9 ms·

Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir

221 points by aidos 9y ago

Cyphase 9y ago
Everyone, please read the letter in full. It's great, and not too long. Of course it's a translation of an ancient language, but assuming it's fairly accurate, it's awesome to think someone wrote something like that almost 4,000 years ago. I think sometimes we forget that at their core, people in 1750 BCE were just like people today. > What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! Love it.
- avtar 9y ago
  > I think sometimes we forget that at their core, people in 1750 BCE were just like people today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...
- pjmlp 9y ago
  That is why I love reading ancient books that have survived to our days.
  - peterburkimsher 9y ago
    You've probably already read it, but here's a mobile-friendly PlinyPedia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668314
- wpietri 9y ago
  I'm fascinated by how much of modern business practice already existed 4 millennia ago. With minor changes, this could have been written today. Although now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. This is basically the age of the code of Hammurabi [1], and a good chunk of that is about commerce. E.g. the section on giving receipts: "104. If a merchant give an agent corn, wool, oil, or any other goods to transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the amount, and compensate the merchant therefor. Then he shall obtain a receipt form the merchant for the money that he gives the merchant. 105. If the agent is careless, and does not take a receipt for the money which he gave the merchant, he can not consider the unreceipted money as his own. 106. If the agent accept money from the merchant, but have a quarrel with the merchant (denying the receipt), then shall the merchant swear before God and witnesses that he has given this money to the agent, and the agent shall pay him three times the sum. 107. If the merchant cheat the agent, in that as the latter has returned to him all that had been given him, but the merchant denies the receipt of what had been returned to him, then shall this agent convict the merchant before God and the judges, and if he still deny receiving what the agent had given him shall pay six times the sum to the agent." From http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
ant6n 9y ago
I wonder whether the complaint worked.
joeberon 9y ago
That's very interesting, thank you
- aidos 9y ago
  I totally stole it from pjc50: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352
hprotagonist 9y ago
i can’t find the source for this assertion but I was lead to believe that a large number of contemporary copies of this message were made and distributed around as a warning to others not to do business with this merchant.
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  That would make a lot of sense. It's similar to the public reference system that makes sites like eBay, AirBnb, and CouchSurfing work.
runako 9y ago
Here are pictures of the letter: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=277770&partId=1&searchText=ur+131236&page=1 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...
- wpietri 9y ago
  Ah that's interesting. It even has dimensions. It's 11.6 cm x 5 cm x 2.6 cm. In comparison, the latest iPhone is 14 cm x 7 cm x 0.7 cm. So this note was basically the size of a cellphone. Or as wide as a 3x5 card, but not as tall. Makes sense, I suppose. Factors that shape iPhones and 3x5 cards include easy handling, easy reading, and easy manual interaction.
  - acqq 9y ago
    11.5 cm was the height of the first iPhone and iPhone 4. That old(!) tablet fits that, it is a little narrower and a little more than twice as thick. Imagine, Steve Jobs at al. chose the size that matched that almost 4000 years old tablet, just went to twice as thin.
    - njarboe 9y ago
      But by making it so thin one could not write on the edge of the tablet[1]. Imagine the complaints from removing such functionality for the sake of mere thinness. [1]http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=1613004127&objectid=277770 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...
      - acqq 9y ago
        Never thought about that, did anybody analyze if the "thou shalt" tablets from the Bible were also inspired by the Babylonian cuneiform ones? From the debt receipts and complaints, to that.. Regarding side writing, yes I'd really hated broken compatibility. Not to mention that they'd break more easily!
Tepix 9y ago
Sounds like he should have used an ethereum smart contract, right?
- CPLX 9y ago
  Lately I've been wondering if there are any HN threads whatsoever that are inappropriate for someone to come in and say that things could have been done better by using the blockchain. The answer, it seems, is self-evident.
coldcode 9y ago
Getting ripped off is apparently at least 3750 years old. People seem to have not changed over time.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I wonder what artifacts will be found from today in 3750 years? BRB, gonna carve this comment into stone tablet and bury it.
- edgarvaldes 9y ago
