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blakesterz

The original with ALL of the excuses is at the British Museum here:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634

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cat excuses | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

67 ILL

49 WITH HIS BOSS

17 BREWING BEER

13 WITH AAPEHTI

8 WITH THE SCRIBE

6 MAKING REMEDIES FOR THE SCRIBE’S WIFE

5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER

5 OFFERING TO THE GOD

5 HIS WIFE WAS BLEEDING

5 FETCHING STONE FOR THE SCRIBE

4 WITH KHONS MAKING REMEDIES

4 SUFFERING WITH HIS EYE

4 OFF ABSENT

4 HIS DAUGHTER WAS BLEEDING

3 WITH HOREMWIA

3 WITH HIS BOSS DITTO

3 LIBATING TO HIS FATHER

2 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS SON

2 HIS MOTHER WAS ILL

2 HIS FEAST

2 FETCHING STONE FOR QENHERKHEPSHEF

2 BURYING THE GOD

1 WITH HIS GOD

1 THE SCORPION BIT HIM

1 STRENGTHENING THE DOOR

1 OFFFERING TO THE GOD

1 OFFERING TO HIS GOD

1 OFF ABSENT WITH THE SCRIBE

1 MOURNING HIS SON

1 LIBATING FOR HIS SON

1 LIBATING FOR HIM

1 LIBATING

1 EMBALMING HORMOSE

1 EMBALMING HIS BROTHER

1 DRINKING WITH KHONSU

1 BUILDING HIS HOUSE

> BURYING THE GOD

Thousands of years later and yet who among us hasn't missed work to bury God?

around here it’s an annual day off.

Well, the whole point of the holiday is he didn't stay buried.

Hence the need to do it repeatedly.

“To bury your god once may be regarded as misfortune, to bury them twice looks like carelessness.” - not Oscar Wilde.

Who knew that Egypt was so progressive that guys can take off when their wife or daughter has a period.

Maybe they, like in some Abrahamic religions to come later, considered women "impure" when they had the period, and this somehow translated to the men in the household? Wild speculation, of course.

Calm down. It's just a PMS joke.

No it's not

Did I not seem calm in my reply?

Oh come on, now you're just being hysterical.

That's what I thought as well, though I would expect that'd appear in higher frequency - unless the bosses sent people to check.

I think it's more likely that the men had to take over household tasks while their wives were on the rag.

Hm. Why would they have to take over? Women on their period are not invalids. Though maybe the weren't allowed to do household tasks?

Probably considered unclean -- some religions still believe this (Islam, Judaism). You can't clean and cook if you're unclean? I don't know.

In Islam and Judaism women can still do housework. It's a ritual purity, not an actual physical one.

Some women are completely disabled by their period pains. I can imagine the husband coming home to attend to her, the kids, the animals, and the house

Now imagine women without modern feminine hygiene products. It’s a very different story.

right, a woman with a particularly heavy period might need to be cared for on the worst day.

There are still some cultures where women isolate themselves in separate buildings while they are "unclean".

Yes, this brings us back to my original comment :)

Menstruation, Menstrual Hygiene and Woman's Health in Ancient Egypt http://www.mum.org/germnt5.htm

they really are putting modern day US employers to shame

Wow this really does tell a story. His mom and his son both died.

Everyone he ever met died. Now the story is more sinister!

A lot of those are related to death:

5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER 2 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS SON 1 EMBALMING HORMOSE 1 EMBALMING HIS BROTHER 1 MOURNING HIS SON 3 LIBATING TO HIS FATHER 13

and I suspect most of these:

8 WITH THE SCRIBE 1 OFF ABSENT WITH THE SCRIBE 5 FETCHING STONE FOR THE SCRIBE 2 FETCHING STONE FOR QENHERKHEPSHEF 1 LIBATING FOR HIS SON 1 LIBATING FOR HIM 1 LIBATING 2 BURYING THE GOD 21

and there's a bunch making remedies and/or looking after wives and female relatives:

6 MAKING REMEDIES FOR THE SCRIBE’S WIFE 5 HIS WIFE WAS BLEEDING 4 WITH KHONS MAKING REMEDIES 4 HIS DAUGHTER WAS BLEEDING 2 HIS MOTHER WAS ILL 21

Some ones that seem work-related by the use of names:

49 WITH HIS BOSS 3 WITH HIS BOSS DITTO 3 WITH HOREMWIA 13 WITH AAPEHTI 68

Then there's some actual stuff the worker was doing - mostly brewing beer:

17 BREWING BEER 5 OFFERING TO THE GOD 1 WITH HIS GOD 1 STRENGTHENING THE DOOR 1 BUILDING HIS HOUSE 25

A few unknowns:

4 OFF ABSENT

And finally the actual illness and injury, including scorpion guy!

