In the interest of helping y’all stalk a guy who’s been dead for three thousand years, I present to you another document excavated from the archives of Ea-Naṣir! This one is a purely practical one: a record of sale for 50 garments to Ea-Naṣir. The guy apparently liked his clothing (or, more likely, bought it to sell as a merchant).
11 garments: value: 1/3 mina, 2 2/3 shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 13 shekels of silver 2 garments: value: 6 ½ shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 10 2/3 shekels of silver 27 garments: value: 5/6 mina, 4 ½ shekels, 15 še ______________ 50 garments: value: 1 2/3 mina, 7 1/3 shekels, 15 še: in the hands of Mr. Ea-Naṣir
(A mina was about 500g; a shekel was 8.3g; a mina was .05g. So the total weight in silver for 50 outfits was about 895g, or two pounds.)
In the interest of helping y’all stalk a guy who’s been dead for three thousand years, I present to you another document excavated from the archives of Ea-Naṣir! This one is a purely practical one: a record of sale for 50 garments to Ea-Naṣir. The guy apparently liked his clothing (or, more likely, bought it to sell as a merchant).
11 garments: value: 1/3 mina, 2 2/3 shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 13 shekels of silver 2 garments: value: 6 ½ shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 10 2/3 shekels of silver 27 garments: value: 5/6 mina, 4 ½ shekels, 15 še ______________ 50 garments: value: 1 2/3 mina, 7 1/3 shekels, 15 še: in the hands of Mr. Ea-Naṣir
(A mina was about 500g; a shekel was 8.3g; a mina was .05g. So the total weight in silver for 50 outfits was about 895g, or two pounds.)
In the interest of helping y’all stalk a guy who’s been dead for three thousand years, I present to you another document excavated from the archives of Ea-Naṣir! This one is a purely practical one: a record of sale for 50 garments to Ea-Naṣir. The guy apparently liked his clothing (or, more likely, bought it to sell as a merchant).
11 garments: value: 1/3 mina, 2 2/3 shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 13 shekels of silver 2 garments: value: 6 ½ shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 10 2/3 shekels of silver 27 garments: value: 5/6 mina, 4 ½ shekels, 15 še ______________ 50 garments: value: 1 2/3 mina, 7 1/3 shekels, 15 še: in the hands of Mr. Ea-Naṣir
(A mina was about 500g; a shekel was 8.3g; a mina was .05g. So the total weight in silver for 50 outfits was about 895g, or two pounds.)
The Ea-Nasir meme was believed by experts to be extinct since 1750 BCE until a live population was uncovered in 1953 CE. The meme remained critically endangered until introduction to the tumblr ecosystem circa 2015. Ea-Nasir is now a thriving meme and we are proud to classify this species as Least Concern thanks to your conservation efforts.
Thank you for your interest! We here at the TACM are happy to receive questions from the public.
In 1953, the surviving population of Ea-Nasir memes were found in Ur. The memes, having endured for thousands of years in the absence of internet users, were subsisting entirely on clay tablets.
Definitely want to write a story where a pickpocket has to steal the ring off someone’s finger in order to unlock a treasure palace. Probably to star Ea-Nasir as either the mastermind or the key-keeper.
[ID: A photograph of an ancient metal key; it has teeth and grooves like a modern key might, but instead of a “shaft” like a modern key, it’s attached to a ring and meant to be worn on the hand.]
After Ea Nasir notoriously failed in the copper business, he went into computers under the name Ea Games, where he received even more angry letters of complaint than before.
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
In the interest of helping y’all stalk a guy who’s been dead for three thousand years, I present to you another document excavated from the archives of Ea-Naṣir! This one is a purely practical one: a record of sale for 50 garments to Ea-Naṣir. The guy apparently liked his clothing (or, more likely, bought it to sell as a merchant).
11 garments: value: 1/3 mina, 2 2/3 shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 13 shekels of silver 2 garments: value: 6 ½ shekels of silver 5 garments: value: 10 2/3 shekels of silver 27 garments: value: 5/6 mina, 4 ½ shekels, 15 še ______________ 50 garments: value: 1 2/3 mina, 7 1/3 shekels, 15 še: in the hands of Mr. Ea-Naṣir
(A mina was about 500g; a shekel was 8.3g; a mina was .05g. So the total weight in silver for 50 outfits was about 895g, or two pounds.)
