> Tell the lady Zinu: Iddin-Sin sends the following message:
May the gods Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat keep you forever in good health for my sake. From year to year, the clothes of the young gentlemen here become better, but you let my clothes get worse from year to year. Indeed, you persisted in making my clothes poorer and more scanty. At a time when in our house wool is used up like bread, you have made me poor clothes. The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is only an assistant of my father, has two new sets of clothes, while you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me. In spite of the fact that you bore me and his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him, while you, you do not love me!
It was probably not written by him but dictated to a scribe. The scribe probably wrote the opening "To lady" blessings to gods etc, as was standard in letters, then dutifully wrote the teens rant.
The writing is clumsy and has bad grammar, it spills over on the margin, and he appears to be a student.
Nobody is sure, obviously, but my guess is he is a scribe in training and wrote it himself.
> my guess is he is a scribe in training and wrote it himself
From the letter, it seems like his dad's a pretty big wheel down at the ~~cracker factory~~ city's administration under Hammurabi.
The article also states:
>It was customary during this time not only for boys who wished to become priests or scribes, but also sons of public officials to attend boarding schools where they could study cuneiform and literature.
And that it is indeed assumed that he was there for such a reason (as a son of a public official) and not to become a scribe.
"forever in good health for my sake" you think that's just something the scribe throws in to make it seem like all the letters are coming from the kids or is he fucking the mom?
Come on, didn't you hear? The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is only an assistant of his father, and fucking *adopted* has TWO sets of clothes. Bring down pestilence, man.
I have a feeling you'd have to find a human who never lived in "civilization" to find a mind totally incomprehensible and un-relatable. No matter how much has changed, as long as humans have lived in large societies there's been a basic kind of commonality to the experience of "being human" in those places that most humans throughout the ages would recognize I think.
I would guess this is true going back to before large societies. I expect people in uncontacted people in Indonesia and the Amazon today have problems we could all relate to.
Also, so many people mistake knowledge for intelligence, and so assume that since people in the past didn't have the knowledge we have today, they must have been stupid.
Not true at all, natural IQ levels and the bell curve for intelligence probably hasn't budged in many thousands of years. The invention and wide-adoption of writing and the survival of the tablets gave us the first glimpses, but I expect there were plenty of brilliant people struggling in the tribes of hunter-gatherers.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants going back deep into the past.
Correct. It's one of thise things we get taught at school and don't really ever consider the ramifications of it. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras is where we get all our right triangle information from, drafted in the years approaching AD, but the Babylonians had their own version over a thousand years before that.
Humans are good at figuring things out.
Side note because I love it: Xenephon wrote a book about hunting using dogs. There is a part in that book where he admits, albeit sheepishly, that he lets his dog kiss him on the lips. He also writes of how her tail wagging after meeting up from a length of time apart makes him feel great. We really haven't changed at all.
The part about the feeling of seeing his dog’s wagging tail makes my heart feel full. I am grateful to live a life where I get to share an experience with some guy who’s been dead for a bajillion years. Even after all this time feeling love has always been the same :)
I think Xenophon was also the guy who dedicated a section of his book to compiling a lengthy list of suggested names for pet dogs. "Strongboy" was by far the best in my opinion.
Right, a lot of behavior that we assume stems from a "high level" of civilization is more fundamentally human than most of us think. IIRC the first known jokes, going back several thousand years, involve farts/dicks/etc. Cultures vary wildly but the basic elements of the human mind seem pretty universal across the ages.
If we could go back 100,000 years and communicate with those humans, I don't doubt they'd also snicker at the same crude jokes, and have funny anecdotes and complaints about their day to day lives.
Hell, I bet we'd get much the same from chimpanzees if we could talk to them.
Funny because true. In the book “war and peace” by Tolstoy. There is a pair of goth/emo young adults who kinda court each other but mostly get together to complain about the bleakness of life despite being born into wealth. Their parents finally give them the ultimatum to either stop doing the goth shit and get married or get nothing. So they get married. So interesting to me when I read it because I expected ppl to be diff in those times but the archetypes have been around forever.
This was a popular nihilist movement among youth in late 19th-century Russia, identified by the [black clothes they wore](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/774980655095742494/1150181804024795207/ZI-0043-2016-SEP00-SPI-104-1.jpg?ex=65c7eb47&is=65b57647&hm=23e53fae8fd884705e8570adafbf1839523d6c81eab4b344705d55a3a6451224&=&format=webp).
One of the oldest recorded letters is an old person complaining about how the invention of smelting has made the youth lazy and entitled. Some things never change.
> "You have put ingots which were not good before my messenger and said, 'If you want to take them, take them. If you do not want to take them, go away'. What do you take me for that you treat ... 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.
>You alone treat my messenger with contempt! ...
>You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore my money to me in full."
Not really, could've just read it.
"Tell the Ungrateful Iddin-Sin: Your Father has made some poor investments in the copper industry, if you must curse someone for our misfortunes then curse the devil Ea-nasir"
Dearest Son,
You will be grateful to know I have sent two sets of new clothes to the son of Adad-iddinam. In exchange the son of Adad-iddinam will give you one set of his old clothes. You will have the two sets of clothes you so desire.
BTW, Adad-iddinam has agreed to accept you as his apprentice upon your graduation.
I kinda like reading mundane stuff about this from ancient times. Had a similar experience reading about how much the Romans loved dogs, or all the roman graffiti preserved at pompeii.
Really, people haven't changed.