67 ILL 4 SUFFERING WITH HIS EYE 1 THE SCORPION BIT HIM 72

Seems that brewing and DIY were the only hobbies around - unless you count making remedies or embalming!

With his boss:

It's a little buried (on mobile) but:

> ... the next most frequent is being away with one's superior doing private work for him, a practice that was not forbidden if done in moderation.

While definitely a legal grey area in these modern times, foremen borrowing a truck/excavator and a bloke or two to sort out something at the foreman's house still seems to happen.

I imagine this happens often considering the amount of stories I hear of developer companies doing inadequate jobs.

Brewing beer and making remedies may may not be mutually exclusive as ancient beer had natural antibiotics like tetracycline: https://www.wired.com/2010/09/antibiotic-beer/

Many might be missing work because of ritual uncleanliness (wife/daughter bleeding)

Remember this is translated by archaeologists, and most of them go into the profession thinking about mummies.

I suspect whenever they come across a symbol they don't understand to translate, they might just assume it means "ooh, it must mean wrapping my father"!

TL;DR:. Translator bias could be hitting hard...

No. We have a good grasp of how ancient Egypt worked. Archeologists also don't go into the profession "thinking about mummies", archeology is a respectable, evidence-based profession. Do you think the whole field of archeology is a joke?0 There are lots of dual-language pieces that have been used to verify an accurate translation of these very inscriptions.

Not least of which, the Rosetta Stone has three: Hieroglyphics, Demotic, and Greek.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

For a long time archeology was simply known as “digging” and following that “digging for things”

Do you have any authority on the subject of archeological academic misconduct or are you speculating?

No, archeologists do not go into the field "thinking about mummies". This isn't Hollywood.

Yah, exactly, they're not excuses, they're reasons, and apparently allowed and understood.

Whoever wrote that article is really anti-worker and probably a trash person.

The word "excuse" doesn't require the negative connotation you're ascribing to it.

Only a son is worth mourning?

Khonsu must be an important guy

Something that hasn’t changed in 3200 years is inconsistent labelling of data.

Hard to implement a drop down menu on a stone tablet :)

You would think after couple of years they will have blocks for WITH BOSS that can just be pressed on the clay.

Tell that to my toes

This is the kind of dry humor that keeps me reading long HN comment threads. Well done.

Are these for a single person, or for many people?

If the latter, then, seems their parents (mother) died a lot (5) in comparison to how often they themselves were ill (67)

Sorry boss, can’t come in today. My mother died again.

What if this:

"5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER"

took 5 days? If it included other ceremonies?

(Still, that's a bit much I guess.)

Your momma so fat it took you 5 days to wrap her corpse.

Reminds me of the #1 reason for a day off work in Australia: possum attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ytDTcsuYM

It's really anti-worker to consider reasons to miss work (legit ones, allowed ones, necessary ones) "excuses". As if everyone's supposed to work all the time and any time off is non-legit.

What a poor way to view workers... the article really is casting workers in a bad light when that's the opposite of what we need.

> Year 40 Penduauu: month 1 of Spring, day 14 (DRINKING WITH KHONSU)

"Khonsu, you have any good ideas?"

"I have a bad one."

Suddenly, Moon Knight makes more sense

Later on in the tablet, they refine it into "MAKING REMEDIES WITH KHONSU".

I suppose then Khonsu said "Here, hold my henqet"

That was a perfect joke. Thank you.

Interesting that the dates are "Month 3 of Summer, Day 24" etc. The curious bit to me being the enduring use of 4 distinct seasons, when there are obviously other ways to mark a year.

Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

I recently read about the Hindu seasons. Here is an off the cusp search result on the subject.

https://www.learnreligions.com/the-six-seasons-of-india-p2-1...

"Sekki is the traditional way of expressing seasons in Japan. There are 24 sekki, including rikka (立夏, the first day of summer) in early May, shoman (小満, lit. “a little full” as in growing, waxing) in late May and boshu (芒種, lit. bearded grain) in early June.

