Little moments where our ancestors loved & complained
November 1, 2021 2:08 PM   Subscribe

Monk Hermann von Reichenau wrote a chronicle for the year 1021 which ends "My brother Werner was born on November 1." (I assume that's "Werinharius frater meus Kalend. Novem. nascitur." in this text; I don't read Latin.) Happy birthday, Werner! Also: A typical complaint fielded by Babylonian administrators: “I am not getting water for my sesame field. The sesame will die. Don’t tell me later, ‘You did not write to me.’ The sesame is visibly dying. Ibbi-Ilabrat saw it. That sesame will die, and I have warned you." As flglmn notes: "one of those moments where you absolutely feel the kinship of all human beings every where and at all times".
posted by brainwane (55 comments total) 98 users marked this as a favorite
 
Paging Ea-nasir!
posted by Foosnark at 2:25 PM on November 1, 2021 [13 favorites]


PER MY LAST CLAY TABLET
posted by Ryvar at 2:35 PM on November 1, 2021 [116 favorites]


You guys. That's where I'm from (Reichenau). This is like two worlds colliding.
posted by any_name_in_a_storm at 2:35 PM on November 1, 2021 [9 favorites]


"You are my brother; you should send me silver, my brother – a great quantity. Give me the best silver, then I will send you, my brother, all that you, my brother, request."
posted by clavdivs at 2:49 PM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


I love things like this. I think it's a good thing to be reminded that we have a lot more in common with people from hundreds of years ago than we might think. From the second link:
There was a medieval parenting manual that recommended parents smack pieces of furniture their toddlers bumped into and scold the furniture for being so naughty as to get in the way, so that the kids would laugh and forget about their bumps and bruises

I read that and my heart melted

(source: Medieval Women by Deirdre Jackson. She cited the primary source but I cannot for the life of me find the book to check what it was called)
It reminds me of this wonderful comment from Catseye about parent-child relationships in history. My favourite part of the comment:
People loved their kids. The idea a lot of us today have, that parents weren't so attached to their offspring when they knew they'd lose a few in childhood, is as jb says a myth influenced by some outmoded research from the 1960s. Obviously there were some neglectful and abusive parents, as ever, but there's also an incredible amount of tenderness expressed from parents writing about their children. One of the most striking and recurrent things about the parent-physician letters I've read is all the ways this comes across - parents rushing to physicians because their child swallowed a coin, riding five hundred miles on horseback to see an ill child at boarding school, ending letters with "can anything more be done for my sweet lassie?", describing how many words their toddlers understood, describing their three-year-old running to see his father when he came home. I've read one letter from a grandparent who spends two pages describing how incredibly handsome and clever and talented the young child in question is, this one time he picked up a fiddle and he could play it without even being taught!, before even mentioning his illness. They loved their kids.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:11 PM on November 1, 2021 [36 favorites]


Wanna have many emotions in the archives? Find this letter from Spotswood Rice.
Your Miss Kaitty said that I tried to steal you But I'll let her know that god never intended for man to steal his own flesh and blood.
Spoiler:
Mr. Rice gets his children back safely after the war is over and lives a long life with them in St. Louis.
posted by teleri025 at 3:31 PM on November 1, 2021 [9 favorites]


Also from flglmn
what separates history from pre-history is the ability of human beings for the first time to leave an unambiguous record that they told you what was going to happen and they're not going to be the ones taking the fall for it when it does
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:31 PM on November 1, 2021 [54 favorites]


Administrative memos and messages are my favorite historical artifacts. Thanks for sharing this.
posted by interogative mood at 3:39 PM on November 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


There is a Middle Kingdom love poem that says “when I see you, I am happy, even without beer.” Things don’t change.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:50 PM on November 1, 2021 [23 favorites]


This reminds me of a favorite book, Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Yes, that Nathaniel Hawthorne, of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, etc.)

In the mid 1850s his wife went to visit her family, taking along two of their children, leaving him home alone with their five-year-old son, Julian. The book is a published excerpt of his journal, in which he wrote about their daily activities to show her when she got back home. And it's honestly not all that different of what a journal of single-fatherhood would be today -- he tries to write, the kid is sweet and also chaotic, someone gets stung by a wasp and later pees in his pants, and mostly the kid just will not. Stop. Talking. At one point, Hawthorne writes something like "Was ever a man more bepelted by words than I?" and I just loved that so much!