“These copper ingots,” the devil said, “are of sub-par quality.” “You accepted them as payment,” the merchant said, “the deal is done.” “Very well. I will uphold my end of the bargain,” the devil said. “Your name will live forever.” “That is all I ask,” said Ea-nasir.
Tumblr’s sincere commitment to never let Ea-nasir die is genuinely amazing
“These copper ingots,” the devil said, “are of sub-par quality.” “You accepted them as payment,” the merchant said, “the deal is done.” “Very well. I will uphold my end of the bargain,” the devil said. “Your name will live forever.” “That is all I ask,” said Ea-nasir.
Tumblr’s sincere commitment to never let Ea-nasir die is genuinely amazing
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
“These copper ingots,” the devil said, “are of sub-par quality.” “You accepted them as payment,” the merchant said, “the deal is done.” “Very well. I will uphold my end of the bargain,” the devil said. “Your name will live forever.” “That is all I ask,” said Ea-nasir.
Tumblr’s sincere commitment to never let Ea-nasir die is genuinely amazing
You purchased something that the seller assured you was of the highest quality. Some copper, let’s say. Upon receiving the product, you realize the quality is substandard. How do you react?
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
“I wish ancient people preserved their writing and artifacts better” I write in electronic signals on a piece of hardware that can’t retain its efficacy for more than a few decades.
Time to laser-print my entire blog on titanium plates and bury them underground.
brb etching my one-star yelp review of the sheet metal supplier that sold us shitty copper on a granite slab
We are never going to give this guy a fucking break are we
Ea-nasir knows what he did.
But more importantly, WE know what he did. Because it got written down in some rocks.
The funny part is that clay tablets are supposed to be ephemeral. When you’re done with them you just soak them in water, smooth them out, and re-use them for a different message. They weren’t meant to be any more permanent than an email.
The only reason we still have that particular clay tablet is because a. Ea-nasir was a huge weirdo who collected all of his hate mail, and b. his house later burned down, and coincidentally did so at exactly the right temperature to bake the collected tablets into pottery rather than destroying them.
It’s basically the equivalent of an email getting inscribed onto a steel plate by accident.
I see the misconception that cuneiform was carved into stone a lot in connection with the Ea-nasir meme, but yeah, no, it was written with little reed tools on a handful of clay that was then left to air-dry. They could be easily recycled at that point by pounding to dust and mixing into new clay, but also, obviously, a lot of them were preserved.
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
item: the global population at 2000 BCE has been estimated, with necessarily large (and indeed unquantified) uncertainties, at between 27M and 72M (wikipedia has references)
item: as of 2020 CE, one estimate of the number of tumblr users was ~29M in the US alone(Statista; tumblr does not release its own statistics)
conclusion: it seems entirely plausible, given the migration of Popular Tumblr Posts™ to other social media sites, that more people know about Ea-Nasir today because of tumblrthanwere alive on the planet during his lifetime
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
i love this but i feel like it’s my duty to inform you that mesopotamian complaint letters (actually most of all of their documents) were not engraved in stone tablets, but pressed into still-kinda-soft clay. just a little fun fact to enjoy alongside your ea-nasir joke ^^
“I wish ancient people preserved their writing and artifacts better” I write in electronic signals on a piece of hardware that can’t retain its efficacy for more than a few decades.
Time to laser-print my entire blog on titanium plates and bury them underground.
brb etching my one-star yelp review of the sheet metal supplier that sold us shitty copper on a granite slab
We are never going to give this guy a fucking break are we
Ea-nasir knows what he did.
But more importantly, WE know what he did. Because it got written down in some rocks.
The funny part is that clay tablets are supposed to be ephemeral. When you’re done with them you just soak them in water, smooth them out, and re-use them for a different message. They weren’t meant to be any more permanent than an email.
The only reason we still have that particular clay tablet is because a. Ea-nasir was a huge weirdo who collected all of his hate mail, and b. his house later burned down, and coincidentally did so at exactly the right temperature to bake the collected tablets into pottery rather than destroying them.
It’s basically the equivalent of an email getting inscribed onto a steel plate by accident.
my favorite thing about this post is all the “ea nasir” in the tags. I cannot articulate how hilarious it is to me that there is a well populated “ea nasir” tag on tumblr. PLEASE imagine going back in time and telling a babylonian conman that thousands of years in the future he’s going to be spoken about across the entire world using unfathomable technologies on account of how truly shitty his copper was