The 24 sekki can be further divided into three for a total of 72 shijijūni ko (七十二侯) that last for about five days each. These subseasons include mugi no toki itaru (麦秋至), or “the time for wheat has come,” which lasts from May 31 to June 5, and kamakiri shozu (“the mantis is born”) from June 6 to June 10. "

https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/just-how-...

The full list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#The_24_sekki

There used to be a maintained shared Google Calendar you could use that would display those in your agenda. While the names did not fit exactly with my local weather, it was interesting to give a name to small parts of the year. It felt very natural and intuitive.

I love this. Ever since moving back into the wild from the city, it's been so nice to take notice of all the little "microseasons" you'll see inside a usual season. I took it for granted as a kid, but as an adult, it's nice to name and partake in the various parts of the year as you mention.

From my perspective, anything regularly periodic in nature is used to track time: the Sun (years, seasons, days, day/dusk) and Moon (months, weeks, King tides). Consider even the starfield (astrology: years, decades+).

Four seasons makes sense in all of these contexts, and I hypothesize that there are a lot of patterns in nature that are well bucketed into 4 sequential, equal seasons. This is impossible for me to demonstrate, unfortunately. Also, division by by 4 and 12, a year into four seasons is like a month into four weeks. Weeks seem to me to be among our most subjective fundamental time unit.

I see weeks as being the most arbitrary. I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic.

  > I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic.

I especially like that you chose prime numbers. A week composed of a prime number of days will remain the smallest indivisible group of days that a culture will have.

Agreed, glad you called this out! I was thinking about rambling about this, but this is a topic I can go on and on about, and I was already off to a slow start today...

Please ramble! I've actually though much about this as well. It kind of forces a "holy day" because without one nothing fits into one week with any period other than "every day" or "every week" - be that week 5 or 7 or 11 days. I've heard that the seven day week was independently developed at least three times in ancient times across disparate cultures as well.

Well, maybe, except that months are sometimes prime numbers and we subdivide them anyways, right?

I guess weeks don't exactly subdivide months, they're sort of separate systems?

I always wondered what it would feel like to not have weeks, or even years, but to live life in a continuous stream of days looking forward. I'm not sure if we would feel a horrible lack of closure or accomplishment, or if it would make us more productive and forward looking and moving. I wonder how much of my life I waste just trying to close out a week/month/year.

I was talking to a Jamaican primary school teacher once. She told me that the songs (Nursary rhymes) that they teach the kids are often based on old English ones ( like ring-ring-a-roses) but any reference to the four seasons have been mutated. Since in Jamaica they just have two seasons; wet season and dry season.

> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

Ancient Egyptian :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar:

“The ancient Egyptian calendar – a civil calendar – was a solar calendar with a 365-day year. The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days.”

So, a better calendar than ours :(

The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) - https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY gets into the "why the year we have is designed the way it is" ... though it takes 22 minutes to get to that part.

It wasn't really better as the 30 * 12 + 5 approach needed manual application of the + 5... which is what the new calendar was trying to avoid.

I gather +536 felt longer.

"There are just two seasons in the old Icelandic calendar: [...] summer and winter."

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/10/21/do_you_kn...

The local version of this is: there are only two seasons in Michigan—winter and construction.

There were two in The Bay Area in the early 2000s: wet and dry. Prolonged drought has made us a one-season region, talking about four seasons like other areas.

India (and nearby areas) famously used/uses 6 seasons. The Mayan Haab' isn't precisely a seasonal calendar, but each of the 20 'months' was used to much the same effect.

It's common among many ancient cultures to treat equinoxes and solstices as events of great importance, as those mark the beginning of the season change, but not all regions experience seasons the same.

Ancient Egyptians, while knowledgeable of astronomy, had only three seasons: Akhet (summer/heat), Peret (flooding, of the Nile) and Shemu (harvest). Notice the conspicuous absence of winter.

https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/28/a-year-in-three-seaso...

Oh, when it snows in Egypt (which it does do on occasion) they definitely notice the conspicuous absence of winter.

In particular the traditional Persian new year (Nowruz) starts in spring, and is celebrated throughout central asia as far as Kazakhstan.

The roman calendar started the year in spring as well with March (hence the names September/October/November/December are literally the 7th/8th/9th/10th month). The Greek apparently were all over the place with the year starting in summer/fall/winter depending on region/polis.

