Complaints. We’ve all made them. But I'm sure nothing compares to the story I’m about to tell you.
Over the summer, I took a trip to the world-renowned British Museum and looking back on this inspiring trip, an unusual artefact captivated my interest. It was not any of the vast monuments, such as the statue of Ramesses II, which inspired the poem "Ozymandias," nor was it the Rosetta Stone from the Ptolemaic period, written in Hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. No. It was a minuscule, albeit irrelevant-looking, clay tablet standing at just 11.6cm tall and 5cm wide with the caption “Complaint about delivery of the wrong grade of copper”. Despite appearing uneventful at first glance, I came to find that this old Babylonian tablet holds a much more intriguing story than any other artefact in the museum.
The tablet tells the tale of the very unsatisfied customer, Nanni, who inscribes the clay tablet after his trade with a particularly notorious copper merchant, Ea Nasir, does not go as planned. According to Nanni, after being promised high-quality copper for his messenger to collect on his behalf, Ea Nasir instead offered low-quality copper and essentially informed the messenger to either take it or leave empty-handed. The inscription goes on to mention a history between Nanni and this Mesopotamian menace, saying that on multiple occasions Ea Nasir had left Nanni empty-handed, pocketing his money and refusing to deliver the copper. Nanni finishes his complaint, declaring that he will no longer accept Ea Nasir's substandard copper and instead will choose the ingots himself upon delivery. Unfortunately, we know no more about the ancient feud, but it certainly boggles the mind that Nanni would continue to use Ea Nasir’s services after all the hassle the cunning merchant caused.
Excavations which took place at what was thought to be Ea Nasir's residence in Ur found multiple tablets along with Nanni’s complaint, which revealed several other victims of Ea Nasir's mischief in the metallurgy industry. One citizen, Arbituram, complains that he has not received his copper delivery, while another, Imgur-Sin, grows restless at the continuous poor quality of copper he is receiving. It is safe to say Ea Nasir was quite the scam artist for his time, and the remaining citizens of Mesopotamia should count themselves lucky that he didn't have access to the internet.
The events captured within the inscription of the tablet have sparked much interest and discussion amongst many history scholars and nerds alike. Ea Nasir's antics have resulted in internet fame being captured in memes across multiple history Reddit forums and Facebook groups, surely making him one of the oldest internet celebrities. Since the tablets' acquisition into the British Museum in the 1950s, it has appeared in various academic works on Mesopotamia as well as articles highlighting his mischief. This artefact has even been officially recognised as the “World's oldest written customer complaint” by Guinness World Records.
Whether you feel sympathy for poor Nanni and the other victims who only wanted their promised copper or find the actions of the Akkadian Annoyance to be quite amusing, I’m sure we can all agree that none of us have been angry enough to spend the time carving out a full-blown complaint onto a tablet before. Although being small and rather insignificant to the grand history of the world, I believe this story holds some immense weight in the sense that it teaches us that, throughout thousands of years, humans haven't really changed much at all.
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