  In the year 5767. Go imagine that time span.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  they'll unearth partial disk platters or solid state chips.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  The only surviving artifact from our period of time will be a single CD-ROM copy of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. At offset 0x4B3B8A of the game executable, the following message is found: > Tomb Raider IV - The Last Relevation -- Dedicated to my fiance Jay for putting up with this game taking over our lifes,my step sons Craig,Jamie & Aiden (Show this to your mates at school, they'll believe you now!!),also for my daughters Sophie and Jody - See you in another hex dump - Richard Flower 11/11/1999 https://tcrf.net/Tomb_Raider:_The_Last_Revelation https://tcrf.net/Tomb_Raider:_The_Last_Revelation
deadmetheny 9y ago
The best part about this is that archaeologists supposedly found more complaint tablets in the same room of the house about the same guy, leading them to believe that the house they found them in belonged to the Ea-nasir himself.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  this needs to be made into a TV show.
  - Razengan 9y ago
    They should call it the Flintstones or something.
- BeefySwain 9y ago
  Have they been transcribed and made available?
  - deadmetheny 9y ago
    I can't find anything online suggesting they have been, unfortunately. I'd also love to read them.
- xjlin0 9y ago
  The room for customer support/relationship maybe?
  - gadders 9y ago
    Like a clay-based call centre?
Beltiras 9y ago
Buyer was pissed. Really pissed.
crispyambulance 9y ago
I have found twitter to be the most excellent platform for complaints in the year 2017. Many orgs have responsive social media staff that monitor twitter and are able to make stuff right. Twitter is better than clay tablets for complaints, though I do admire the gravitas of a clay tablet. Nothing says "I am fucking serious" as well as pounding out a message on clay, firing it in an oven for 12 hours, and then sending a servant to deliver it by donkey or camel through hostile territory.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Sometimes I use Facebook messenger. I guess it has the same effect.
- krapp 9y ago
  To be fair, "pounding out a message on clay, firing it in an oven for 12 hours, and then sending a servant to deliver it by donkey or camel through hostile territory" was probably just the way long-distance correspondence was done back then. Maybe Nanni was also instructed to throw it at Ea-nasir's head or something.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    > Maybe Nanni was also instructed to throw it at Ea-nasir's head Well it does say that it is slightly damaged.
- imglorp 9y ago
  The master may have had a scribe on staff for these things.
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  You'll be really excited about my pitch deck: Clay Tablets as a Service. Want to sign up for the API Beta?
  - microtherion 9y ago
    You'll have competition: https://dumbcuneiform.com https://dumbcuneiform.com
QAPereo 9y ago
I love the details, and the points he's clearly outraged about. Basically a combination of, "It was dangerous!" "Do you know who I fucking am?!" and "Treat me with contempt? I'll show you contempt!" People haven't changed really.
d--b 9y ago
This is fun, but at the same time not very surprising. People do complain and so sometimes put it in writing. Is there a catalog of everything that is a "first known written stuff". Like the first known correspondence between a child and a distant cousin, or the first letter in which a woman tells another woman that they bought the same dress and that's not cool?
- dalbasal 9y ago
  It’s true, some of this is frivolous. It’s valuable though, since we think in narratives and achieving milestones helps us feel progress. It's like how Floyd Mayweather just achieved a contrived goal of "undefeated in 50 matches," or the long list of Roger Federer's achievements, all made up "firsts" or "mosts." There’s a non-frivolous side too, I think. Firsts (and other data points) help to timeline the use of written language and its development. The Akkadian/Sumerian finds are really good for this, because of the quantity of finds and the ease of translation (Akkadian anyway). King List, Laws and other political/governance texts. Epic/mythological tablets and other “religious” tablets. Historical tablets. Some clay tablets are reproduced in the bible, and still form core parts of culture. A tremendous amount of accounting tablets appear in very early periods suggesting that clay was originally a finch startup idea.
  - evincarofautumn 9y ago
    Another thing we can glean from these records is how expensive/labor-intensive it was to produce them. If we find that in a certain time period, people were only writing about business and government as opposed to personal correspondence or frivolous things, then we can assume that the medium might have been costly at the time, and/or that people did less-official communication through media that were less durable, like paper or the brain of a messenger.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
booleandilemma 9y ago
I love the inscribed metadata at the top: Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message: It’s like an email header for a clay tablet.
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  well into the early modern era, letters were written as if they were speech. this explains the three paragraphs of flowery hellos at the opening of most old letters — it’s written as if the writer is standing in front of the reader and speaking.
- jff 9y ago
