In 4000 years customer service has not improved....
Think customer service is bad now? Read this 4,000-year-old complaint letter
“I shall inflict grief on you!” is just one of the threats irate customers directed at Ea-nāṣir, a shady copper merchant who operated in Mesopotamia some 4,000 years ago.
This palm-sized clay tablet, inscribed in cuneiform nearly 4,000 years ago, rails against the delivery of poor-quality copper. Considered the “world’s oldest complaint letter,” it was found in the house of the allegedly unreliable metal merchant, Ea-nāṣir, in what is now southern Iraq.
Photograph courtesy The Trustees of the British Museum
ByErin Blakemore
About 3,770 years ago, a disgruntled trader named Nanni fired off a litany of woes about a transaction gone awry, giving a piece of his mind to the allegedly unscrupulous merchant—a fellow Babylonian by the name of Ea-nāṣir.
Though this all took place in the
ancient city of Ur (in what is modern-day Iraq), the complaint resonates with modern consumers, with claims of shady financial dealings, low-quality product, and a serious lack of customer service. So much so, actually, that the complaint letter enjoys a Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest, and Nanni’s grievances from four millennia ago have now inspired a seemingly endless string of
memes, comics, and in-depth comparisons on the internet.
So who was Ea-nāṣir, and why is Nanni’s complaint letter so compelling thousands of years after it was written?
‘I shall inflict grief on you!’
The notorious tablet was
discovered in Ur about a century ago, when an expedition led by famed archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley unearthed why may be the home of Ea-nāṣir, including a slew of business documents recorded in cuneiform writing on small clay tablets. Among them was Nanni’s complaint. Dating from 1750 B.C., the palm-sized tablet is inscribed in Akkadian, the language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia at the time. Today, the tablet is
part of the collections of the British Museum.
The
letter, dictated by Nanni, slams Ea-nāṣir for promising “fine quality copper ingots,” then failing to follow through on the deal. Instead, Nanni complains, the merchant has sent low-grade copper, treated him and his messenger with contempt, and taken his money—seemingly because Nanni owes him “one (trifling)
mina of silver.” (A mina was the equivalent of approximately one-fifth of an ounce.)
When Nanni’s messenger attempted to dispute the quality of the copper with Ea-nāṣir, Nanni claims, he was dismissed: “If you want to take them, take them,” Ea-nāṣir reportedly said. “If you do not want to take them, go away!”
Nanni is livid, both about the low-quality copper and the merchant’s treatment of his assistant. “I will not accept here any copper from you that is not fine quality,” he angrily concludes, according to one translator. “I shall…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.” Later, Nanni warns: “Because you despised me, I shall inflict grief on you!”
The earliest globalization
The letter crackles with anger across the millennia, and for archaeologists like professor
Lloyd Weeks of Australia’s University of New England, who studies metal production and exchange in the ancient Near East, it captures the realities of an ancient economy in miniature.
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