stewards. Many people lived by wages and allowances from the temples, and thus we have these ledgers illuminating aspects of Babylonian city life.
We also have clay tablets from the Hittite Empire, around 1400-1300 B.C. A majority of tablets from Boǧazköy, Turkey are legal texts, documenting their laws, family relations, commodity prices, and more. These also include religious texts, which tell us about certain rituals and beliefs about gods and storytelling.
The archives of Egypt, around 3,000 - 1,000 B.C., likewise served to document legal matters, along with administrative and military information. One group of papyri, kept at a harbour site, details the movement of boats carrying limestone and food deliveries to a building site. These inform us about how administration worked around this construction project. We also, of course, have many records about the functions of temple life for these periods, due to papyrus being best preserved in dry, cool places.
The earliest surviving Chinese writing is on oxen bones of about 1600 - 1100 B.C. The writing details divinations made by the contemporarily ruling Shang royal house. Other writing materials include tortoiseshells and bronze, all documenting similar divinations, providing the moniker “oracle-bone script”. Around 500 B.C., a new script emerged to create documentation of government affairs, written on bamboo scrolls. This is more accurately related to the concept of archiving, but it is useful to know the earlier script it emerged from.
We are constantly trying to learn about the past. Having historical information is extremely valuable to improve our foresight and to have past data to compare our current world to. For example, Ancient Greece holds the first known democracy. We know many details of how that government in Athens worked because of written records of speeches. We therefore know that what we currently call the democratic nation of the U.S.A. is not the same. While Ancient Athens was a direct democracy, the U.S. government is more accurately a republic, sometimes referred to as a representative democracy.
Past archives also help us keep current archives. Many Ancient Egyptian documents have been lost to the elements, due to the moisture-sensitive nature of papyrus. What has survived is mostly in tombs and temples, or on clay tablets. With these surviving artifacts, we can better understand what materials will last under certain conditions, and the environments required both to find other ancient materials, and to preserve modern ones.
More broadly, this is also why archeology is so important. Archaeological projects need to be funded in order for us to find and gather these artifacts. Without proper funding for research and for preserving these materials in museums, much of this information would be lost to us.
Additional Resources
1. Overall History
2. Sumerian Ledgers
3. Hittite Archive
4. Ancient Egypt Archives
5. Chinese Writing
6. Chinese Writing 2