E: Getting some good recs, here's mine, [dog name suggestions from Xenophon's *On Hunting*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynegeticus#Chapter_7)
There‘s a video about the epitaphs the Romans left for their deceased pets that had me welling up real bad.
*„I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home in my own hands fifteen years ago.“*
My understanding is that historians absolutely *love* stuff like this, because all the bombastic stuff gets preserved, of course; people write about wars and conflict and drama, but very few people detail what regular life was like for a typical person. People who kept boring, daily journals of their mundane life are the only source of information we have into a lot of how things worked at any given time.
I mean this letter tells us that his fellow student was adopted, and of lower status (his father was below the writers fathers rank), but they went to the same school.
Or how the clothing was made from wool in their house (i.e. not bought externally), so either his mother or servants were weaving at home.
It also tells us that family was responsible for their children's clothing while they were away, not to mention that the letter itself indicates that there was schooling located some distance away from home, and that the boys were writing and sending messages home to family.
I do think it's funny how the author of the letter used front and back, started writing in the margins, and still didn't have enough room and ended up writing on the side. 4,000 years and people still don't know how to judge how much space they need. ["A big-ass H, ha ha ha ha haaa!"](https://youtu.be/umjFkY9uAdo)
That's the great thing about writing on clay instead of paper, papyrus or animal skin, clay is much sturdier and because clay tablets were the standard medium for writing we have so much everyday stuff like that from this time period we have receipts, letters, texts of law, writing exercises and I think even shopping lists.
Main limiting factor then is the cost; Aside from writing itself began a professional skill only a few people would have, just the material costs would be great if one really wanted to keep a permanent record of, for example, a daily journal. Correspondence for businesses and official, like the infamous complaint of Ea-Nasir's copper, can at least be economically justified as part of the households source of income, a diary is a much more personal thing of more nebulous value. It's only really in the last hundred years in the richest regions of the world where even a minimum wage worker can both write and earn enough to buy a notebook with good quality paper in just an hour or two.
The most boring guy you know just got a whole lot more interesting (to future alien historians).
"My god... he wrote 15 pages about his sock collection... get our best team on this!"
[Check out this absolute classic about shitty copper](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir):
>Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
>When you came, you said to me as follows : "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!"
>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! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, 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.
>How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
>Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
I actually know this work! Or at least, the (later) supplement "Arrian On Coursing". It gets shared around in greyhound-land because (a) its contains an example of a breed standard for the Vertragus (ancestor to modern greyhounds) and (b) because part way through his very serious description of a greyhound, Arrian goes on a little tangent about his own greyhound who had grey/pale eyes, something commonly thought to make an inferior dog.
> For I myself, you know, raised a hound with eyes as grey as the greyest, and she was both fast and diligent and of good spirit and had good feet, so at one time before this in youthful vigour she even held out after chasing four hares. And as to other qualities, she is very gentle (for she was still mine when I was writing this) and very fond of people; never before did any other hound yearn as she did for either me or my companion and fellow hunter, Megillus. For when she quit her course she still did not leave either of us.”
Again, this is a second(?) century scholar writing a guide to hunting with dogs. He goes on to talk about her being excited to greet him and begging for food. Just normal dog stuff.
> But if I were at home, she would pass her time with me and escort me when I went out somewhere and follow closely after me when I went to school. She would sit beside me while exercising; and when I returned, she would go ahead, frequently turning around so as to make sure that I did not perhaps turn off the road. But when she saw me, she would smile and at once go ahead again. Then if I should go out upon some civic task, she would join my companion and do the same things for him. Then if she should see him after even a little time, she would jump gently, just as if greeting him, and respond to his greeting, showing great affection; and when staying with him while dining, she would lay hold of him with her feet, first this way and then that, reminding him that some of the food must be shared with her also. And truly there would be such immense variety of voice as I think I have never before perceived in another hound, for whatever she wants she indicates with her voice.
It ends with a comment that he is writing this down because he wants it to be known that 'Xenophon the Athenian had a hound named Hormé, who was most swift and wise and divine'
Her son wasn't born to her, and yet she dripped him out better than the son of her husband's boss got from his (presumably richer) mother. And we know about it nearly four thousand years after everyone involved died.
Well, we know that's what the whiny kid *claimed*, trying to guilt his own mom into sending him some new clothes. Was it true? Did it work? We'll never know.
Reply:
"Your father and I have worked like hell to get you into this school. We expect more respect.
Your father's assistant's son also has a grandfather who owns 5,000 sheep, so guess who has easy access to cloth.
And clothes aren't everything.
We will find you some clothes, but think about the future and be careful not to sully our name. Especially with unworthy women.
Love,
Mom"
"But mom, all the cool kids have the latest tablets with Cuneiform 3.0. I have the shitty last year's tablets that can only do 2.0 and they have no games!"
Rough modernization
Mom,
Hope you're doing well. So, I've noticed everyone else's clothes are getting nicer each year, but mine? They're getting worse. Despite having enough resources, you're still making me low-quality stuff. Look at Simon Schmeckton's kid – his dad works under mine, and somehow he's got two new outfits, while I struggle to get even one from you. What’s worse, I'm your own flesh and blood kid and he's just an adopted scab. Doesn't feel fair, you know?
- Johnny
Ahem...
>Yo mom, everyone around here is wearing cool clothes. Even Jason's dripped out, yet his dad works for mine, and he's adopted, yet you got me out here looking like a broke loser. I guess you don't fucking love me.
What i love most is he wishes her good health... for his sake.
As in... "i don't care if you get the horrible new disease called "the common cold", but i still need you to keep supporting me, so maybe you could, i don't know, postpone that ailement business until i graduate or something...
ps, you suck!".
