By u/callmesalticidae: Is it plausible that Ea-nasir was unfairly maligned?
"Good, honest merchants may get bad reviews, or even people who falsify complaints in an attempt to swindle the merchant. In today's world, apps and outlets that mostly get 5-star reviews will still probably have a few 1-star reviews as well.
Do we have other reasons to believe that Ea-nasir sold bad copper, besides the complaint tablets?
Do we have a reason to pay more credence to a complaint tablet than to a 1-star Yelp review?
It must have taken more effort to make the complaint tablet, so maybe "Somebody cared enough to complain" meant more back then than it does now, but I don't want to just come up with a reason in my head and say, "I figured out the answer!""
Ea-nasir was a merchant who lived in the city of Ur during the Old Babylonian period. He is famous for receiving a letter that stated in part, "You set out bad ingots for my messenger... you'll learn here that I will not accept bad copper from you!" This letter is known as the "Oldest Customer Complaint", or UET 5, 81.
Trusting that the sender of this letter, a man named Nanni, wrote in earnest about the quality of Ea-nasir's inventory, let's look at what all information we have surrounding this merchant, the nature of this complaint, and whether this poor report is actually representative of the work Ea-nasir performed.
Who was Ea-nasir and what do we know about his work?
Scholars cite Ea-nasir's house as No. 1 Old Street in area AH. There are two databases you can access to see what all we've attributed to that location. The first is Ur-Online (http://www.ur-online.org/location/69/) and the second is ARCHIBAB (https://archibab.fr/textes?archid=197). The first database tells us what we have associated with this archaeological context, the second is a dossier that scholars have reconstructed through methods related to prosopography and archival analysis. We attribute 26 documents to this location due to their proximity to Ea-nasir and his work.
The extent to which we know of Ea-nasir comes solely from these 26 documents. They are 2 land sale contracts, 12 letters, and 12 texts that relate to his business practice. These documents suggest that Ea-nasir was a landowner: he owned his house as well as some land surrounded by orchards. Some of his letters suggest that he had a business associate named Ilshu-tillassu. Most importantly, these texts provide evidence that he was a long-distance merchant, specifically a Dilmun trader (in Akkadian, ālik Dilmun). This means he would travel from Ur to Dilmun by boat via the Gulf.
Dilmun, located where the country of Bahrain stands today, was a central place for trade during the Old Babylonian period. Copper would have been mined in a region called Magan, coinciding with modern day Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and brought to Dilmun. Babylonian traders would bring perfumes, pottery and baskets, slaves, and agricultural products to be sold. Dilmun was thus the intermediary point of trade between Magan and the region of Southern Iraq where Ur is located.
This was not light travel, nor easy business. Ea-nasir had investors, upwards of fifty individuals are noted in one document. Traders were expected to pay import and export dues, their travel depended on seasonal winds, and most of all they had to manage transportation for upwards of 20 tons of copper, roughly 18,000 kg, according to one document of his. The actual act of selling copper was not the most important thing Ea-nasir did. Instead, our merchant was likely incredibly wealthy and well-connected; he was not some general salesperson.
What was this bad copper and who was Nanni?
The topic of copper for this letter has been addressed in another thread (asked here by u/TanktopSamurai), whose answers are informative and provide details I don't have time to rehash. Though, I'll take a moment to speak to the language used in the famous letter. The 'bad' ingots (gubāri la damqūtim) are in comparison to what was promised to Nanni: good ingots (gubāri damqūtim). The use of 'bad' here not a technical term, it's literally 'not good ingots'. The writer Nanni is simply stating that the ingots were not the promised good ingots. That being said, good is almost certainly related to copper purity.
As far as we know, Ea-nasir had no part in smithing or smelting copper. If he had any part in deciding whether his product was good or bad, it would have likely been dependent on Dilmun's market. In this way, the extent this letter is about poor treatment of Nanni by Ea-nasir is more important than anything else, the copper being bad was simply icing on the cake.
More to the point, this letter doesn't suggest Nanni was a customer. In one document, Nanni and another person by the name of Shumi-abum paid transport dues for a metric ton of copper, roughly 1,000 kg. Moreover, we don't see some sort of "I'll take my business elsewhere" comment from Nanni at the end of this letter. Instead, Nanni states that he is going to be the one who personally selects which copper ingots to keep: "in my courtyard I shall select (the copper ingots) individually and take possession (of them)" (lines 49-51 of the letter). My understanding of this information is that Nanni wrote to take control of copper owed to him, having invested money and energy in Ea-nasir's copper ventures. Nanni no longer trusts Ea-nasir as having his best interests in mind.
Is Nanni's complaint worth considering compared to a 1-star Yelp review?
We ought to believe Nanni's complaint that he was poorly treated by Ea-nasir and that he was offered poor ingots, otherwise this letter wouldn't exist. The complaint is private, sent in a letter addressed only to Ea-nasir and not for public humiliation (until the 1950s CE, at least). We don't need to consider the effort it took to write a letter, as writing in cuneiform was not as difficult as some folks can be led to believe. These folks wrote all the time.
Addendum: Reception History
I fundamentally disagree with this letter being understood as a customer complaint. In my mind, this has been a tricky game of telephone where the British Museum's "Complaint about delivery of the wrong grade of copper" has turned into r/ReallyShittyCopper. I think my disagreement here is beside the point.
The adoration and obsession of this text due to the internet being a weird, funny place has been one of the biggest boons to ancient history in the last decade. Because of this text, folks are interested in 4,000 year old international trade and can recognize cuneiform writing, even if they can't read it. I have spent over a decade studying these things in great detail and the fact that I can have so many conversations with hundreds of thousands of folks about this one figure is incredible.
Sources:
H.H. Figulla and W.J. Martin (1953), Ur Excavation Texts V: Letters and Documents of the Old-Babylonian Period (UET 5).
A.L. Oppenheim (1954), "The Seafaring Merchants of Ur," in Journal of the American Oriental Society 74/1: 6-17.
Marc van de Mieroop (1992), Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur (BBVO 12).
Baptiste Fiette (2020), "Les échanges commerciaux entre ur et Dilmun d’après les archives d’Ea-nasir," in Nouvelles recherches sur les archives d'Ur d'époque paléo-babylonienne (ARCHIBAB 4): 425-444.
Have a question or comment? Contact me!