Another favorite quote: "It really does seem as if he has baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure." Parenting, amirite?!?
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:59 PM on November 1, 2021 [34 favorites]


MetaPrev: accidental deaths in Tudor England
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:17 PM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


My fellow-soldiers have no beer. Please order some to be sent.

From a letter sent by Masculus, a Roman decurion stationed on Hadrian’s Wall, around the turn of the second century CE.
posted by greycap at 4:19 PM on November 1, 2021 [6 favorites]


what separates history from pre-history is the ability of human beings for the first time to leave an unambiguous record that they told you what was going to happen and they're not going to be the ones taking the fall for it when it does

Maybe that's why we were in such a hurry to invent it.. people just won't listen.
posted by bleep at 4:35 PM on November 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


Paging Ea-nasir!

Are you kidding? That dude never replies to messages. There were dozens of letters like that in his house when it was excavated.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:38 PM on November 1, 2021 [6 favorites]


There was a medieval parenting manual that recommended parents smack pieces of furniture…

I'm very happy to read this. It's something my Ulster-Scots mum and grandma did.
posted by brachiopod at 4:52 PM on November 1, 2021 [12 favorites]


If you want that real connected-to-history thing read people's descriptions of their pet cats. Like from 9th century Japan here:

"This cat, unlike other cat that has light black hair, he has completely pure black hair. When he sleeps in circle, he is so small like a grain, but when he stretches, he looks like a great bow. His eyes are so sparkling."

This guy called his cat an itty-bitty grain kitty and honestly who hasn't.
posted by Anonymous at 5:07 PM on November 1, 2021


PER MY LAST CLAY TABLET

posted by Ryvar



I legit LOLed at this!
posted by darkstar at 5:12 PM on November 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


I love a man who writes Cuneiform.
posted by ovvl at 5:18 PM on November 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


Charles Darwin in a letter to Charles Lyell, 1 October 1861:

[ . . . ] But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.— I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids & today I hate them worse than everything so farewell & in a sweet frame of mind, I am | Ever yours | C. Darwin

Same, Darwin, same.
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 5:18 PM on November 1, 2021 [38 favorites]


The Ea-nasir Wikipedia site has a link to transcriptions of tons of transcribed Babylonian letters (pdf):

What I have told you now has happened to me: For seven months this (unborn) child was in my body, but for a month now the child has been dead and nobody wants to take care of me. May it please my master (to do something) lest I die. Come visit me and let me see the face of my master! [Large gap] Why did no present from you arrive for me? And if I have to die, let me die after I have seen again the face of my master!
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 5:19 PM on November 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


"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.

(source)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 5:23 PM on November 1, 2021 [13 favorites]


The birthday boy Werinharius turns up a little later in the Reichenauer Kaiserchronik from which we learn that in 1053 "“Werinharius Augiensis, a greatly learned monk,* truly devoted to religion, burning with a zeal for a more perfect life, set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Christ's sake, and dying there, was happily buried in the field of [the monastery at] Akeldama. Over time many have followed in his footsteps."

RIP

*(Werinharius Augiensis monachus admodum doctus etc...)
posted by BWA at 5:24 PM on November 1, 2021 [7 favorites]


I've forgotten the source (it might have been 1587) but there's a really touching letter from a father in the Ming Dynasty writing to his deceased child. He talks about how she loved to knock at his study door, sneak in, and ask "who's there?", and how her mother would fret over whether she'd grow up to be a proper lady, but he'd tell her mom to relax because she was just a kid, and it ends with him reminding her to be polite to the judge of the underworld and to look after her little sister (who had also recently died).
posted by airmail at 5:33 PM on November 1, 2021 [30 favorites]


Cras eget laboris quam. Si hora nona adesses, magna esset. Oblitus sum, debes laborare etiam diebus dominicis.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:43 PM on November 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


TPS relationes in charta tegimus. Magna esset si facere posses.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:47 PM on November 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


So, tablets from cuneiform schools typically have the teacher's writing on one side, with the student's copy on the flip side. Irving Finkel told of a tablet he saw in someone's private collection. The student's side of the tablet had a few sloppy words, then a sketch of someone (presmably the teacher or parent) yelling so dramatically that teeth were flying from their mouth.

