TRESOR

Abstract: The first account of the discovery of the Treasure of Ziwiye was published in two places by the then Director of Antiquities of the Persian Government, M. Andre Godard. The first, Le Tresor de Ziwiye: (Editions de l'Institut Franco-Iranien) gave the text of his lecture to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. The other was Le Tresor de Ziwiye, a beautifully illustrated book published at Haarlem in 1950 by the Iranian Archaeological Service. For these publications we are deeply grateful to M. Godard. I need not describe this collection in detail, only mention that it consists of objects of gold, ivory and bronze of great beauty, variety and interest which were discovered, unfortunately in the course of clandestine excavations, at Ziwiye near Sakkez in Azerbaijan 120 km. south east of Lake Urmia. It is now dispersed, some pieces being in Teheran, others in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, others elsewhere. According to M. Godard, some of the pieces, e.g., those of ivory, are Assyrian work of the ninth-eighth century B.C., and were exported from Assyria to Sakkez. The other objects, in M. Godard's view, belong to the ninth century, or in some cases to the seventh century B.C. The fact that some of these pieces contain motifs and features hitherto regarded as characteristic of Phoenician, or in other cases of Scythian art of the sixth century B.C., is explained by M. Godard by means of a new and striking theory: that we have (except in the case of the ivories, which he considers Assyrian) in these mixed works of art examples of the native art of the kingdom of Mannai, an art which later was appropriated or copied by the immigrating Scythian tribes, who afterwards dispersed it widely, and thereby caused it to be known to the modern world as Scythian. I shall not discuss this theory here, I shall offer only some notes about the dating.

Abstract: A partir du donne textuel des Livres d'Esdras et de Nehemie, l'A. cherche a rejoindre le donne historique qui concerne le conseil qui, du temps de ces prophetes, presidait au Tresor du Temple de Jerusalem. Tenant compte des etudes qui l'ont precede sur la question, l'A. tente de reconstituer les structures de cet organisme. Il parvient ainsi a determiner deux fonctions certaines de ce conseil : prelever et redistribuer des taxes d'une part, gerer l'administration fiscale de l'Empire perse d'autre part

Abstract: Description d'un tresor en argent mis au jour lors de fouilles effectuees a Haifa, l'ancien Dor, en Israel. Plusieurs sacs contenant des pieces en argent ont ete decouverts dans une jarre en argile parmi de la vaisselle en ceramique et dateraient du XIe-Xe s. av. J.-C. L'A rappelle alors l'usage de cet argent par les pheniciens, pourquoi ces sacs de lin et explique l'importance de ce port a l'epoque ainsi que les coutumes pheniciennes consistant a enterrer des objets.

Abstract: In the early 1970s, A.W. Johnston likened the Treasury Board to Kafka's Castle. Widespread misconceptions existed, he wrote, about the workings of the Treasury Board and its Secretariat. Since then, the scope of Treasury Board activities has broadened substantially. Both the Board and the Secretariat have assumed new responsibilities in the area of personnel policy, in establishing new administrative policies for government operations and in managing the government's property holdings, for example. Yet little has been written about these new responsibilities and, to an outsider, the Treasury Board must resemble Kafka's Castle now as much as it did in the early 1970s. This paper describes the various changes introduced over the past fifteen years that have transformed the operations of the Treasury Board and its Secretariat. The paper goes further and locates the Treasury Board between the competing forces of centralized decision-making on the one hand and “letting the manager manage” on the other. The paper points out that the Treasury Board has been a key actor in the various attempts at “letting the manager manage.” It recently launched a major new initiative - Increased Ministerial Authority and Accountability (IMAA) - which is designed to transfer important decision-making authority to managers. The paper concludes with a review of IMAA, its origin, its design and its operations. Sommaire: Au debut des annees soixante-dix, A.W. Johnston comparait le Conseil du Tresor au Château de Kafka. Il affirme que les malentendus quant aux activites du Conseil du Tresor et de son secretariat etaient repandus. Depuis, le Conseil du Tresor a beaucoup elargi le champ de ses activites. Le conseil et son secretariat ont accepte de nouvelles responsabilites concernant les politiques de gestion du personnel et l'elaboration de politiques de gestion des affaires gouvernementales et de gestion des avoirs fonciers du gouvernement, par exemple. Pourtant, on n'a pas dit grand-chose de ces nouvelles responsabilites et, pour un observateur etranger, le Conseil du Tresor resemble sans doute autant aujourd'hui au Château de Kafka qu'au debut des annees soixante-dix. Dans cet article, l'auteur expose les changenients qui sont survenus depuis quinze ans et qui ont transforme les activites du Conseil et son secretariat. L'auteur va plus loin et situe le Conseil du Tresor entre deux poles, d'une part les forces concurrentielles qui caracterisent des prises de decisions centralisees et, d'autre part, l'attitude qui veut que “les directeurs aient la latitude de diriger”. L'auteur souligne que le Conseil du Tresor a joue un role-cle dans les diverses tentatives visant a laisser “les directeurs diriger”. Le Conseil a recemment lance un important programme, intitule Autorite et responsabilite accrues du Ministere (ARAM), lequel vise a donner plus de pouvoir decisionnel aux gestionnaires. En conclusion, l'auteur passe en revue l'origine, la conception et les activites de ce programme. So he resumed his walk, but the way proved long. For the street he was in, the main street of the village, did not lead up to the Castle hill, it only made towards it and then, as if deliberately, turned aside, and though it did not lead away from the Castle it got no nearer to it either. At every turn K. expected the road to double back to the Castle, and only because of this expectation did he go on. F. Kafka, The Castle