Logging an Unfinished Year: Administrative Time, Taxation, and the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries

This paper reinterprets the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries as an early administrative logging system, developed to stabilize taxation and governance under conditions where the annual cycle itself was not yet fully defined. Rather than serving primarily scientific or divinatory purposes, celestial observations functioned as an immutable temporal reference, anchoring agricultural prices, environmental disruptions, and social disturbances to a stable timestamp framework Logging an Unfinished Year Admi… . The long-term consistency and rigid format of the diaries are explained as the result of bureaucratic success: once the logging structure proved effective for administration and dispute resolution, it became institutionally immutable. This study introduces the concept of administrative time, showing how long-term logging can substitute for incomplete theoretical understanding. In this view, the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries represent an early solution to governing under temporal uncertainty, anticipating later developments in mechanical and mathematical timekeeping. License: CC0 1.0