(This was apparently a cosplayer at DragonCon this year.)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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The Internet in Ancient Times
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Welcome to the stone age... or the bronze age... or the iron age... heck, anything with an 'age' is welcome, except our modern age or any ages to come.
This is about what the internet was like thousands of years ago back when it all started. Like when Darius the Great hired mercenaries via Craigslist or when Egypt invented emojis.
CODE OF LAWS
1 - Be civil. No name calling, no fighting, keep your flint hand axes inside your leather pouches at all times.
2 - Keep the AI stuff to a minimum. It gets annoying and old fashioned memes are more fun for everyone.
3 - None of this newfangled modern 21st century nonsense. We don't even know what "21st century" means.
4 - No porn/explicit content. The king is sensitive about these things.
5 - No lemmy.world TOS violations will be tolerated. So there.
6 - There is no ~~rule~~ law 6.
Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar entrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above and below (in north and south), subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight, the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness.
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I love the echos in culture of this one dude, who we all know, and the only reason we know of him is that he kept his own hate mail.
No idea who he is or what this is all about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir?wprov=sfla1
Ah, that story, so nothing about this particular person and "hate mail" was only further getting me off track.
What are you going on about..?
The only reason we know about Ea-nāṣir is indeed that he apparently kept the complaints he received in an archive in his house; from the linked Wikipedia article:
And, as the article also mentions, the whole thing became a widespread meme once it hit reddit, which explains why someone would cosplay as him.
I am talking about how the comments made me think about stuff that is not linked to the actual story.
And we'll never know if his copper really was shitty.
Given the fact that they took the time to write a formal complaint in clay (something that's expensive to do in the ancient world), it's indeed likely that his copper was shitty:
"He sold low grade copper disguised as premium grade. He is a man of low repute, a copper dealer with questionable ethics, who cheats people out of their money."
Or you know, just imagine that review on Amazon with 1/5 stars and way more expletives.
And there were many such complaints that he kept! It makes absolutely no sense that not only would multiple people lie about his copper being shitty by carving expensive tablets, but that he would keep false complaints about himself. The simplest explanation is that his copper was indeed shitty and he found it amusing that so many people complained about it.
"FIVE THOUSAND years from now, you will be a famous meme."
Gettouttahere! Fuggeddaboutit!
I always wondered what the circumstances were that the tablets remained where they were. Was the house abandoned after he died? Did subsequent people who lived there just keep the tablets around for some reason?