Scribes could also use their words to paint a colorful picture, and there's a great story in David Damrosch's The Buried Book. I wish I could find the full text online to provide exact quotes, but Assyrian King Esarhaddon was apparently depressive and something of a hypochondriac, and the memos back and forth among his aides are sooo relatable:
Is one day not enough for the king to mope and to eat nothing? For how long? This is already the third day...
He interpreted every unusual event as an ill-omen, so much so that you can read the exasperation:
Why does the king look for trouble ... When has the king even visited Harihumba? (where the disaster struck)
But of course, my favorite plaint was simply: "Why is the king like this?"
posted by cheshyre at 5:48 PM on November 1, 2021 [26 favorites]


Love that medieval parenting advice! My mum will rush over and dramatically comfort the floor- "is the floor ok??" when a little falls over and the confusion/giggles are so good.
posted by freethefeet at 6:22 PM on November 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


People loved their kids. The idea a lot of us today have, that parents weren't so attached to their offspring when they knew they'd lose a few in childhood, is as jb says a myth influenced by some outmoded research from the 1960s.

I used to live across the street from Boston's Evergreen Cemetery, and would regularly walk past a child's grave near one of the entrances, a small, heavily eroded stone lamb whose inscription was largely illegible except for "Our Eddie". It was probably from the 1860s or 70s, and sinking into the ground. For some reason, even though it was surrounded by hundreds of other stones and I had no kids of my own then, the pathos of it struck me forcibly. I still think about it occasionally now that I'm a parent, almost 30 years later.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:36 PM on November 1, 2021 [11 favorites]


I came here mostly for the jokes about Babylonian copper-merchants, but this thread has become surprisingly moving.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:15 PM on November 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


I found the Lewis and Clark journals to be a surprisingly fun read, because they've got some moments like this.

There is this one-week passage where Lewis (I think it was Lewis) was talking about one of their supply boats, this one white boat where this one week things just went wrong with it. First it started leaking and they had to call a halt while people patched it up....then the person who was supposed to tie it up one night in camp didn't tie quite well enough and drifted downriver overnight...then another leak, a bigger one this time....just a solid parade of days where one thing or another befalls the white boat, about which Lewis started complaining that "some kind of evil genius" must be wreaking some kind of supernatural havoc on it. Finally there came a day that made me laugh out loud - they'd dragged it ashore when they made camp that night, so it couldn't drift away, and they even had two guys do maintenance on it so it wouldn't leak, and everything was going to be fine and they all went to sleep. And in the middle of the night, a herd of bison came passing by, and swam across the river, emerging from the river right by their camp - and one of the buffalo got tired for a second, and sat on it.

Lewis recounts this the next day - and he doesn't use these exact words, but you can tell he is thinking ".....that god-damn motherfucking white boat again...."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 PM on November 1, 2021 [38 favorites]


This is my favorite thing in the Met. I saw it displayed in a big case of other ostraca, and it stood out for having absolutely terrible handwriting. Turns out it was some kid’s homework from 1,400 years ago - specifically their homework on the Illiad, which I also studied in school. I think I just stood there staring at the thing in a weird kind of awe for five or ten minutes.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:36 PM on November 1, 2021 [32 favorites]


My favourite in this genre is the doodles Darwin's children left in the margins of his manuscript of On the Origin of Species.
posted by Harald74 at 11:39 PM on November 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


I remember an exposition in Nara, Japan, with fragments of little planks that were used for accounts and various administrative jottings. And the caricatures of bosses and various penii drawn in the margins. People will be people.

On the kids' theme, Kochanowski's Laments were written on the death of his daughter, age 2 and a half, in 1580. They remain some of the most poignant transcriptions of grief in literature.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:08 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


One of my favourites is Onfim, that little 7-year-old boy who lived in what is now Russia, back in the early 13th century, and his doodles on his homework showing himself fighting a monster. ('I am a wild beast!')

I guess it shows that even back then, small children daydreamed, made up stories and passed notes in class...
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 12:18 AM on November 2, 2021 [12 favorites]


Metafilter: That sesame will die, and I have warned you
posted by Grangousier at 12:24 AM on November 2, 2021 [8 favorites]


On the kids' theme, Kochanowski's Laments were written on the death of his daughter, age 2 and a half, in 1580. They remain some of the most poignant transcriptions of grief in literature.

