
Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir - aidos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
======
herodotus
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
That would have to be a remarkably prescient customer relations fellow to know
that such-and-such would be born 1750 years later.

~~~
quickthrower2
I declare this year 1533 BZ. I'm not obliged to let you know what the Z is,
but it's gonna be important!

------
crispyambulance
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.

~~~
dbcurtis
You'll be really excited about my pitch deck: Clay Tablets as a Service. Want
to sign up for the API Beta?

~~~
microtherion
You'll have competition:
[https://dumbcuneiform.com](https://dumbcuneiform.com)

~~~
schoen
> Good catch, smarties! Cuneiform is a writing system, not a language (like
> roman letters). We're transliterating - converting the syllables of your
> message to the cuneiform script - rather than translating.

Maybe the next evolution of this is a service that translates to one of the
ancient languages that was traditionally written in cuneiform! (But I guess
the transliteration approach is somewhat legitimate considering the range of
totally unrelated languages that have been written in this system -- so why
not English too?)

------
Cyphase
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.

~~~
pjmlp
That is why I love reading ancient books that have survived to our days.

~~~
peterburkimsher
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)

------
ben11kehoe
It gets better:
[https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrev...](https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/123010716162/thesparkofrevolution-
blacktyranitar)

> 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
A narcissist.

~~~
davidkuhta
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
Was his house known as the "Ea-nasir Ziggurat" ?

------
runako
Here are pictures of the letter:

[http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...](http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=277770&partId=1&searchText=ur+131236&page=1)

~~~
wpietri
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
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
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/coll...](http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=1613004127&objectid=277770)

~~~
acqq
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!

------
deadmetheny
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.

~~~
xjlin0
The room for customer support/relationship maybe?

~~~
gadders
Like a clay-based call centre?

------
booleandilemma
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.

~~~
jff
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
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
"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).

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

------
WindowsFon4life
"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>

------
njarboe
"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
Basically a receipt probably for tax purposes

------
d--b
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
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
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.

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

------
gadders
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.

------
athenot
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
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
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.

~~~
oh_sigh
I think people are suprised specifically because they don't read anything
written by human hands from the ancient world

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

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

------
nocoder
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.

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

~~~
bringtheaction
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)

------
peterburkimsher
"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?

------
ant6n
I wonder whether the complaint worked.

------
joeberon
That's very interesting, thank you

~~~
aidos
I totally stole it from pjc50:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669352)

------
Beltiras
Buyer was pissed. Really pissed.

------
QAPereo
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.