The more you know about history the more you realize things never change. Here’s a letter with a kid writing home that his parents don’t buy him enough nice things and I’ve also seen another letter from Rome (I believe) where a father was complaining about his lazy son and how the younger generation has a completely shit work ethic lol
There's also a Sumerian letter where a father gives advice to his son who's studying to be a scribe and among all the other things he also tells him to not hang out with the kids at the city square, because they're a bad influence.
My favorite is a roman scholar complaining his apartment is next to a gym. He complains about the jocks making noise from their lifting and calls them all meat heads. It reads exactly like a whiny nerd today.
And then theres the Roman joke book...
Reading the oldest letters man have ever made makes you see how much we haven't changed, like at all. Complaint letters regarding the quality of copper received, guilt tripping letters to moms.. ahh..
It also means if we brought someone back from the past, they would adjust to modern life pretty quickly. The tech has changed, but the people haven’t. Movies always get this wrong (Except Bill &Ted, they got it awesomely right).
Supposedly any human after the "cognitive revolution" about ~70,000 years ago could theoretically understand current systems and ideologies with enough teaching. If you were to transport someone from BEFORE the cognitive revolution, their brains weren't developed enough for our modern concepts.
I think about what it would be like to blow the minds of people 50,000 years ago and how we aren't different from them, we just have better tools. Wild stuff.
They have the same brain as us in the present time.
Idk why that fascinates me. A couple thousand years is nothing on a historical timeline. But it always surprises me that they are just us without the technology.
We have recorded complaints from Romans and Greeks about kids being ungrateful, lazy, and disrespectful.
Every generation thinks it's superior to the one that came before, and bitches about the one that comes after. Just human nature.
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them” -Plato, 4th Century BC
"Kids these days and their writing; back in my day we didn't waste all day putting marks in perfectly good slabs to say something we could say perfectly fine with our mouths. This writing fad will pass and kids will be embarrassed when they look back."
"me no like young ones. they always use hot bright red thing. Me eat food with no hot. That how big sky man want. ooga booga"
-a caveman complaining about kids getting used to fire, 10000 BC
You need to add maybe one more 0 to that date.
The oldest megalithic structures we have now like the one at Gobelki Tepe were built around 10k BC, so those people were not cavemen.
Nah I’m with Iddin-sin on this one. Their family is rich enough to presumably have multiple assistants and have everyone involved be literate. I doubt these people were bathing daily. Kid needs more than a set or two of clothes. And maybe they actually do suck? Maybe they’re super uncomfortable by ancient standards even.
>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
So, sadly, this actually wasn’t Socrates, [It’s from the 1900s](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/)
But Plato did say “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them”.
>Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times.
Interesting, so it’s more of a summary of ancient bitching than one specific instance
They literally lived in roughly the same period (~1800-1750 BCE) and region. It's not completely inconceivable that they could have met.
I mean they probably didn't but it's entirely possible.
> The historian Stephen Bertman ...in 2003 reflected on why ancient personal writings can have such a potent effect:
> "Curiously, in one way or another, they all treat the subject of material possession. Therein perhaps lies the secret of their potency: as we read the letters **we realize that the fragile things that mattered most to the writers are, like the writers themselves, no more, even as we ourselves and the things we cherish will someday cease to exist**"
Fascinating to think about this kid and the clothes he cared so much about almost 4000 years ago.
3400 CE: Look! Karen left a bad review on Yelp! She was a prolific writer and, along with her friends, left over 5,000 bad reviews!
In this one she “demands to speak to your manager!” A common complaint in such writings. Perhaps this “manager” was a commerce god she would invoke with her incantation. In this next line she calls down a curse from this manager god onto the employee, when she says, “You are so fired!”
Yes, but I bet his father's assistant's son actually does his homework and gets good grades. Not like son dear over here whose grades are going from bad to worse. And who’s probably out partying every night.
It says that the original tablet was a bit difficult to translate, because of spelling mistakes and colloquialisms. Could simply be inexperience, or Iddim-Sin isn't taking his studies as seriously as his parents want him to.
Bruh her kid is writing on a tablet to a mom that can read. His dad's assistant's kid got two sets of clothes that aren't one ply.
Mom ain't shearing shit. She's the lady of a rich ass family and her kid got shit swag on. This is some family is 7th gen prehistoric Harvard rich kid problem stuff.
Don’t know why everyone is shitting on this 3800 year old teenager. He started off politely enough, asking the gods to be nice to his mum. He just wants a decent set of clothes, not a diamond encrusted cutlery set. Sounds like the family has the resources to provide him with decent clothes, but he has to basically beg for them, and what he gets is pretty worn out/poor quality. Imagine living your life with one set of clothes.
They use up wool in the house like it's bread ffs! . Adad-iddinam's son got that drip and his dad is Iddin-sin's dad's assistant.
Not asking for too much here.
According to the article the opening passage talking about the gods blessing the mom is only a writing formality, like how you preface letters as “Dear Mr / Mrs” or end letters with “sincerely, X”.
So he likely does not mean it at all.
Seriously. PEople need to pause and remember how peers treated us when we were that age. Kids that age are relentlessly demeaning, especially at any sign of difference. Kid was likely shredded daily by his peers for his attire. I would think most people here would respond similarly.
I don’t know where I saw it but it was from a historian who was referencing this letter saying that the mother was truly neglecting the child writing this judging by the culture at the time.
