The Worst Businessman of the 18th Century BC (2018) | Hacker News Reader

The Worst Businessman of the 18th Century BC (2018)

forbes.com

80 pointsrespinal39 comments

I just love this:

> “The copper of mine, give it to Nigga-Nanna – good copper, in order that my heart shall not be troubled.”

> “May Samas bless your life. ... In order that your heart shall not be troubled, give good copper to him.”

“May your heart not be troubled..” It’s just a small sample of letters, but it seems people from 4000 years ago had better empathy than us.

Why do we not show each other this kind of courtesy any more? Why do most of our interactions today seek to upset someone or become upset instead of seeking accord?

The reason why we don't show any form of courtesy anymore is because there is no community. There are so many people on this planet suffering so much injustice that we may as well be ants to each other.

I think you are lensing this through your own cultural filters/assumptions.

My first reading is as a veiled threat: honour our agreement or I bring trouble to your heart.

Your first sentence could just as well be the response to your second.

I would be very wary of reading too much into the tone of a translation, especially when the language has been dead for so long.

Really? I take this as evidence indicating basically the opposite - fundamental human nature, as reflected through our communications and business practices, hasn't changed significantly in thousands of years. Some folks might be courteous, giving others the benefit of the doubt in hopes they'll "catch more flies with honey" or, more-likely, due to pervasive social norms and taboos. Others might issue thinly-veiled or direct threats, hoping to coerce the desired outcome. Either way, there have been shady business people and the ripped-off, the scammers and the scammed, for going on 4 millennia, at the very least, and there really is no sign the status quo going to change. If anything, this should dispel our romances of the human condition. The form is immaterial to the underlying function of the communication. "I feel ripped off, please deliver the goods."

~1800 years later, and 2 millennia ago, the graffiti at Pompeii http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2... tells a similar (and somewhat more humorous) story but in a different context.

> The form is immaterial to the underlying function of the communication.

The form is very much pertinent to the outcome. If I come at you with expletives, it will produce a different result, even if just in your internal state.

That link is fascinating, thanks for sharing. Two minor things that stuck out to me:

- "Kosher garum" - didn't see that coming!

- "På stora svenska online casino kan du alltid hitta casino spel från Netent, spelen har översatts till många språk inklusive svenska." I don't speak Swedish but is this randomly injected online gambling spam?!

> På stora svenska online casino kan du alltid hitta casino spel från Netent, spelen har översatts till många språk inklusive svenska." I don't speak Swedish but is this randomly injected online gambling spam?!

Yes, it looks like the page has been compromised.

Oh but we do. See, for instance, the forms of phrase "with all due respect", "bless your heart", and "oh you sweet summer child". Full of respect, kindness, and compassion.

Sometimes, when people make mistakes, people from 2019 remind them that they're like the great thinker Einstein, a sign that even though they believe the person erred, everyone believes that they are still capable of acting with great intelligence.

Truly, looking back two thousand years to the language of 2019 CE (near the invention of the Internet), one of us 5th-millennials must only conclude that true compassion began with that great sharing that was possible when all of Man could speak to all of Man over a single network.

> See, for instance, the forms of phrase "with all due respect","bless your heart", and "oh you sweet summer child". Full of respect, kindness, and compassion.

This basically means you are due no respect, your heart is black as charcoal, and you are as naive as a child.

Source: many years living among the British.

"With all due respect" can mean 'you're not worthy of any respect, but plyed with a straight bat, it means "I'm about to disagree with you strongly and in a way that might jeopardise my career, but I have to say this, please don't take it as a personal attack'.

Usually that reduces to "I think you're an idiot, and here's why."

I think these constructions are fascinating. They're accepted as barely disguised aggression, used in situations where outright aggression might spiral out of control.

But they actually work. Even though everyone understands what they really mean, they're far less likely to lead to escalation than less polite forms.

I believe that was more or less his point.

“Bless your heart” in the Southern US does not mean you’re amoral.

The implication is that you failed at something because you are so pitiably stupid or incompetent that failure was inevitable. For example, you would not say “bless your heart” to someone who had already cheated you, but you might use it to suggest that you see through their scheme: “Bless your heart, but I’m not paying $10000 for a rusted-out Toyota.”

“God love ‘em” works similarly but mostly in the third person, as in “Did you taste the [awful] food he brought? Bless his heart/God love ‘em.”

See for example, the LA governor’s recent use of the phrase towards Trump who had supported his opponent unsuccessfully in the elections

I'd guess it's a convention of that society, and means no more than our (peculiar, in my view) manner of the writing of some letters starting "Dear Sir" and ending "I remain faithfully yours ...", or similar words.

I think this may be a register (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%2...)

I remember reading a letter translated from Arabic to English. It sounded a lot like these letters to Ea-Nasir.

> but it seems people from 4000 years ago had better empathy than us.

I see you're not from the South. Ask someone who is what "bless your heart" actually means.

Well... what does it mean

The city of Ur Kaśdim (Ur of the Chaldeans) is the birthplace of Jewish patriarch Abraham. 1)

It was identified with Tell el-Muqayyar by Henry Rawlinson in 1862, situated near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. 2)

1) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11%3A31...

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_of_the_Chaldees

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759

"the work that you have done is soooooooo good."

How did they translate the "soooooooo" part? Were ancient people really using this kind of tone?

A particularly long line perhaps?

I suppose that must have been one way to be passive aggressive in cuneiform.

This is actually really entertaining. I thought I had read somewhere that there are thousands of untranslated ancient Sumerian/Babylonian/Akkadian tablets. Does anyone know if this is true?

AFAIK most of what's been in European collections for ages hasn't even been transcribed. I remember Irving Finkel lamenting the utter lack of Assyriologists.

are they online? i;m guessing not but would be cool if they were

Slightly off-topic.

Ever since I came across the Proto-Zagrosian hypothesis [0] [1] and subsequent dravidian linguistics papers [2], I can’t stop looking at words like Ur and not make a mental connection.

Even some of the names here sound more plausible if I mentally substitute the letters with equivalent dravidian alphabets.

I was browsing Google maps around my home town and I coundn’t stop seeing the root words - Bangalore (Bangal - Ur), Mysore (Mys- Ur), Hosur (Hos - Ur), Coimbatore- (Coimbat - Ur).

I have no training in linguistics so I’m going to admit that many of these are probably just words that look similar. Any dravidian linguists here want to chime in?

I’m really excited to see how studies in Proto-Zagrosian evolve and what new connections we might find from it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elamo-Dravidian_languages

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.3.551...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12284-011-9076-9

This Ea-Nasir guy was certainly no Kushim. Kushim would never mess you around like that!

If this were Reddit you could bank mad karma by saying something about EA screwing people over for 3800 years.

Do I need to update my filters? Why can forbes detect my adblocker?

I hear Softbank are offering 20 billion

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