History[edit]

Main article: History of accounting

Portrait of Luca Pacioli, painted by Jacopo de' Barbari, 1495, (Museo di Capodimonte).
The history of accounting is thousands of years old and can be traced to ancient civilizations.[12][13]
[14]
 The early development of accounting dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and is closely related to
developments in writing, counting and money;[12] there is also evidence of early forms
of bookkeeping in ancient Iran,[15][16] and early auditing systems by the
ancient Egyptians and Babylonians.[13] By the time of Emperor Augustus, the Roman government had
access to detailed financial information.[17]
Double-entry bookkeeping was pioneered in the Jewish community of the early-medieval Middle
East[18][19] and was further refined in medieval Europe.[20] With the development of joint-stock
companies, accounting split into financial accounting and management accounting.
The first published work on a double-entry bookkeeping system was the Summa de arithmetica,
published in Italy in 1494 by Luca Pacioli (the "Father of Accounting").[21][22] Accounting began to
transition into an organized profession in the nineteenth century, [23][24] with local professional bodies in
England merging to form the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1880.[25]