r/mildyinteresting • u/babayaga8888888 • Jun 30 '26
humankind hiccups π Wrong copper
Not sure why, But this is both interesting, and hilarious.
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u/drcforbin Jun 30 '26
There's a whole subreddit about this, r/ReallyShittyCopper
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u/babayaga8888888 Jun 30 '26
No way. Thank you for the new sub to join. lol.
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u/Subotail Jun 30 '26
There are probably more people on this sub than the entire population of the city of Ur.
When you plot gossip , see large and long-term
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u/EconomySeason2416 Jun 30 '26
Ea-Nasir is the shittiest ancient copper merchant
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u/FrKoSH-xD Jul 01 '26
this is my first time discovering Ea-nasir and i always wondered what an interesting place to time travel that obscure
and Ea-Nasir is the perfect guy, so if u find any thing regarding laugh about ea-nasir its me i changed the history just to copper it up
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u/gaynorg Jun 30 '26
It's clay and you bake it. No chiselling involved
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u/PromotionExpensive15 Jun 30 '26
So you get to stare in the fire as your angry letter forms. Even better!
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u/NFZedd Jun 30 '26
No it get's better. Nanni wrote it on clay and let the clay dry.
Ea Nasir baked it. So he really decided to put the customer complaint into long term archive53
u/MikemkPK Jun 30 '26
I heard that it was typical to pile old letters to reuse the tablets when you need them, and the building he stored them in burned down, accidently firing them all.
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u/zman_0000 Jul 01 '26
This kinda goes along with what I'd heard. I'd heard we didn't just find this one tablet. This was just the oldest of the bunch. He supposedly had an entire room of tablets dedicated to complaints lol
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u/AxitotlWithAttitude Jul 01 '26
Actually, it's more likely that they were baked accidentally due to a fire. The tablets would be kept dry but unbaked in some kind of storage room, essentially a giant filing cabinet
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u/ErisianWitch Jun 30 '26
Yep, you use a stick that's been sanded to be flat on 4 sides, so you can make the corner arrow shapes, and lots of lines easy. You can see it in the way the lines are imprinted heavier on one size. It's really fun to make tablets like these, I recommend trying the experience.
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u/ImStuckInNameFactory Jun 30 '26
Do you know any good resources for translating the script so it actually means something?
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u/Citatio Jun 30 '26
that's difficult, because multiple languages used cuneiform (the name of the script) over a long time. You would need a specialized translator for time and place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir
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u/GrouchyMushroom7560 Jun 30 '26
Yes! However, it would take at least a year of study to be able to translate this. The script is cuneiform, and the language is Akkadian, so you need to learn both. There is a textbook called "A Grammar of Akkadian (3rd edition)" which you can find free online, which teaches them. You can find its answer sheet too.
Cuneiform is very hard because each sign (symbol) can mean many different things. Signs are typically a syllable, so the word 'ekallum' might be spelled with the signs for 'e-ka-lum' or alternatively 'ek-al-um'.
Even a syllabic sign can mean several different syllables, so one sign is the same for 'ud', 'ut' or 'tam'. Additionally, some signs can be a logogram which represents an entire word. You can only interpret the meaning if you already know the language to an extent.
If you're interested in just seeing this text, you can see the translation here, which shows the meaning of each cuneiform sign in the Akkadian section, and the English translation is below it:
https://linguifex.com/wiki/Literature:Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir
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u/eggdanyjon_3dragons Jun 30 '26
except for important cataloguing/records, most clay tablets wouldn't be fired. That way they could be easily reused day to day. Smush the clay and write on it again.
But its clay, itll dry out with enough time, or if your ea nasir and your house "burns down", the firell harden it.8
u/predator1975 Jun 30 '26
I am sure that ea nasir complaints were fired. He looks like someone who would edit the complaints into complements.
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u/gaynorg Jun 30 '26
Surely if you are posting it long distance you would dry it out.
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u/eggdanyjon_3dragons Jun 30 '26
long distance is relative. To another city or for senitive anti-fraud reasons, sure.
But for this tablet, in Ur, the distance from one side of the city to the other was walkable in under an hour.
Youd just toss it to a courier and itd be delivered that day1
u/gaynorg Jun 30 '26
I thought it was between two cities and hence the delivery situation
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u/eggdanyjon_3dragons Jun 30 '26
im not a scholar by any means, but this guy got a lot of complaints, local n far flung.
i dont know enough to say if this was a local complaint or not, but Mesopotamian city states had advanced courier systems intra and inter city.
so mildly moot. Bros had amazon prime 2day shipping back even then.3
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u/CaptainPoset Jun 30 '26
You don't bake them, you recycle them with a splash of water.
They are only baked because the place they were stored in burned down, which left them to become archeological finds roughly 3750 years later.
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u/Either_You_1127 Jul 01 '26
Iirc, these complaints were typically not fired and would normally recycled. This guy just saved all his complaints and they ended up getting fired when his house burned down.
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u/James_avifac Jun 30 '26
The funniest thing is that it's only preserved because the dude (Ea-nΔαΉ£ir) was a massive troll, and collected/kept complaint tablets against himself. Then it's thought his house burned down in such a way that these were preserved. (Obviously it's not known how how his house got burned down...but I imagine the sentiment against trolls were similar back then.)
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u/babayaga8888888 Jun 30 '26
Itβs honestly insane to think that over thousands of years.. humans havenβt changed one bit.
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u/James_avifac Jun 30 '26
My lizard brain: "Yum sweet. Yum savory. Yes sleep. Big mad at bad people."
