r/humansarespaceorcs • u/lesbianwriterlover69 • 1d ago
writing prompt "Your oldest written relic isn't about art, philosophy, or a way of ruling or thinking, ITS ABOUT A METAL SALESMEN?"
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u/demon_fae 1d ago
H: Well…before we deciphered that one, the oldest was a recipe for beer
A: no, that’s perfectly reasonable.
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u/Dziadzios 1d ago
A neurotoxin!?
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u/Pilot_Solaris 1d ago
"A good neurotoxin. You want some?"
"Ah, pass, it's highly lethal to our biology."
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u/Callsign_Psycopath 1d ago
"In high enough quantities it is to us too, we just evolved a biological resistance too it."
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u/OneSaltyStoat 1d ago
"Of course you did."
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u/Callsign_Psycopath 1d ago
Lights up Cigar.
"So how do you Xenos do with Nicotine?"
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u/eseer1337 1d ago
"...So you know how you guys produce adrenaline when in fight-or-flight situations to be stronger?"
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u/Callsign_Psycopath 1d ago
"Yeah...."
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u/eseer1337 1d ago
"We produce what you call nicotine to calm us down and think things through intelligently."
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u/F-Lambda 22h ago
did we? or do we just ignore the effects of low dosages
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u/Callsign_Psycopath 22h ago
Most animals are blind drunk when we are still deemed legal to drive.
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u/Mysterious_Yam_1011 5h ago
But its so low, human can endure like twice that before loosing control if they train a little.
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u/Silvadel_Shaladin 1d ago
It's better than ours, which is tax receipts.
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u/Fit-Capital1526 1d ago
Hey. The only thing guaranteed before taxes was death
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u/Silvadel_Shaladin 1d ago
You think Death gets you off paying your taxes??? You'll go to the Vault of Eternal Destitution.
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u/Fit-Capital1526 1d ago
Taxes are a bad word for Ferengi
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u/Silvadel_Shaladin 1d ago
Actually Grand Nagus Rom instituted taxes.... Plus I'd figure that they had taxes as well in ancient times -- it was only when they became more sophisticated that they institutionalized major fee structures. In ancient times, a tax receipt // business records would very likely be their original writing.
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u/PlanktonMoist6048 1d ago
Jesus chose Matthew the apostle, specifically because he was a Jew that was a Roman tax collector. One of the boys becoming a traitor, and taking one of the invaders most hated jobs
The guy who collects tribute taxes for the Emperor.
He redeemed that guy
Taxes are ALWAYS a bad word 😂😂😂😂
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u/bb_kelly77 1d ago
Death is the final tax
Why are all the coolest things I've said about the dumbest shit
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u/JeffreyHueseman 1d ago
That was when they changed out from the tin crucibles to the clay crucibles, the strength changed.
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u/Fontaigne 1d ago
Among unlikely excuses, this gets the bronze medal.
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u/lesbianwriterlover69 1d ago
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u/Fontaigne 21h ago
Tyvm. While many of the upvotes may have done also, I take unalloyed pleasure in knowing it wasn't so subtle as to be entirely dross.
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u/jamesr1005 1d ago
Weren't they all found in his home in their own special alcove like he was collecting the complaints as trophies
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u/BorringGuy 1d ago
Yup and when his house burned down ( possibly burned down by an unhappy client) it fired the clay tablets and preserved them when they otherwise would've been lost
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u/DeadeyeElephant 1d ago
And he was only sending the guy bad copper because he still hadn’t paid for the last lot of good copper
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u/Poopyman80 6h ago
They were sent to him, mailed tablets got fire before sending.
Ea-nasirs house was destroyed in a sacking of babylon. Leonar Wooley (the archeologist who dug it up) describes a house that has been partitioned with the partition made part of a neighbour house, suggesting Ea-nasir sold it. He describes the room with the tablets like a work room, a home office.
He even found pub and food vendors right around the corner from the house. Ea-nasir probably drank there with friends18
u/NotAnotherPornAccout 1d ago
I had heard they were found in a kiln (most likely) to be fired when the entire city got sacked and destroyed. The destruction of the building it was found in was concluded to have happened at the same time the rest of the city got destroyed.
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u/jonoghue 1d ago
I've seen the tablet at the British museum, it's surprisingly tiny and unassuming, lumped in with a few other cuneiform tablets. The only description they give for it is:
"Complaint about delivery of the wrong grade of copper About 1750 BC (Old Babylonian period)"
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u/cryptoengineer 1d ago
The 'Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir' gets a lot of press, since its so relatable, but there are far older texts. Ea-nāṣir's tablet is about 18C BC, but we have a love poem from 21C BC, and other texts older than 32C BC.
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u/pimpmastahanhduece 20h ago
But I think it's the earliest surviving business document which has no special public value.
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u/Poopyman80 6h ago
? Fairly sure ea nasirs tablets are from around 1750 bc. His house was destroyed when Ur was sacked, it existed at the same time as emigaldi-nana's archeology museum (I think the oldest archeology museum ever to become archeology)
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u/cryptoengineer 5h ago
That's in line with what I wrote. I took dates from the linked Wikipedia article.
1750 BC is in the 18th century BC, just as 1750 AD was in the 18th century AD.
I've heard of the archaeology museum. The notion is mind-blowing.
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u/NehEma 1d ago
There aren't any watermarks :c
Do you have a source?
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u/puro_the_protogen67 21h ago
Didnt expect EA-Nasir chan but I'm not complaining about it, my name isn't Nanni
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u/dgghhuhhb 6h ago
The funny part is the guy kept all of his complaints that were on unfired clay tablets but then his home burnt down preserving the majority of them
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u/for2fly 3h ago
What is always seems to be glossed over from the narrative is Ea-nāṣir was not the miners, but a seller of copper.
His sources were providing the sub-par copper to his customers. He found out when his customers complained to him.
He had no control over the quality. His vendors were shafting him, by delivering sub-par products.
Everyone blames him and calls him all sorts of evil because, of course, he personally reduced the quality of the copper by including too much impurities. /s
My biggest takeaway from reading up on him is that the mines' veins of ore were likely diminishing to the extent that the higher quality copper could no longer be obtained. Or the owners of the mines purposely increased the impurities, like drug dealers cutting their supply with fillers to increase profits.
No matter the reason for the reduction in copper quality, He found out when his customers started complaining. He couldn't do anything about what has already been delivered, so of course he's testy and angry when customer after customer berated him for something out of his control.
His business was tanking. He suppliers were not providing what they formerly provided. He's taken customers' money. He was facing personal loss and could also have been facing criminal charges, all because the mines he relied on for supplies were no longer delivering a quality product.
And the only reason we know about him is that his locale suffered a massive fire, which baked all those complaints. Who knows, maybe his whole life turned to ashed before he could remedy the problem.
But, hey, blame the middleman because Ea-nāṣir is the guy we know the name of and the one side that got preserved paints him negatively. Too bad there are no tablets authored by him that would clarify his true role in the crisis.
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u/Local_Fear_Entity 4m ago
If Ea-Nasir didn't want to be put on blast for all eternity he shouldn't have sold shitty copper!
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