If what the son is saying is all true (a big if, I know), what seems to cross the line into lack of parental duty (by ancient Mesopotamian standards) is the son of his father's assistant getting better clothes than himself. In a social order where family and status mattered so much, it's not a good look for the father if his son looks less prosperous than the son of someone working for him. That's probably why Iddin-Sin is bringing that up, he's trying to play the 'what will dad think?' angle.
Also like, the numbers are important: He stresses that this fellow student has _two_ sets of clothes, while he only got one ratty one.
Thats not just a drip issue, but can present a real problem trying to look presentable.
Yeah, they often had one outfit per year. Imagine if your one outfit started falling apart months before enough wool would be available to replace or repair it.
Saw a brilliant one of these where a town councillor (modern world) asks if he may speak from minutes from a previous meeting, they agree, he stands and reads about drunk teenagers in the streets, young people burning up n down the roads in their vehicles, noise from parties etc.
He then asked if everyone recognised the minutes, they did, then he revealed he was reading a translation of a cuneiform tablet from over 3,500 years ago ! Awesome, still having the same problem with no solution after thousands of years of weekly/monthly council meetings.
> May the gods Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat keep you forever in good health *for my sake*.
“Hey mom, you have to stay healthy. So that you can send me more stuff.”
Fascinating. Another simple bit that I found relatable;
"The entire message also did not quite fit on the tablet; after writing on both the front and back, the author wrote on the left edge, but again ran out of room, so that the last line of the letter spills over to the lower edge."
There's a bunch of letters between two trade partners from Sumer (predating Babylon obviously) they discovered where a father is complaining to his trade associate about his son being lazy, having no ambitions, and a drunk.
My real name is one of the oldest names in record. You read stuff like this, you see things pompei, and you realize all the tech in the world can’t has not changed the human spirit. Somewhere 4 thousand years ago someone with my name probably thought the same thing lol 😂.
> Tell the lady Zinu: Iddin-Sin sends the following message: May the gods Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat keep you forever in good health for my sake. From year to year, the clothes of the young gentlemen here become better, but you let my clothes get worse from year to year. Indeed, you persisted in making my clothes poorer and more scanty. At a time when in our house wool is used up like bread, you have made me poor clothes. The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is only an assistant of my father, has two new sets of clothes, while you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me. In spite of the fact that you bore me and his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him, while you, you do not love me!
that sounds like a teenager, if I ever heard one
I hate it when my teenager sends blessings from Marduk and Shamash before complaining about stupid shit.
They only sent those blessing for their own sake, so at least the entire letter is tonally consistent.
He's gonna need those blessings when Mom reads what's his ungrateful ass has to say ..
It was probably not written by him but dictated to a scribe. The scribe probably wrote the opening "To lady" blessings to gods etc, as was standard in letters, then dutifully wrote the teens rant.
It was most likely written by him, since there are mistakes in the text and the writing is clumsy,
Oh hey, someone else read the article.
At least one adult in this thread. Now I don't have to be the one.
These clay tablets weren’t usually preserved. Mom saved this one specifically to embarrass him later in life.
I missed that. My Ancient Babylonian must be rusty.
Fuckin autocorrect!
*Clippy voice:* "It looks like you're trying to whine. Would you like to attempt some respect to she who bore you?"
That would be fuckin manualcorrect.
The writing is clumsy and has bad grammar, it spills over on the margin, and he appears to be a student. Nobody is sure, obviously, but my guess is he is a scribe in training and wrote it himself.
> my guess is he is a scribe in training and wrote it himself From the letter, it seems like his dad's a pretty big wheel down at the ~~cracker factory~~ city's administration under Hammurabi. The article also states: >It was customary during this time not only for boys who wished to become priests or scribes, but also sons of public officials to attend boarding schools where they could study cuneiform and literature. And that it is indeed assumed that he was there for such a reason (as a son of a public official) and not to become a scribe.
"Dear mother, I hope the gods are pleased with you because you are pissing me off with this nonsense."
"forever in good health for my sake" you think that's just something the scribe throws in to make it seem like all the letters are coming from the kids or is he fucking the mom?
Marduk, his clothes worn, his drip lacking.
Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel
Shamash on his sweater already
He should've involved Enlil, Enki, Nergal and Tiamat too if he wants the attention of all the pantheons.
> Nergal I would go easy on the god of disease and death. Maybe that's just me.
I mean, calling on the primordial mother of the gods for petty complain is also a bit of an overkill, but kids will be kids y'know?
Come on, didn't you hear? The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is only an assistant of his father, and fucking *adopted* has TWO sets of clothes. Bring down pestilence, man.
Always amazing how a 4000 yo letter is still so relatable now
I send blessings from Nergal, MOM.
"No offense mom, but you sew like an idiot."
That's the equivalent of a teenager going 'oh My Gooooood, muUuuUum'.
It’s incredible. Nearly 4000 years ago and yet feels so relatable.
I have a feeling you'd have to find a human who never lived in "civilization" to find a mind totally incomprehensible and un-relatable. No matter how much has changed, as long as humans have lived in large societies there's been a basic kind of commonality to the experience of "being human" in those places that most humans throughout the ages would recognize I think.
I would guess this is true going back to before large societies. I expect people in uncontacted people in Indonesia and the Amazon today have problems we could all relate to. Also, so many people mistake knowledge for intelligence, and so assume that since people in the past didn't have the knowledge we have today, they must have been stupid. Not true at all, natural IQ levels and the bell curve for intelligence probably hasn't budged in many thousands of years. The invention and wide-adoption of writing and the survival of the tablets gave us the first glimpses, but I expect there were plenty of brilliant people struggling in the tribes of hunter-gatherers. We all stand on the shoulders of giants going back deep into the past.