  I found that line quite interesting. The wording seems to imply that someone is going to read this tablet to Ea-nasir, and possibly that someone wrote the tablet on behalf of Nanni. In an age before near-universal literacy (i.e. most of human history), that makes sense: Ea-nasir would have summoned someone to read out the tablet. Given Ea-nasir's position as a presumably well-off trader, he may have simply had a scribe on-staff to handle his correspondence--an early instance of the modern PR hack?
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I think it's literally just the equivalent of an envelope - a "to" field and a "from" field, so that any messenger in charge of deliveries can, at a glance, tell to whom this message is meant to be delivered, and to return it to the sender if it's undeliverable. I wonder if ancient Ur had dodgy FedEx delivery guy equivalents who would knock on your door and toss the tablet in the dirt and mark it as "delivered".
    - yellowapple 9y ago
      "knock on your door and toss the tablet in the dirt" At least then it'd be delivered (as opposed to the normal FedEx approach of "knocking" by slapping a missed delivery slip on the door).
athenot 9y ago
The arabic version of the wikipedia entry has a picture of the tablet. https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/لوح_شكوى_إلى_ايانصير https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/لوح_شكوى_إلى_ايانصير
- dkersten 9y ago
  Its also linked at the bottom of the english wikipedia page, under External Links. It links the British Museum, where it has pictures of front and back.
fapjacks 9y ago
It always surprises me that people seem so surprised that people were the same way so many years ago. If you read basically anything written by human hands in any time period, it seems they all had very many of the same concerns we do today.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  I guess it's because of how much has changed, both culturally and technologically. But some things are just human nature
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  I think people are suprised specifically because they don't read anything written by human hands from the ancient world
ben11kehoe 9y ago
It gets better: https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrevolution-blacktyranitar https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrev... > But this guy, this Ea-nasir, he kept all of his angry letters - hundreds of them - and meticulously filed and preserved them in a dedicated room in his house. What kind of guy does that?
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  A narcissist.
  - davidkuhta 9y ago
    FTFY: A wealthy narcissist. Edit: Surprised on the downvotes. "Traveling merchant who imports metals and has a room in their house solely dedicated to customer complaints" Wouldn't the preservation of his narcissism to modern times heavily connote the importance of his wealth?
    - microtherion 9y ago
      Was his house known as the "Ea-nasir Ziggurat" ?
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Ea-nasir-sist, surely.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Huh, I follow David's tumbler via RSS for exactly this kind of fascinating thing. Glad I'm not the only one.
nocoder 9y ago
This is fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. It's amazing that I can totally relate to an almost 4000 year old stuff, it's kind of cute.
gadders 9y ago
Some people wonder what is the point of reading Herodotus or Plutarch etc and then you read things like this and see that human nature has not changed much in 5,000 years.
eternalban 9y ago
If only Ea-nasir had put his money into crytops, instead, we would be reading tablets on his 10000% return on investment. :)
herodotus 9y ago
Dear Nani Thank you for your tablet which we received on March 7, 1750BCE. We appreciate your business and can assure you that feedback like yours is important to us because it helps us improve our business. We take all feedback very seriously. We apologize if our service did not meet your expectations, but, more importantly, did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves. We are always striving to improve, which is why we remain Mesopotamia's leading producer of copper ingots. Enclosed is a discount code which you can use on your next purchase to compensate you for the difficulties you experienced. This coupon expires in 1749BCE Sam-Gun, Cutomer relations
- alphakappa 9y ago
  That would have to be a remarkably prescient customer relations fellow to know that such-and-such would be born 1750 years later.
  - herodotus 9y ago
    -:)
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    I declare this year 1533 BZ. I'm not obliged to let you know what the Z is, but it's gonna be important!
pault 9y ago
Shouldn't this have (-1750) in the title?
njarboe 9y ago
"while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas." I would be interested on what this joint-written, sealed tablet kept at the temple is. Some kind of escrow system? Unfortunately the wikipedia article does not mention anything about this cryptic phrase.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Basically a receipt probably for tax purposes
WindowsFon4life 9y ago
"Written in Cuneiform". How about Akkadian? Many languages were written in wedge writing. Cuneiform is neither a language, nor a fixed set of symbols. Cuneiform was used in at least eight different languages. </rant>
peterburkimsher 9y ago
"million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 - 100,000 have been read or published." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script What are we doing about this?