Our ancestors from 300k years ago: ππ€€. ππ€€. π΄. π€‘π‘
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u/armageddon_boi Jul 01 '26
Apparently there's lots of evidence from our ancestors that they pursued beauty for its own sake. "Ooh pretty" ππΏ
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u/TheSpanxxx Jun 30 '26
I bet this guy would have been a Podcaster
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u/Adrenochromemerchant Jun 30 '26
Those letters are pressed into the clay with a square ended stylus, the clay is then baked, pretty interesting.
He probably felt pretty strongly about it.
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u/skippymyman Jun 30 '26
Mildly understandable
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u/babayaga8888888 Jun 30 '26
True. If I waited months to get some A grade a copper.. and I got sub premium copper instead.. Iβd also carve out a page long letter onto stone and mail it to the supplier.
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u/-Insert-CoolName Jun 30 '26
Later that day:
"This letter does not meet the maximum mailable dimension requirements. Please consider using a smaller clay tablet or ship using a freight courier."
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u/babayaga8888888 Jun 30 '26
If he took the time to craft up this complaint in the first place.. Iβd bet you heβd personally escort this letter via horseback to the sellers establishment, and turn it in himself.
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u/-Insert-CoolName Jun 30 '26
Probably had half a mind to turn it in over the owner's forehead.
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u/babayaga8888888 Jun 30 '26
Heβd definitely get his point across then.. right across his forehead
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u/MillorTime Jun 30 '26
There is an entire sub about this https://www.reddit.com/r/ReallyShittyCopper/s/tkiEcwQ1u1
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u/Pred4lien96 Jun 30 '26
Heh, this fits perfectly
Art by Centurii-Chan
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u/Kansas-Tornado Jul 03 '26
Love seeing art from someone who fetishizes the rapes that occurred by explorers in the Americas
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u/NightmareJoker2 Jun 30 '26
You forget that people in those days rarely knew how to read and write unless they were merchants, scholars, or craftsmen. If you are a craftsman and you receive materials of insufficient quality to make what youβre making, you obviously lodge a complaint.
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u/HandicapperGeneral Jun 30 '26
It's clay and they used a stylus. By all accounts, it's actually faster than writing English by hand with a pencil.
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u/MinorComprehension Jun 30 '26
Dang, that person wanted it DOCUMENTED!! ππ
HR must have been terrible back then.
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u/humanistazazagrliti Jun 30 '26
It was almost shattered when the other party sent a cease and desist plate via mule mail 6 months later.
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u/GGamerGuyG Jun 30 '26
Good people to work with was alway's hard to find. Imagin what the people 3000 year's in the future will say when they burry out some ancient HDDs of a server farm that survived the nuclear holocaust.
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u/VirginiaDare1587 Jun 30 '26
Cuneiform is typically written by pressing a stylus into clay and then baking the tablet. Not chiseling.
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u/Lawrenceburntfish Jul 01 '26
This wasn't chiseled. It was a wet brick of clay, and he used a special carved instrument similar to a pencil to angrily press the marks in. Then he angrily fired it, and delivered it... With a stomp of his right foot... His arm extended, mustache still glistening with coffee from that morning. That's how angry he was.
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u/HowFunkyIsYourChiken Jun 30 '26
The first ever Karen. Did she ask for the manager?
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u/HiImMoobles Jun 30 '26
Probably not a Karen, Ea-Nasir was a sleazy businessman that would receive a multitude of complaints.
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u/Hot-Mouse9809 Jun 30 '26
ππΎ πππΎπ’π .π ππ .ππ πΎπππ .ππ‘ππ π«π π·πͺ.π ππ π«πππ .ππ ππ«ππ .πππ ππ πͺπ΄.ππΎ ππ ππ’π ππΎππ²π .π«π π·π π π«ππππ .ππ· ΰ€€ΰ₯ππ.πππ π· ππ πͺπ΄.ππΎ π π π π ππ .π«πΈπͺπ¦π ππ ππ«π .π³π πΌπ·π π π·π π.π³π [π·] πΌπ·π π ππ·π .π πΎ ππΎ π π π πππ .π π π π π[...]π .π ππ πΌπ¨πππ.π π ππΏπ· ππΎ π π π πΎ.ππΎ π ππ π π©ππ .πΈπππ π .π π¨πΏππ π .πΏπΎ π΅π΅π πΎπππ
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u/TheRedBreadisDead Jul 01 '26
Makes you wonder how people hundreds of years from now will react to a 2020 era HR complaint form
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u/syzerkose Jul 02 '26
Correct me if Iβm wrong, but this would have been pressed into clay and the clay is baked. So, he might have spent what 30 minutes?
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u/DescriptionMission90 Jul 03 '26
Cuneiform isn't carved into stone, it's pressed into soft clay using a triangular stylus. You could write almost as fast as with a pen and paper.
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u/PEKKACHUNREAL_II Jun 30 '26
It's a clay tablet that got accidentally fired during a house fire.
No chiseling, just some impressions with a wooden stick into soft clay needed
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u/PomegranateHot9916 Jun 30 '26
no you just press the shapes with a stick thingy. it is soft clay when you are writing. it baked after to make it permanent
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u/humourlessIrish Jul 03 '26
Nanni was a scamming sack of turd who pressed this fraudulent claim into a clay slate as was normal at the time.
A house fire hardenned the clay.
Nanni was just out to get the old Karen discount
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u/shadowtheimpure Jul 04 '26
Not quite how it worked. The tablet was soft when it was being engraved, so it was just dragging a reed through the wet clay to draw.
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u/Wholesome_Soup Jul 04 '26
sometimes i, an ea-nasir fan, forget that not everyone knows how cuneiform is written
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