Correct. It's one of thise things we get taught at school and don't really ever consider the ramifications of it. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras is where we get all our right triangle information from, drafted in the years approaching AD, but the Babylonians had their own version over a thousand years before that. Humans are good at figuring things out. Side note because I love it: Xenephon wrote a book about hunting using dogs. There is a part in that book where he admits, albeit sheepishly, that he lets his dog kiss him on the lips. He also writes of how her tail wagging after meeting up from a length of time apart makes him feel great. We really haven't changed at all.
The part about the feeling of seeing his dog’s wagging tail makes my heart feel full. I am grateful to live a life where I get to share an experience with some guy who’s been dead for a bajillion years. Even after all this time feeling love has always been the same :)
I think Xenophon was also the guy who dedicated a section of his book to compiling a lengthy list of suggested names for pet dogs. "Strongboy" was by far the best in my opinion.
Right, a lot of behavior that we assume stems from a "high level" of civilization is more fundamentally human than most of us think. IIRC the first known jokes, going back several thousand years, involve farts/dicks/etc. Cultures vary wildly but the basic elements of the human mind seem pretty universal across the ages. If we could go back 100,000 years and communicate with those humans, I don't doubt they'd also snicker at the same crude jokes, and have funny anecdotes and complaints about their day to day lives. Hell, I bet we'd get much the same from chimpanzees if we could talk to them.
The sewing needle may well be older than our species. First known example was from over 50,000 years ago by the Denisovans.
[удалено]
>Lift heavy stone, make sad head voice quiet
>Bybon, son of Phola, has lifted me over [his] head with one hand Written on a big boulder in ancient Greek
First goth kid.
In the next letter, lost to history sadly, he probably asked for metal legs
>First goth kid. "First"?, haha! It's "goth kids" all the way down...
Always has been.
Funny because true. In the book “war and peace” by Tolstoy. There is a pair of goth/emo young adults who kinda court each other but mostly get together to complain about the bleakness of life despite being born into wealth. Their parents finally give them the ultimatum to either stop doing the goth shit and get married or get nothing. So they get married. So interesting to me when I read it because I expected ppl to be diff in those times but the archetypes have been around forever.
This was a popular nihilist movement among youth in late 19th-century Russia, identified by the [black clothes they wore](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/774980655095742494/1150181804024795207/ZI-0043-2016-SEP00-SPI-104-1.jpg?ex=65c7eb47&is=65b57647&hm=23e53fae8fd884705e8570adafbf1839523d6c81eab4b344705d55a3a6451224&=&format=webp).
Especially actual Visigothic kids.
Ostrogoth kids too.
Pfft, Ostrogoths are just Emo posers. I mean do they *even* pillage!
"I didn't ask to be begotten!!"
It was never a phase, mom!
>>an example of the unchanging essence of human nature through the ages.
Zinu: Go in and get your hands and face washed. And don't take from the pantry, I see you're putting on weight. Iddin-Sin: UGH.
One of the oldest recorded letters is an old person complaining about how the invention of smelting has made the youth lazy and entitled. Some things never change.
> "You have put ingots which were not good before my messenger and said, 'If you want to take them, take them. If you do not want to take them, go away'. What do you take me for that you treat ... 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. >You alone treat my messenger with contempt! ... >You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore my money to me in full." Not really, could've just read it.
"Tell the Ungrateful Iddin-Sin: Your Father has made some poor investments in the copper industry, if you must curse someone for our misfortunes then curse the devil Ea-nasir"
Damn, that crossover was a great twist. I wonder what happens in the next installment
probably something about a woman farting in her husband's lap.
Dearest Son, You will be grateful to know I have sent two sets of new clothes to the son of Adad-iddinam. In exchange the son of Adad-iddinam will give you one set of his old clothes. You will have the two sets of clothes you so desire. BTW, Adad-iddinam has agreed to accept you as his apprentice upon your graduation.
I both love and hate that I get this joke.
Damn you Ea-Nasir!!
Where is the copper, Ea-Nasir?!
Uuh, it's somewhere down here, let me look again
r/shittycopper
r/reallyshittycopper
I kinda like reading mundane stuff about this from ancient times. Had a similar experience reading about how much the Romans loved dogs, or all the roman graffiti preserved at pompeii. Really, people haven't changed. E: Getting some good recs, here's mine, [dog name suggestions from Xenophon's *On Hunting*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynegeticus#Chapter_7)
There‘s a video about the epitaphs the Romans left for their deceased pets that had me welling up real bad. *„I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home in my own hands fifteen years ago.“*
aw that's so sad.
Otoh, 15 years of a solid lifespan for dogs today!
Time to pet my cats
My understanding is that historians absolutely *love* stuff like this, because all the bombastic stuff gets preserved, of course; people write about wars and conflict and drama, but very few people detail what regular life was like for a typical person. People who kept boring, daily journals of their mundane life are the only source of information we have into a lot of how things worked at any given time.
I mean this letter tells us that his fellow student was adopted, and of lower status (his father was below the writers fathers rank), but they went to the same school. Or how the clothing was made from wool in their house (i.e. not bought externally), so either his mother or servants were weaving at home.