221 points by aidos 9y ago

Everyone, please read the letter in full. It's great, and not too long. Of course it's a translation of an ancient language, but assuming it's fairly accurate, it's awesome to think someone wrote something like that almost 4,000 years ago. I think sometimes we forget that at their core, people in 1750 BCE were just like people today. > What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! Love it.

avtar 9y ago
> I think sometimes we forget that at their core, people in 1750 BCE were just like people today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...
pjmlp 9y ago
That is why I love reading ancient books that have survived to our days.
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  You've probably already read it, but here's a mobile-friendly PlinyPedia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668314
wpietri 9y ago
I'm fascinated by how much of modern business practice already existed 4 millennia ago. With minor changes, this could have been written today. Although now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. This is basically the age of the code of Hammurabi [1], and a good chunk of that is about commerce. E.g. the section on giving receipts: "104. If a merchant give an agent corn, wool, oil, or any other goods to transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the amount, and compensate the merchant therefor. Then he shall obtain a receipt form the merchant for the money that he gives the merchant. 105. If the agent is careless, and does not take a receipt for the money which he gave the merchant, he can not consider the unreceipted money as his own. 106. If the agent accept money from the merchant, but have a quarrel with the merchant (denying the receipt), then shall the merchant swear before God and witnesses that he has given this money to the agent, and the agent shall pay him three times the sum. 107. If the merchant cheat the agent, in that as the latter has returned to him all that had been given him, but the merchant denies the receipt of what had been returned to him, then shall this agent convict the merchant before God and the judges, and if he still deny receiving what the agent had given him shall pay six times the sum to the agent." From http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

ant6n 9y ago

I wonder whether the complaint worked.

joeberon 9y ago

That's very interesting, thank you

aidos 9y ago
I totally stole it from pjc50: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352

hprotagonist 9y ago

i can’t find the source for this assertion but I was lead to believe that a large number of contemporary copies of this message were made and distributed around as a warning to others not to do business with this merchant.

peterburkimsher 9y ago
That would make a lot of sense. It's similar to the public reference system that makes sites like eBay, AirBnb, and CouchSurfing work.

runako 9y ago

Here are pictures of the letter: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=277770&partId=1&searchText=ur+131236&page=1 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...

wpietri 9y ago
Ah that's interesting. It even has dimensions. It's 11.6 cm x 5 cm x 2.6 cm. In comparison, the latest iPhone is 14 cm x 7 cm x 0.7 cm. So this note was basically the size of a cellphone. Or as wide as a 3x5 card, but not as tall. Makes sense, I suppose. Factors that shape iPhones and 3x5 cards include easy handling, easy reading, and easy manual interaction.
- acqq 9y ago
  11.5 cm was the height of the first iPhone and iPhone 4. That old(!) tablet fits that, it is a little narrower and a little more than twice as thick. Imagine, Steve Jobs at al. chose the size that matched that almost 4000 years old tablet, just went to twice as thin.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    But by making it so thin one could not write on the edge of the tablet[1]. Imagine the complaints from removing such functionality for the sake of mere thinness. [1]http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=1613004127&objectid=277770 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...
    - acqq 9y ago
      Never thought about that, did anybody analyze if the "thou shalt" tablets from the Bible were also inspired by the Babylonian cuneiform ones? From the debt receipts and complaints, to that.. Regarding side writing, yes I'd really hated broken compatibility. Not to mention that they'd break more easily!

Tepix 9y ago

Sounds like he should have used an ethereum smart contract, right?

CPLX 9y ago
Lately I've been wondering if there are any HN threads whatsoever that are inappropriate for someone to come in and say that things could have been done better by using the blockchain. The answer, it seems, is self-evident.

coldcode 9y ago

Getting ripped off is apparently at least 3750 years old. People seem to have not changed over time.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

I wonder what artifacts will be found from today in 3750 years? BRB, gonna carve this comment into stone tablet and bury it.