Wonderful closing lines in the translation shown there of Lament 1:

Man's life is error. Where, then, is relief?
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief?

posted by rory at 6:56 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]


Dear Dad, Send Money – Letters from Students in the Middle Ages

B. to his venerable master A., greeting This is to inform you that I am studying at Oxford with the greatest diligence, but the matter of money stands greatly in the way of my promotion, as it is now two months since I spent the last of what you sent me.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:04 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]


On the one hand, it's heartwarming to learn that a thousand years ago our ancestors were dealing with the exact same day-to-day nonsense that we do. But on the other hand, don't you think our ancestors would be kind of bummed to learn that a thousand years in the future, their descendants would still be dealing with the exact same day-to-day nonsense? Shouldn't we have progressed past some of this by now?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:13 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]


On the theme of little moments speaking to us from the past, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889) is full of them:

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

Old humorous writing is a great source of observations that feel as if they could have been made today: see Mark Twain, George & Weedon Grossmith, P. G. Wodehouse, Australia's Lennie Lower, Canada's Stephen Leacock and many more.
posted by rory at 7:19 AM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


In the 2nd century a young Egyptian named Apion, from Philadelphia, enlisted in the Roman navy. He sailed across a stormy Mediterranean to the naval base at Misenum. When he arrived safely he wrote this letter to his father back in Egypt:
Dear Epimachus, my father and lord.

Before all else, I pray you are flourishing and in good health, and that my sister and her daughter and my brother are also well. I thank the Lord Serapis for keeping me safe when I was in danger during my sea voyage! When I arrived at Misenum I received from the emperor three gold coins to compensate me for my traveling expenses - so I am well! I beg you father, write me a letter; firstly telling me about your health, secondly about the health of my brother and sister, and thirdly just so I can pay reverence to your handwriting. You educated me so well, I hope to advance quickly in the Roman navy, gods willing. I have also sent with the messenger a portrait of myself. My new Roman name is Antonius Maximus! The name of my company is 'Athenonica'. I pray that you are well father."

Address: To Epimachus at Philadelphia, from his son Apion. This letter from Apion to be delivered via Julianus, the under-secretary at Alexandria.
And not only do we know that this letter was successfully delivered, we have a "sequel" letter from the same man some years later to his sister where we we learn that not only did "Maximus" marry an Italian lady and had kids, but that his Egyptian sister named her son Maximus!
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:43 AM on November 2, 2021 [13 favorites]


Shouldn't we have progressed past some of this by now?

Move past what, though? What people find moving about these ancient missives is the eternally relatable human emotion in them. Have we progressed past parents loving their children? Or people having petty grievances? It's nice to know that people have always just been people no matter the time or distance involved.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:50 AM on November 2, 2021 [7 favorites]


Well, at least thing are a little better than they were in London in 1632. I mean, how many people do you know who have died this year of "teeth"?
posted by The Bellman at 8:08 AM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


I really need to find the source for this and bookmark it hard, because I keep citing it, but there's a cuneiform letter from around 1850 BCE that's a father writing to his son in another city saying, and I summarize, "No, you can't have more money, all kids these days care about is parties and the latest fashions, and not working hard like we did when I was young."

You can all but hear the thump of the cane through the words.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:21 AM on November 2, 2021 [5 favorites]


Faint of Butt wrote:

On the one hand, it's heartwarming to learn that a thousand years ago our ancestors were dealing with the exact same day-to-day nonsense that we do. But on the other hand, don't you think our ancestors would be kind of bummed to learn that a thousand years in the future, their descendants would still be dealing with the exact same day-to-day nonsense? Shouldn't we have progressed past some of this by now?

So by "nonsense" I think you mean the negative stuff. Stuff including "a person in power over me is ignoring a problem that may get blamed on me" and "I feel very poorly today and it makes me grumpy" and "you aren't helping me with a big problem I have even though that's your job" and "the guy in charge is sulky and worries a lot" and "this piece of equipment is causing me a disproportionate level of headache" and "I'm bored with studying" and "childcare can be tedious" and "I'm sad that my loved one has died."

I think my really long-ago ancestors, the ones from like a thousand years ago or even 300 years ago, died believing that their children and grandchildren would mostly live lives similar to their own. So I don't think they'd be bummed that we still have those situations. I think they would sort of react the way we're reacting, like, "ha, I guess that never changes!" and then share their stories.