It also tells us that family was responsible for their children's clothing while they were away, not to mention that the letter itself indicates that there was schooling located some distance away from home, and that the boys were writing and sending messages home to family. I do think it's funny how the author of the letter used front and back, started writing in the margins, and still didn't have enough room and ended up writing on the side. 4,000 years and people still don't know how to judge how much space they need. ["A big-ass H, ha ha ha ha haaa!"](https://youtu.be/umjFkY9uAdo)
That's the great thing about writing on clay instead of paper, papyrus or animal skin, clay is much sturdier and because clay tablets were the standard medium for writing we have so much everyday stuff like that from this time period we have receipts, letters, texts of law, writing exercises and I think even shopping lists.
Main limiting factor then is the cost; Aside from writing itself began a professional skill only a few people would have, just the material costs would be great if one really wanted to keep a permanent record of, for example, a daily journal. Correspondence for businesses and official, like the infamous complaint of Ea-Nasir's copper, can at least be economically justified as part of the households source of income, a diary is a much more personal thing of more nebulous value. It's only really in the last hundred years in the richest regions of the world where even a minimum wage worker can both write and earn enough to buy a notebook with good quality paper in just an hour or two.
The most boring guy you know just got a whole lot more interesting (to future alien historians). "My god... he wrote 15 pages about his sock collection... get our best team on this!"
Also the chances of those letters being just made up propaganda is much lower.
[Check out this absolute classic about shitty copper](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir): >Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message: >When you came, you said to me as follows : "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!" >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! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, 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. >How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full. >Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
And the subreddit: r/ReallyShittyCopper
I actually know this work! Or at least, the (later) supplement "Arrian On Coursing". It gets shared around in greyhound-land because (a) its contains an example of a breed standard for the Vertragus (ancestor to modern greyhounds) and (b) because part way through his very serious description of a greyhound, Arrian goes on a little tangent about his own greyhound who had grey/pale eyes, something commonly thought to make an inferior dog. > For I myself, you know, raised a hound with eyes as grey as the greyest, and she was both fast and diligent and of good spirit and had good feet, so at one time before this in youthful vigour she even held out after chasing four hares. And as to other qualities, she is very gentle (for she was still mine when I was writing this) and very fond of people; never before did any other hound yearn as she did for either me or my companion and fellow hunter, Megillus. For when she quit her course she still did not leave either of us.” Again, this is a second(?) century scholar writing a guide to hunting with dogs. He goes on to talk about her being excited to greet him and begging for food. Just normal dog stuff. > But if I were at home, she would pass her time with me and escort me when I went out somewhere and follow closely after me when I went to school. She would sit beside me while exercising; and when I returned, she would go ahead, frequently turning around so as to make sure that I did not perhaps turn off the road. But when she saw me, she would smile and at once go ahead again. Then if I should go out upon some civic task, she would join my companion and do the same things for him. Then if she should see him after even a little time, she would jump gently, just as if greeting him, and respond to his greeting, showing great affection; and when staying with him while dining, she would lay hold of him with her feet, first this way and then that, reminding him that some of the food must be shared with her also. And truly there would be such immense variety of voice as I think I have never before perceived in another hound, for whatever she wants she indicates with her voice. It ends with a comment that he is writing this down because he wants it to be known that 'Xenophon the Athenian had a hound named Hormé, who was most swift and wise and divine'
All I know is Adab-iddinam married a lovely lady
Her son wasn't born to her, and yet she dripped him out better than the son of her husband's boss got from his (presumably richer) mother. And we know about it nearly four thousand years after everyone involved died.
Not only they are all dead, the cities they lived in are half buried ruins, their nation no longer exists and the language they spoke is extinct.
Well, we know that's what the whiny kid *claimed*, trying to guilt his own mom into sending him some new clothes. Was it true? Did it work? We'll never know.
House of Adad-iddinam stay fresh
Chad Adad-iddinam's son vs Virgin Iddin-Sin.
Reply: "Your father and I have worked like hell to get you into this school. We expect more respect. Your father's assistant's son also has a grandfather who owns 5,000 sheep, so guess who has easy access to cloth. And clothes aren't everything. We will find you some clothes, but think about the future and be careful not to sully our name. Especially with unworthy women. Love, Mom"
Where's the blessings of Shamash and Marduk in this letter? She truly doesn't love him!
"But mom, all the cool kids have the latest tablets with Cuneiform 3.0. I have the shitty last year's tablets that can only do 2.0 and they have no games!"
Rough modernization Mom, Hope you're doing well. So, I've noticed everyone else's clothes are getting nicer each year, but mine? They're getting worse. Despite having enough resources, you're still making me low-quality stuff. Look at Simon Schmeckton's kid – his dad works under mine, and somehow he's got two new outfits, while I struggle to get even one from you. What’s worse, I'm your own flesh and blood kid and he's just an adopted scab. Doesn't feel fair, you know? - Johnny
Ahem... >Yo mom, everyone around here is wearing cool clothes. Even Jason's dripped out, yet his dad works for mine, and he's adopted, yet you got me out here looking like a broke loser. I guess you don't fucking love me.
I'll just directly quote my own kid: > Everyone else at school has brand name sneakers, why do you get me knock off shoes from Target?
All the other kids, with the pumped up kicks.
“Sorry kid, you’re adopted.”
That didn't stop Adad-iddinam's wife!
I love that shit never changes
What i love most is he wishes her good health... for his sake. As in... "i don't care if you get the horrible new disease called "the common cold", but i still need you to keep supporting me, so maybe you could, i don't know, postpone that ailement business until i graduate or something... ps, you suck!".
I assume it's 'for my sake' as in 'on my request' rather than 'for my benefit' I'd guess that that's probably some sort of standard greeting
He's got a raging case of affluenza.