I'd heard this was because July and August (for Julius and Augustus) were added later to the calendar and originally there were only 10 months that started with January.

I believe those were merely renamed, and the original year was 10 months from March to December, with a nondescript “winter” period between December and March.

Up until 1751 the legal year (fiscal year) in England (and its North American colonies) started at 25 March (Lady Day).

One origin story for April Fool's suggests that it's to do with getting the year wrong.

My understanding was that new years was always January, 1st, but that the year number changed on Lady Day

The UK's tax year still reflects this, starting from April 6, which both accounts (pun intended) for the year changing on Lady Day, and the transition from Julian to Gregorian calendars.

Another phenomenon I’ve found curious is the cross-cultural definition of a week as roughly a quarter moon, and correlated names for days of the week. [1]

  Sunday    Sun     Sōlis    Hēlíou     日曜日
  Monday    Moon    Lūnae    Selḗnēs    月曜日
  Tuesday   Mars    Mārtis   Áreōs      火曜日
  Wednesday Mercury Mercuriī Hermoû     水曜日
  Thursday  Jupiter Iovis    Diós       木曜日
  Friday    Venus   Veneris  Aphrodítēs 金曜日
  Saturday  Saturn  Sāturnī  Krónou     土曜日

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week

There's some ... but I think it misses two really important ones (and this is just off the top of my head):

1. The Romans had an eight day "week"; and,

2. The mesoamericans had a 260 day "week" (or, at best, interlocking 13 and 20 day "weeks").

I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.

>The Romans had an eight day "week"; and,

The Beatles were Romans!

So were the B-52's, but only if you wanted to.

> I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.

The 7-day week originated in Sumerian Babylon culture from 2100 BC and has to do with quartering moon phases. I worry when seeing many things attributed to "Judeo-Christian culture" which actually originated from other cultures, many aspects of what's in "Judeo-Christian culture" including perhaps some of the key stories in the Old Testament like the Flood appear to have been copied or at least inspired by stories from Sumerian culture which was considered the 'high culture' of the region.

They definitely didn’t invent it, but I would say it’s fair to give Christianity itself credit for converting Rome to a 7 day week & then most of the rest of the world after. It takes a religion with certain characteristics to accomplish that.

> it’s fair to give Christianity itself credit for converting Rome to a 7 day week

How so? Constantinus was the one who committed to the change and the day names were after the Roman Gods. Even today, we're using Viking names, like today happens to be Odin's Day, tomorrow's going to be Thor's Day and the day after is going to be Freya's Day. I'm not sure it is reasonable or rational to "credit Christianity itself".

Constantine adopted a 7 day calendar a few years after adopting Christianity. Christians had already adopted that calendar from Jews.

These are more jargon imports that came bundled with the 7-day week after the Romans, and then Europe, popularized it after adopting it. As an analogy, you don't hear many other ways of naming tea and coffee across cultures.

As far as I understand from the Wikipedia article, this practice has spread directly from Judaism (7 days) through Christianity through the Roman Empire (which renamed the days according to the planets/gods) to all of these places. It's not clear from the article if perhaps the Ancient Greeks had a similar system already - but otherwise, the Indians and the Chinese adopted this system from Roman/Hellenistic sources between the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, and other cultures around them adopted it from them slightly later.

Polish doesn't use those names, but a different system:

Poniedziałek (lit. After not working) Wtorek (not sure) Środa (also not sure) Czwartek (lit. the fourth) Piątek (possibly means drinking day?) Sobota (not sure) Niedziela (Not working)

‘Sobota’ resembles ‘sábado’ in Spanish and might refer to the Sabbath?

Those all loosely resemble the Russian names, and as the other commentator noted “Sobota” sounds a lot like “Sabbath”

> Piątek (possibly means drinking day?)

The word means "the fifth day", from piąty (fifth) rather than pić (to drink).

Wtorek (Tuesday) comes from wtóry, meaning "second".

Środa (Wednesday) is from środa, meaning “middle”.

Sobota (Saturday) is from Hebrew שַׁבָּת‎ (šabbāṯ), meaning the Sabbath.

Oh yeah, I guess I was tired and didnt make the connection

Wtorek probably means "the second day", and Środa means "middle". Piątek probably means "fifth".

