Administrative history was for a long period of time a field neglected by historians. Successful leaders, major battles or important events were more attractive for those who recorded the history of humanity than the unspectacular day by day work of some clerks. But although we know relatively few things about the public administration of ancient Egypt or ancient China, or about the administrative systems developed by the successive empires that dominated the Persian Gulf area, often known as the „fertile crescent”, we may have the certainty that the vast projects undertaken by those civilizations could not be possible without the existence of a performant public administration. The purpose of this article is to unfold de factors that influenced the development of public administration over time and over empires, and their legacies for the current public administration.