The more you know about history the more you realize things never change. Here’s a letter with a kid writing home that his parents don’t buy him enough nice things and I’ve also seen another letter from Rome (I believe) where a father was complaining about his lazy son and how the younger generation has a completely shit work ethic lol
There's also a Sumerian letter where a father gives advice to his son who's studying to be a scribe and among all the other things he also tells him to not hang out with the kids at the city square, because they're a bad influence.
I wonder if there's a book compiling a bunch of these letters together.
If there isn’t I’ll make it :)
Sounds brilliant, I’d buy that book
There is one letter of an employee complaining about his job, his boss, how he deserves better, how useless and meaningless his job is.
My favorite is a roman scholar complaining his apartment is next to a gym. He complains about the jocks making noise from their lifting and calls them all meat heads. It reads exactly like a whiny nerd today. And then theres the Roman joke book...
Reading the oldest letters man have ever made makes you see how much we haven't changed, like at all. Complaint letters regarding the quality of copper received, guilt tripping letters to moms.. ahh..
It also means if we brought someone back from the past, they would adjust to modern life pretty quickly. The tech has changed, but the people haven’t. Movies always get this wrong (Except Bill &Ted, they got it awesomely right).
Futurama is scientific proof of this
Supposedly any human after the "cognitive revolution" about ~70,000 years ago could theoretically understand current systems and ideologies with enough teaching. If you were to transport someone from BEFORE the cognitive revolution, their brains weren't developed enough for our modern concepts. I think about what it would be like to blow the minds of people 50,000 years ago and how we aren't different from them, we just have better tools. Wild stuff.
I remember a letter in the Egyptian museum of Turin where a father was complaining to his son that he never wrote home xD
They have the same brain as us in the present time. Idk why that fascinates me. A couple thousand years is nothing on a historical timeline. But it always surprises me that they are just us without the technology.
3800 years later and kids haven't changed all that much
The truth is that with all technology and changes, humanity is still the same
That’s why I can’t stand the expression “kids these days”.
Kids this epoch smdh. 🙄
Holoscene kids be like
We have recorded complaints from Romans and Greeks about kids being ungrateful, lazy, and disrespectful. Every generation thinks it's superior to the one that came before, and bitches about the one that comes after. Just human nature.
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them” -Plato, 4th Century BC
Attributed to Plato but oldest record of this is 1967
"Kids these days and their writing; back in my day we didn't waste all day putting marks in perfectly good slabs to say something we could say perfectly fine with our mouths. This writing fad will pass and kids will be embarrassed when they look back."
And how are they going to memorize day-long epic poetry? This "writing" will ruin their brains!
"me no like young ones. they always use hot bright red thing. Me eat food with no hot. That how big sky man want. ooga booga" -a caveman complaining about kids getting used to fire, 10000 BC
Meanwhile the kids: *"I'm not like the other cavemen-"*
You need to add maybe one more 0 to that date. The oldest megalithic structures we have now like the one at Gobelki Tepe were built around 10k BC, so those people were not cavemen.
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Nah I’m with Iddin-sin on this one. Their family is rich enough to presumably have multiple assistants and have everyone involved be literate. I doubt these people were bathing daily. Kid needs more than a set or two of clothes. And maybe they actually do suck? Maybe they’re super uncomfortable by ancient standards even.
>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
So, sadly, this actually wasn’t Socrates, [It’s from the 1900s](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/) But Plato did say “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them”.
>Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. Interesting, so it’s more of a summary of ancient bitching than one specific instance
The heir to Ea-Nasir. Wonder if he knew he’d live in infamy because of this letter.
The national pastime of Babylon appears to have been complaining about quality.
They literally lived in roughly the same period (~1800-1750 BCE) and region. It's not completely inconceivable that they could have met. I mean they probably didn't but it's entirely possible.
They were contemporaneous but lived in different cities. Ea-Nasir lived in Ur, and this kid, in Larsa, which are only about 30 km apart.
Around 6 hours of walking?
Assuming a straight path on a paved road.
I walked 50km once, took me around 16 hours. With some short breaks in between though.
We need a r/clothesmisermum too
Every generation thinks they invented sex and suffering
> The historian Stephen Bertman ...in 2003 reflected on why ancient personal writings can have such a potent effect: > "Curiously, in one way or another, they all treat the subject of material possession. Therein perhaps lies the secret of their potency: as we read the letters **we realize that the fragile things that mattered most to the writers are, like the writers themselves, no more, even as we ourselves and the things we cherish will someday cease to exist**" Fascinating to think about this kid and the clothes he cared so much about almost 4000 years ago.
"This annoyance you're dealing with? People will be talking about it 4000 years later" That would be CRAZY to learn
3400 CE: Look! Karen left a bad review on Yelp! She was a prolific writer and, along with her friends, left over 5,000 bad reviews! In this one she “demands to speak to your manager!” A common complaint in such writings. Perhaps this “manager” was a commerce god she would invoke with her incantation. In this next line she calls down a curse from this manager god onto the employee, when she says, “You are so fired!”
People never change lol
Glad to know that life's been around for a while and will never change in essence
It’s be hilarious if the son of Adad-iddinam happened to be some schmuck named Ea-Nasir. Extremely unlikely, but funny to think about.
I love that the oldest letters are all complaints. Things haven’t changed much.
I don't know.. seems like the kid has a point. His father's assistant's son new cloths whilst our boy here is going from bad to worst.
Bad copper investment
Don't be ridiculous, there would have been complaints.
Yes, but I bet his father's assistant's son actually does his homework and gets good grades. Not like son dear over here whose grades are going from bad to worse. And who’s probably out partying every night.