edgarvaldes 9y ago
In the year 5767. Go imagine that time span.
jlebrech 9y ago
they'll unearth partial disk platters or solid state chips.
bringtheaction 9y ago
The only surviving artifact from our period of time will be a single CD-ROM copy of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. At offset 0x4B3B8A of the game executable, the following message is found: > Tomb Raider IV - The Last Relevation -- Dedicated to my fiance Jay for putting up with this game taking over our lifes,my step sons Craig,Jamie & Aiden (Show this to your mates at school, they'll believe you now!!),also for my daughters Sophie and Jody - See you in another hex dump - Richard Flower 11/11/1999 https://tcrf.net/Tomb_Raider:_The_Last_Revelation https://tcrf.net/Tomb_Raider:_The_Last_Revelation

deadmetheny 9y ago

The best part about this is that archaeologists supposedly found more complaint tablets in the same room of the house about the same guy, leading them to believe that the house they found them in belonged to the Ea-nasir himself.

jlebrech 9y ago
this needs to be made into a TV show.
- Razengan 9y ago
  They should call it the Flintstones or something.
BeefySwain 9y ago
Have they been transcribed and made available?
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  I can't find anything online suggesting they have been, unfortunately. I'd also love to read them.
xjlin0 9y ago
The room for customer support/relationship maybe?
- gadders 9y ago
  Like a clay-based call centre?

Beltiras 9y ago

Buyer was pissed. Really pissed.

crispyambulance 9y ago

I have found twitter to be the most excellent platform for complaints in the year 2017. Many orgs have responsive social media staff that monitor twitter and are able to make stuff right. Twitter is better than clay tablets for complaints, though I do admire the gravitas of a clay tablet. Nothing says "I am fucking serious" as well as pounding out a message on clay, firing it in an oven for 12 hours, and then sending a servant to deliver it by donkey or camel through hostile territory.

chrisper 9y ago
Sometimes I use Facebook messenger. I guess it has the same effect.
krapp 9y ago
To be fair, "pounding out a message on clay, firing it in an oven for 12 hours, and then sending a servant to deliver it by donkey or camel through hostile territory" was probably just the way long-distance correspondence was done back then. Maybe Nanni was also instructed to throw it at Ea-nasir's head or something.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  > Maybe Nanni was also instructed to throw it at Ea-nasir's head Well it does say that it is slightly damaged.
imglorp 9y ago
The master may have had a scribe on staff for these things.
dbcurtis 9y ago
You'll be really excited about my pitch deck: Clay Tablets as a Service. Want to sign up for the API Beta?
- microtherion 9y ago
  You'll have competition: https://dumbcuneiform.com https://dumbcuneiform.com

QAPereo 9y ago

I love the details, and the points he's clearly outraged about. Basically a combination of, "It was dangerous!" "Do you know who I fucking am?!" and "Treat me with contempt? I'll show you contempt!" People haven't changed really.

d--b 9y ago

This is fun, but at the same time not very surprising. People do complain and so sometimes put it in writing. Is there a catalog of everything that is a "first known written stuff". Like the first known correspondence between a child and a distant cousin, or the first letter in which a woman tells another woman that they bought the same dress and that's not cool?

dalbasal 9y ago
It’s true, some of this is frivolous. It’s valuable though, since we think in narratives and achieving milestones helps us feel progress. It's like how Floyd Mayweather just achieved a contrived goal of "undefeated in 50 matches," or the long list of Roger Federer's achievements, all made up "firsts" or "mosts." There’s a non-frivolous side too, I think. Firsts (and other data points) help to timeline the use of written language and its development. The Akkadian/Sumerian finds are really good for this, because of the quantity of finds and the ease of translation (Akkadian anyway). King List, Laws and other political/governance texts. Epic/mythological tablets and other “religious” tablets. Historical tablets. Some clay tablets are reproduced in the bible, and still form core parts of culture. A tremendous amount of accounting tablets appear in very early periods suggesting that clay was originally a finch startup idea.
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  Another thing we can glean from these records is how expensive/labor-intensive it was to produce them. If we find that in a certain time period, people were only writing about business and government as opposed to personal correspondence or frivolous things, then we can assume that the medium might have been costly at the time, and/or that people did less-official communication through media that were less durable, like paper or the brain of a messenger.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

booleandilemma 9y ago

I love the inscribed metadata at the top: Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message: It’s like an email header for a clay tablet.