I appreciate Ada Palmer's point on historical change which discusses progress and notes, "If we work hard at it, we can find metrics for comparing times and places which don’t privilege particular ideologies." and discusses those big things, improvements to the human condition, infant mortality, and stuff like that. In this thread I don't want to dive into the details around, like, kings and childcare and what I do and don't have to deal with. But on an everyday basis, I think my ancestors would be amazed at how much LESS I have to deal with some of those annoying things than they did, because of those fundamental improvements in my life.

But I'm thinking about this personally, as though I'm getting to sit around with my ancestors and talk with them, not in aggregate as you suggested, where our ancestors more generally would get to check out their descendants' condition and assess it. And: Possibly I've read you wrong and by "nonsense" you mean more fundamental things like the feelings of dissatisfaction, resentment, boredom, grief, etc. at all, and I think some of the scariest and most mind-bending speculative fiction is trying to imagine how different individuals and societies would be such that those emotions really wouldn't come up at all. And I think in many of those imaginings, some of the warm spontaneous funny loving emotions don't come up either. I don't know!
posted by brainwane at 8:46 AM on November 2, 2021 [5 favorites]


At the Bodleian Library:
This poem (Glouster's Chronicle, composed between 1270-1300) was copied in the early 1400s and the scribe left plenty of margin space for the readers to argue with it. ... One helpful annotator drew a finger pointing to an important bit the exact same way people retweet with a comment of only "👇" or "THIS"!
posted by brainwane at 8:50 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]


I definitely can sympathise with this 9th Century Irish monk complaining about his hangover in ogham.
posted by scorbet at 9:12 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


Some of our ancestors might be pretty pissed that the Millennium came and went again without the Second Coming.

Here's a good one (pdf) from an Assyrian tablet:

“As to the textiles about which you wrote to me in the following terms: “they are (too) small, they are not good’; was it not on your own request that I reduced the size? And now you write (again), saying: “process half a mina (of wool) more in your textiles”. Well, I have done it.”
posted by BungaDunga at 9:13 AM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


"Regarding your textiles, I do not have the copper to pay for them as you requested. However, I know many priests at the ziggurat, and surely the exposure me wearing your textiles when I meet them will bring you many customers..."
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:12 PM on November 2, 2021 [11 favorites]


"I will gladly pay you Tuesday for some textiles today."
posted by BWA at 12:18 PM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


There was a medieval parenting manual that recommended parents smack pieces of furniture their toddlers bumped into

Are you kidding me? This is exactly what we came up with my wife -- to the best of my knowledge, on our own. Awww, bookmarking this for the kids.
posted by kmt at 1:51 PM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


As someone - among many, I assume - who has felt estranged from humanity the last few years, thank you everyone for the contributions to this thread. A prime example of peak Metafilter.

ETA: That English->Aramaic->English translation of All-Star would fit well here and not even ironically.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:36 PM on November 2, 2021 [4 favorites]


This particular story is a little apocryphal, but still makes a lovely point.

The claim is that Margaret Mead was giving a lecture, and someone asked her what was the earliest artifact she'd seen which indicated the very first sign of civilization. They were expecting an answer like a fishhook or a pot or something.

But instead, Mead said that the artifact was a thigh bone which had broken and then healed. Because in the animal kingdom, if you broke a leg you were on your own. But this bone which had broken and then healed suggested that someone had stayed with the injured person, bound up their leg, brought them food while they healed, and stayed with them to care for them until they recovered.

It's now a matter of some debate as to whether this really happened, and whether Margaret Mead really said this - but I think even if Sid from Newark Trucking Company was who said it instead, it's still a telling comment (although breaking my own knee a year ago may be giving me a bias).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:30 PM on November 3, 2021 [4 favorites]


That story may be apocryphal, but when I did anthropology we definitely learned as fact that prehistoric humans and proto-humans had been found with healed wounds like that, as well as some individuals with conditions that would have severely limited their mobility prior to death (like advanced bone cancer).
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:38 PM on November 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


Oh man now I'm clicking around the Met's collection of ostraca and there's some good stuff in there, such as this extremely per-my-last-chunk-of-broken-pottery one.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:58 PM on November 3, 2021


A time capsule and a photo.
posted by brainwane at 4:15 AM on November 19, 2021


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