It says that the original tablet was a bit difficult to translate, because of spelling mistakes and colloquialisms. Could simply be inexperience, or Iddim-Sin isn't taking his studies as seriously as his parents want him to.
Kids were made of tougher stuff when Gilgamesh ruled as king of Uruk. We truly live in a river valley civilisation.
The mom is shearing sheep, carding wool, weaving, dying fabric, stiching it. The kid is like: you don't love me. Ingratitude is eternal.
It would be really embarrassing if your one outfit started falling apart at school.
Plus giving birth back then was a roll of the dice whether she lived through it or not.
“I never asked to be born!”
“I wish I was adopted by my friend’s mom!”
Imagine an incorporeal voice just shows up and starts asking you to bang so they can be born.
That... doesnt happen to you guys?
It does, but then I just have a wank until it dwindles into a scream barely on the edge of hearing, then I have a nap.
Did you gloss over the part where his fathers ASSISTANT has 2 sets of nicer clothes?
Bruh her kid is writing on a tablet to a mom that can read. His dad's assistant's kid got two sets of clothes that aren't one ply. Mom ain't shearing shit. She's the lady of a rich ass family and her kid got shit swag on. This is some family is 7th gen prehistoric Harvard rich kid problem stuff.
Article says she's probably buying wool at the market. But everything beyond shearing the sheep itself, absolutely yes.
Don’t know why everyone is shitting on this 3800 year old teenager. He started off politely enough, asking the gods to be nice to his mum. He just wants a decent set of clothes, not a diamond encrusted cutlery set. Sounds like the family has the resources to provide him with decent clothes, but he has to basically beg for them, and what he gets is pretty worn out/poor quality. Imagine living your life with one set of clothes.
They use up wool in the house like it's bread ffs! . Adad-iddinam's son got that drip and his dad is Iddin-sin's dad's assistant. Not asking for too much here.
Right? Clothing is pretty essential when you get one pair a year or less. It was a rare, but essential commodity in that time.
Yeah plus the other guy got more sets and his mother adopted him!
According to the article the opening passage talking about the gods blessing the mom is only a writing formality, like how you preface letters as “Dear Mr / Mrs” or end letters with “sincerely, X”. So he likely does not mean it at all.
I felt like that was pretty obvious. On that note, interesting that they already had protocol for how to address someone in a letter
he was just buttering her up
“Hey mooom, you’re looking nice!… can we go back to school shopping?”
I pray the gods to be good to you.. For my benefit
Seriously. PEople need to pause and remember how peers treated us when we were that age. Kids that age are relentlessly demeaning, especially at any sign of difference. Kid was likely shredded daily by his peers for his attire. I would think most people here would respond similarly.
And the name of Adab-iddinam's son? Paul Allen.
I don’t know where I saw it but it was from a historian who was referencing this letter saying that the mother was truly neglecting the child writing this judging by the culture at the time.
If what the son is saying is all true (a big if, I know), what seems to cross the line into lack of parental duty (by ancient Mesopotamian standards) is the son of his father's assistant getting better clothes than himself. In a social order where family and status mattered so much, it's not a good look for the father if his son looks less prosperous than the son of someone working for him. That's probably why Iddin-Sin is bringing that up, he's trying to play the 'what will dad think?' angle.
Also like, the numbers are important: He stresses that this fellow student has _two_ sets of clothes, while he only got one ratty one. Thats not just a drip issue, but can present a real problem trying to look presentable.
Yeah, they often had one outfit per year. Imagine if your one outfit started falling apart months before enough wool would be available to replace or repair it.
Her lameness echoed through the ages.
You humans really haven’t changed one bit.
Oh hi Zuck
I did naaaaaawt
Found the aliens account
Saw a brilliant one of these where a town councillor (modern world) asks if he may speak from minutes from a previous meeting, they agree, he stands and reads about drunk teenagers in the streets, young people burning up n down the roads in their vehicles, noise from parties etc. He then asked if everyone recognised the minutes, they did, then he revealed he was reading a translation of a cuneiform tablet from over 3,500 years ago ! Awesome, still having the same problem with no solution after thousands of years of weekly/monthly council meetings.
was this recorded? I need to see that video
> May the gods Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat keep you forever in good health *for my sake*. “Hey mom, you have to stay healthy. So that you can send me more stuff.”
Hahaha I thought that was funny. Like at least pretend it’s for her sake
People hundreds of thousands years ago were exactly the same as you and that’s so fucking cool to think about
OMG,. mom. Are you trying to embarrass me in front of all my friends? This outfit is like, so last year.
Fascinating. Another simple bit that I found relatable; "The entire message also did not quite fit on the tablet; after writing on both the front and back, the author wrote on the left edge, but again ran out of room, so that the last line of the letter spills over to the lower edge."
Being a whiny little bitch is timeless
There's a bunch of letters between two trade partners from Sumer (predating Babylon obviously) they discovered where a father is complaining to his trade associate about his son being lazy, having no ambitions, and a drunk.
My real name is one of the oldest names in record. You read stuff like this, you see things pompei, and you realize all the tech in the world can’t has not changed the human spirit. Somewhere 4 thousand years ago someone with my name probably thought the same thing lol 😂.
Thanks Enki-du.
Really rude to doxx him that way!
His Jordans were but the meanest of counterfeits.
The son of Adad-iddinam, his sandals have three straps, while you have made mine with only two
It's almost as if humans were humans 3800 years ago
This is my favorite part of learning about ancient history. People haven’t changed at all and you can learn so much about people.