#7: Ancient Babylonians were as petty as we are
Today's journey into historical mail
Welcome to this month’s roundup of historical mail! This week, I wanted to give y’all something old. I’m talking ancient: letters from Ancient Mesopotamia.
I think we can often delude ourselves into believing humans have changed over millennia. Historical figures don’t quite feel flesh-n-blood real, even when we’re ogling their corpses behind glass. That mummy at the museum? It wasn’t a regular-ass guy who once ate too many snacks and regretted it at 1 a.m.! Impossible!
Maybe it’s terrifying to lay the endlessness of time out on the table like that without flinching. And besides, with Zuck and Musk watching over our shoulders, the ability to fly across an ocean in a matter of hours to hug someone we love, and the fucking wild life cycles of social media, how could we be anything like folks from five thousand years ago? It feels prettier to pretend we’ve moved forward. A tidy narrative for tidy minds. But the truth is, we haven’t changed.
Scary as it can be, the continued thread of humanity - our pettiness and love of wine and pretty clothes - is so precious it hurts. Human, through and through.
Three ancient letters
Mesopotamian letters were often written by scribes (although some were written directly by the sender) onto stone or clay tablets, which is why they are so well preserved. The Biblical Archaeology Society, a nondenominational nonprofit that researches archaeology from ancient societies found in the bible, estimates that there are over half a million cuneiform tablets in museums worldwide. Most of them are untranslated, and many are housed in museums that have no valid claim to the pieces, like The British Museum - but that’s a topic for another article1.
For y’all, I cherry picked these three clay tablets from the book Letters from Mesopotamia by A. Leo Oppenheim2. I hope you love them as much as I do!
You owe me
This first one, an old Assyrian letter from Anatolia, was written between the 21st and 18th century BCE - a full 4000 years ago. It is so incredibly manipulative and funny, something a toxic former bestie might send when you never paid them back for buying your ticket to that drag show…30 years ago:
“A message from Silla-Labbum and Elani: Tell Puzur-AsSur, Amua, and AsSur-samsi:
“Thirty years ago you left the city of Assur. You have never made a deposit since, and we have not recovered one shekel of silver from you, but we have never made you feel bad about this. Our tablets have been going to you with caravan after caravan, but no report from you has ever come here. We have addressed claims to your father but we have not been claiming one shekel of your private silver.
“Please, do come back right away; should you be too busy with your business, deposit the silver for us. (Remember) we have never made you feel bad about this matter but we are now forced to appear, in your eyes, acting as gentlemen should not. Please, do come back right away or deposit the silver for us. If not, we will send you a notice from the local ruler and the police, and thus put you to shame in the assembly of the merchants. You will also cease to be one of us.“
It’s like Regina George got put in charge of writing student loan letters (I’m sure a good chunk of y’all got that same email I did this past week re: loan forgiveness and the Supreme Court).
Pay up, bitch, or you can’t sit with us!
This is why I don’t want kids
This letter was written from a whiny-ass son to his mother sometime between the 19th and 16th century BCE in the Old Babylonian empire. Gotta love the two-faced blessing:
"Tell the Lady Zinu: Iddin-Sin sends the following message: May the gods Samas, 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!"
We all knew that person in high school - so spoiled that the sight of their friends having something nice was enough to send them off the deep end. The reminder that this kid’s dad is more important than the other guy’s has “wait until my father hears about this” vibes. Update a few of the words, and this could’ve been lifted straight from a 16-year-old’s iPhone.
Let’s get drunk!
This last one’s from the same era - Old Babylonian Empire, between the 19th and 16th century BCE.
“Tell Ahuni: Belanum sends the following message: May the god Samas keep you in good health.
“Make ready for me the myrtle and the sweet-smelling reeds of which I spoke to you, as well as a boat for (transporting) wine to the city of Sippar. Buy and bring along with you ten silver shekels' worth of wine and join me here in Babylon sometime tomorrow.“
Short and sweet, and a great reminder that 4000 years ago, people were writing to each other for little get togethers to ship wine and enjoy their best Picnic Bitch life in one go. As someone who has had two picnics this week alone, I’m halfway to scrounging up my shekels to meet Belanum by those sweet-smelling reeds to transport that wine, myself.
Some things never change
What gets me about all of these is that these folks were people. Belanum and his request for wine, petty-ass Iddin-Sin, and grudge-holding Elani all had rich lives. Maybe Iddin-Sin grew up and cringed every time he thought back to how he used to treat his mom about clothes. Maybe Belanum and Ahuni had a little smooch on the boat and cracked open some of that wine for delivery. They were breathing human beings, as complicated and important and full of plans as you are right now, sitting here reading this email.
Now that everything’s digital, I wonder how much writing we’ll leave behind. I’d like to be remembered like Belanum or Iddin-Sin or Elani 4000 years down the line. Maybe snail mail’s our chance to leave something tangible folks will find in the future, even if it’s just a stack of dusty letters we wrote that someone buys several hundred years from now at an intergalactic estate sale.
My own writing updates
In my quest for eternity, I had a rich month in writing:
I got hired as an adjunct professor for the online masters program at my alma mater, University of Denver, University College! I start in January and am so excited to give back to the program that changed my life.
I recorded the audio version of an upcoming story for The New Orleans Review.
I finished my first draft of my screenplay and began hand-editing it according to fantastic advice from my friend Chris Amick’s class at Project City. Every moment in his course has challenged my usual writing process. No matter your genre, I can’t recommend it enough!
This week I crafted some truly bizarre, loosely linked stories told through official documents: transfer papers for a patient with a mysterious illness, a child’s disturbing progress report, a Publix incident report involving a summoning circle, and a private investigator’s findings on an abandoned lot. I’m printing them, then redacting portions, aging them, and mailing them out to my paid subscribers and Patreon fam this month. Each story for each subscriber is unique!
There are a few days left to vote for the theme for next week’s microfiction prompt! If you’re a paid member, now’s a good time to get your vote in - and if you’re not a paid member, now’s a good time to consider signing up <3.
Unsure? You can dip your toes in with a free one-week trial on Patreon (which features the same things as my Substack, but with more ways to receive snail mail art). If you vote and cancel your trial after less than a week, I support you 100%! Voting’s fun and money’s dumb, so have a good time :).
Questions for you
What letter felt the most familiar to your own life?
Which kind of note/text have you sent recently that mirrors these?
If you could write a story through any professional document or form, what would you choose?
Click da button and let me know!
Thanks for sticking with me as we time traveled. Next week - microfiction awaits!
All my love across the millennia,
Nikita, Your Digital Ms. Frizzle, Your Snail Mail Sweetheart
If you want to read more about why it' matters to return ancient artifacts to their countries of origin, Africa is not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin is both highly informative and a captivating read.