History of Offices
Rome was generally considered to be the first society which, mostly because of the rule of law, developed a relatively sophisticated bureaucracy. This was not equalled in the west for centuries after the fall of Rome, even to some extent reverting to illiteracy whilst the east preserved a more refined administrative culture.
In classical antiquity, offices were often part of a large temple or a palace, usually as a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. These rooms are sometimes called ‘libraries’ by some archaeologists and associated press due to the general reference of scrolls with literature. However in actual fact these were offices since the scrolls were for record keeping and other management uses e.g. treaties and edicts, not for artistic works e.g. poetry, writing and other fiction.
Pre-industrial paintings and tapestries depict personalities or eponyms in their private offices, handling their books or writing on parchment. However, before the invention of the printing press there was a fine line between a private office and a private library due to books being read/written in the same desk or table, and general accounting and personal letters also completed there.