The transmission, retrieval, and storage of information is a still more basic ingredient of the stability, durability, and effectiveness of government. Max
Weber called documents the bureaucrat's tools of production. The Roman Empire has won a reputation for bureaucratic sophistication. So what of its
documents? Before the nineteenth century, it is interesting to note, this aspect of Roman imperial rule did not strike students of the period. It was the
discovery of the papyri of Egypt which contributed to the view that Rome too had been a bureaucracy like those burgeoning in the excavators' homelands.
Since then the spectacular complexity of the administration of Egypt has been further revealed, and evidence from other dry regions-Dura Europus on the
Euphrates is a notable example-has shown that the volume of administrative paperwork in other eastern provinces was likewise very great. The figures can
be astonishing.
A third-century regional administrator's office in Egypt consumed 434 rolls of papyrus in a particular period of about a month. The archives of the fortress
at Dura Europus occupied more than ten rooms. It is easy incautiously to assert that this society can truly be called bureaucratic'. But two problems must
be faced. First, is the practice of either Egypt or Mesopotamia, where the accumulation of documents was an extremely ancient aspect of government,
typical of the eastern Empire in general, and is the East typical of the Empire as a whole? Papyrus archives naturally would not survive elsewhere, but the
absence of the potsherds which were also extensively used at the lowest level of the Egyptian administration, is a better testimony to the singularity of the
Egyptian system, since pottery is virtually indestructible. But the second question is more important: how far is this accumulation of mounds of paper by
dozens of officials evidence for a bureaucratic administration of the kind found in modern states? To answer that question it will be necessary to discover
why records were accumulated and how they were then deployed. Are our ancient administrative documents from working bureaux, lumber rooms, or
something in between?