With some exceptions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawukon_calendar

On Venus, a day is longer than a year.

Babylonians knew 7 planets and named each day of the week as ruled by a planet...

It had also been subdivided into planetary hours...

https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/7-days-week.html

I once heard Canadians in Winnipeg joke there were but two seasons, Winter and Construction. I think this was in reference to road maintenance.

In NZ these days I feel like we have two: Drought and Mudslide.

I needed this today, thanks!

That's hilarious. I lived with a really cold winter and it's not only road maintenance. If you have to do some renovations at your place they sometimes also need to happen on "construction" season, even if it's inside a lot of construction workers go to other places in the winter.

L.A. boasts of three seasons: Drought, mudslide, and wildfire.

Actually it's 4: 1)Winter 2)More winter 3)Still winter and 4)Construction.

And also not exclusive to Winterpeg. It's used in many other parts of Canada as well. Construction season alternatively being named "orange cone season" as well as the roads are full of them.

The Noongar of south western Australia denote six seasons: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/nyoongar.shtml

Makuru was much more suitable than “winter” for the climate in Perth: time to rug up and settle in for cosy nights with your loved ones. I wish the Noongar seasons were more often used in the south west of Australia by everybody, so much more suitable than European seasons shifted 6 months!

Astronomically it seems to make the most sense, you have two solstices and two equinoxes dividing the year into four parts.

Apparently the Sami (Lapps) have/had 8 seasons.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Eight-Seasons-story-Lapps/dp...

Indeed: https://www.samisiida.no/en/b/the-eight-sami-seasons

Do they have months as well? Once you get to 8 it seems like you could just as well call them long months than short seasons.

Every place with wet season maybe?

> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

Sub saharan people (and many Asian), have two seasons, rainy and dry.

Can't we use Structured Equation Modeling or ML to cluster seasons based on actual data?

Thailand has 3 seasons. Hot, cold and rainy season. The emerald buddha has three different sets of clothing to match the seasons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Buddha

Australian indigenous people. Varying numbers of seasons, I'm guessing depending on the climate in which they live.

http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/climate_culture/Indig_seasons.shtm...

I can't think of an ancient Middle Eastern culture with 4 seasons. Hittites had 3, various Mesopotamian cultures had 2. It really only made sense in Europe to divide into 4.

Big day for the guy BURYING THE GOD.

I feel a connection to the guy who missed work "absent with the scribe". I know it was probably something important, but a scribe writing "that guy is excused, he was with me" makes me think of those times my boss took me for lunch and paid with the corporate card.

(Of course, I'm assuming the scribe wrote this)

Bah gawd it's Nietzsche with a steel shovel.

Any idea what "WITH HIS BOSS" means in there? Is that also an excuse of absence, or is that what was marked when not absent?

“… On month 3 of Akhet, days 21-4, it seems that Pennub was off work because he was looking after the ill Aapehti. The most frequently recorded reason for absence is illness (over a hundred times), including 'eye trouble', and 'the scorpion stung him'; the next most frequent is being away with one's superior doing private work for him, a practice that was not forbidden if done in moderation…”

I guess it's like when you're the assistant to a movie studio executive and he/she asks you to wash their car for them.

At the beginning of 'Inscription position: front', it looks like it was not done in moderation

As they say: everything in moderation... including moderation.

The British Museum link has it buried under curator's notes (have to expand it)- it means they worked directly for their boss on the boss' project.

Time off for illness! That's nice. I wonder if one of the HR scribes tracked the days every person took off in an analog ERP system. Scribes seemed important, maybe they outsourced the basics to contractors.

Presumably they did not get paid on those days off.

SAP System/C(lay)

BREWING THE BEER is a good excuse, ngl.

Presumably the boss received some of that beer.

Potable water with nutrients, bioflavinoids, and antibiotic content is definitely an excusable reason.

Fetching stone for the scribe?

Wrapping the corspe of his mother? Is that like "My grandma died?"

Trouble with his eye - maybe all that stone dust.

Strengthening the door - I wonder what door...

How is "With his boss" an excuse?

From the curator’s comments: “[The] next most frequent [reason for absence] is being away with one’s superior doing private work for him, a practice that was not forbidden if done in moderation.”

Linked both below the image and in the third paragraph of the post, but there aren't many more excuses, just a lot of repeats, and the article gives more context then the curators notes at that link.

What's it doing in a "British" museum?

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