You are here: My Favorite Office -> Executive Office

The word stems from the Latin officium, as its equivalent in various mainly romance languages. Interestingly, this was not unavoidably a place, but rather an often mobile 'bureau' in the sense of a human staff or even the abstract notion of a formal position, such as a magistrature. The relatively complicated Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after the fall of Rome, even incompletely reverting to illiteracy, while the east preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture, both under Byzantium and under Islam.

Offices in antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large shrine. There was usually a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the labor of scribes allude to the existence of such "offices". These rooms are from time to time called "libraries" by some archaeologists and the general press since one often associates scrolls with literature. In fact they were true offices since the scrolls were predestined for record keeping and other management functions such as treaties and edicts, and not for writing or keeping poetry or other works of fiction.

The medieval chancery was usually the place where most administration letters were written and were laws were copied in the administration of a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery frequently had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference, a forerunner to the book shelf. The introduction of printing during the Renaissance did not modify these early government offices much.

Copyright © 2005-2007, My Favorite Office.
All Rights Reserved.