hprotagonist 9y ago
well into the early modern era, letters were written as if they were speech. this explains the three paragraphs of flowery hellos at the opening of most old letters — it’s written as if the writer is standing in front of the reader and speaking.
jff 9y ago
I found that line quite interesting. The wording seems to imply that someone is going to read this tablet to Ea-nasir, and possibly that someone wrote the tablet on behalf of Nanni. In an age before near-universal literacy (i.e. most of human history), that makes sense: Ea-nasir would have summoned someone to read out the tablet. Given Ea-nasir's position as a presumably well-off trader, he may have simply had a scribe on-staff to handle his correspondence--an early instance of the modern PR hack?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I think it's literally just the equivalent of an envelope - a "to" field and a "from" field, so that any messenger in charge of deliveries can, at a glance, tell to whom this message is meant to be delivered, and to return it to the sender if it's undeliverable. I wonder if ancient Ur had dodgy FedEx delivery guy equivalents who would knock on your door and toss the tablet in the dirt and mark it as "delivered".
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    "knock on your door and toss the tablet in the dirt" At least then it'd be delivered (as opposed to the normal FedEx approach of "knocking" by slapping a missed delivery slip on the door).

athenot 9y ago

The arabic version of the wikipedia entry has a picture of the tablet. https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/لوح_شكوى_إلى_ايانصير https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/لوح_شكوى_إلى_ايانصير

dkersten 9y ago
Its also linked at the bottom of the english wikipedia page, under External Links. It links the British Museum, where it has pictures of front and back.

fapjacks 9y ago

It always surprises me that people seem so surprised that people were the same way so many years ago. If you read basically anything written by human hands in any time period, it seems they all had very many of the same concerns we do today.

Sharlin 9y ago
I guess it's because of how much has changed, both culturally and technologically. But some things are just human nature
oh_sigh 9y ago
I think people are suprised specifically because they don't read anything written by human hands from the ancient world

ben11kehoe 9y ago

It gets better: https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrevolution-blacktyranitar https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrev... > But this guy, this Ea-nasir, he kept all of his angry letters - hundreds of them - and meticulously filed and preserved them in a dedicated room in his house. What kind of guy does that?

24gttghh 9y ago
A narcissist.
- davidkuhta 9y ago
  FTFY: A wealthy narcissist. Edit: Surprised on the downvotes. "Traveling merchant who imports metals and has a room in their house solely dedicated to customer complaints" Wouldn't the preservation of his narcissism to modern times heavily connote the importance of his wealth?
  - microtherion 9y ago
    Was his house known as the "Ea-nasir Ziggurat" ?
- pishpash 9y ago
  Ea-nasir-sist, surely.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
Huh, I follow David's tumbler via RSS for exactly this kind of fascinating thing. Glad I'm not the only one.

nocoder 9y ago

This is fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. It's amazing that I can totally relate to an almost 4000 year old stuff, it's kind of cute.

gadders 9y ago

Some people wonder what is the point of reading Herodotus or Plutarch etc and then you read things like this and see that human nature has not changed much in 5,000 years.

eternalban 9y ago

If only Ea-nasir had put his money into crytops, instead, we would be reading tablets on his 10000% return on investment. :)

herodotus 9y ago

Dear Nani Thank you for your tablet which we received on March 7, 1750BCE. We appreciate your business and can assure you that feedback like yours is important to us because it helps us improve our business. We take all feedback very seriously. We apologize if our service did not meet your expectations, but, more importantly, did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves. We are always striving to improve, which is why we remain Mesopotamia's leading producer of copper ingots. Enclosed is a discount code which you can use on your next purchase to compensate you for the difficulties you experienced. This coupon expires in 1749BCE Sam-Gun, Cutomer relations

alphakappa 9y ago
That would have to be a remarkably prescient customer relations fellow to know that such-and-such would be born 1750 years later.
- herodotus 9y ago
  -:)
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  I declare this year 1533 BZ. I'm not obliged to let you know what the Z is, but it's gonna be important!

pault 9y ago

Shouldn't this have (-1750) in the title?

njarboe 9y ago

"while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas." I would be interested on what this joint-written, sealed tablet kept at the temple is. Some kind of escrow system? Unfortunately the wikipedia article does not mention anything about this cryptic phrase.

oh_sigh 9y ago
Basically a receipt probably for tax purposes

WindowsFon4life 9y ago

"Written in Cuneiform". How about Akkadian? Many languages were written in wedge writing. Cuneiform is neither a language, nor a fixed set of symbols. Cuneiform was used in at least eight different languages. </rant>

peterburkimsher 9y ago

"million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 - 100,000 have been read or published." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script What are we doing about this?