#ea-nasir will be remembered

[shrike-sorokoput]

me in the neath, after going insane: mr manager sir do you know that in your city there was this guy who sold really shitty copper

[home-and-having-tea]

One of my proudest moments in my whole life has been being able to see the Ea Nasir tablet in person. Man sold such shit ass fuck quality copper, I fangirled over his dogshit Yelp review over 3000 years later. Respect to the king 🫡 😤

[thatlonelycactus]

Crowley was 100% besties with the renaissance thinkers. He and DaVinci were always talking about some kind of invention or painting or just making fun of people, Michelangelo let him in on all the hidden meanings in his paintings and they’d always complain to each other about their bosses, and him and Galileo talked about the stars. In fact, it was his friendship with Crowley that solidified his belief in the heliocentric model of the solar system.

Aziraphale fraternized with the Enlightenment thinkers. He discussed morals and ethics and philosophy with Kant and Rousseau, Locke and Voltaire. Unlike Crowley with the renaissance figures a couple centuries beforehand, Aziraphale shared very little of his angelic wisdom. Partially because he didn’t want to but also because everytime he’d talk with any of them they would beg him not to. This resulted in, whenever they said something completely wrong, Aziraphale trying to hide a sly smile, failing completely and having a cup of tea thrown at his head. Very pleasant.

At the start of the 20th century, Aziraphale found himself surrounded by the likes of Joyce, Woolf and Wilde. He enjoyed it immensely. Who wouldn’t? This is how he got many of his first editions from the period. Whilst he and Wilde were very close, he probably spent the most time with Woolf. Whilst modernist literature was never his favourite period, he loved the writing of Woolf, many of her shorter works he read prior to them being published, were some of the most beautiful works of prose he’d ever read. He thought that Crowley might like Huxley’s works if he liked to read but he didn’t so Aziraphale never tried to convince him to but he always keeps an extra copy of Brave New World in his bookshop just in case (it’s signed too).

Later on in the century, Crowley befriended the men whose names most people only ever expect to hear used from time to time in a science lesson but never truly understand who they were or what it was that they actually discovered. Einstein, Schrödinger, Doppler, if they changed the science world, Crowley knew them. He had a good time with them, providing little “what if”s and queries that would stop them in their tracks. Most of them initially thought he was pretty, how to put it, stupid, at first, I mean if anyone saw they way he looked at the maths they did tragedy think he was pretty brainless too despite the fact he was only trying to figure out why they had done all that maths to get a simple answer. But his value was quickly realised because, unlike his companion, Crowley was much happier to give little pieces of information he learnt during the creation of the universe.

Sorry for my rambling. Also Aziraphale and Sappho were definitely friends and he still has full copies of her poems in the back of his bookshop but he’s not gonna tell anyone about that.

[ibroughtyoumybullets-ningy]

i signed into museum wifi to deliver this to you the moment i saw it

[thedeadtravelfast]

@jabberwocky1996 @ferretfyre

[sasquapossum]

credit: @inarticulatequilter@mastodon.art

[boysnberriespie]

Obsessed with the way tumblr functions irl, like, all it takes is one statement and you clock that someone uses tumblr or at the very least, used tumblr pre-2018

[demilypyro]

Historical people I know who are famous for being bad at stuff but not really doing harm on a major scale:

Ea-nasir

Hegelochus

May I one day fuck up so bad that it is remembered for all time

[vaguely-concerned]

what would I do without you. indeed illario.

lucanis trust me! indeed illario. the ea-nasir vibes on this shitty little rat of a man (somehow still slightly affectionate despite myself)

I am obsessed with WHERE this letter is found and what we're meant to read into those context clues. I don't have a handy save for this mission right now to double check the details, but from memory: It's the room across from what seems implied to be Caterina's room (Lucanis says these are the family quarters, so Illario has kept her locked in her own room all this time probably?? Oh oh house arrest, house arrest for grandmother for ten thousand years style)? We find the scraps of a letter from Zara to Illario, torn to pieces with one fragment still in the empty fireplace so presumably we're meant to assume he burned it, and this old letter from Illario to Lucanis lying neatly on a table. Whose room is this? Because here's a theory one could put together that has some real crazymaking potential for me specifically at least:

Considering that we're helpfully down to only three Dellamortes to account for, it's likely either Lucanis' or Illario's room. If I'm remembering right/let's for a moment assume that Caterina is being confined to her own rooms -- the fact that Lucanis is her favourite and also heir apparent I'd say tips the scales for me that it's likely she'd keep him closest, whenever he's home. Thus opening for the possibility that all this time Illario has been staying in the room of the cousin he murdered but as it turns out not hard enough that he didn't come back again like a haunting, reading his own old letters to him that Lucanis apparently kept all this time (!!! ow !!!), and sparing them from the spiteful fate he gave Zara's 'aww chin up you'll get 'em next time babe' one, right across the hall from where the grandmother he apparently can't bring himself to kill or seriously hurt even with everything else he's done is imprisoned and i n c r e d i b l y pissed off, if she gets out of there while he's sleeping or something he's fucked. Has he been sleeping in Lucanis' bed since kidnapping Caterina????? (did they ever share a bed, when they were children? for comfort if not ever out of real necessity?) is this some kind of incredibly fucked up way to try to be close to them both somehow even when he is the one who messed it all up to begin with? no matter what I have so many questions here what is WRONG with this family???????? (well I don't think we have time to get into all that right now that's a novel not a text post probably fhsdkj)

[witchofanguish]

tbh ea-nasir being a really good copper merchant and being remembered thousands of years later but exclusively as a horrible copper merchant is approximately a million times funnier than him actually being a horrible copper merchant

[queenoftheimps]

The Ea-Nasir meme reminds me of how in Bath, England, there's the famous Roman Baths. If you ever visit, they have displays of all these prayer tablets that were found in the spring of the goddess Sulis Minerva, where people tossed them into the waters to ask for aid.

And like, 90% of the ones I remember being on display went something like:

"Someone stole my cloak while I was bathing and I would like you to punish them with blood and plague unless it is returned by Thursday"

"Please place a curse upon Bob, who took my gloves while I was bathing, thank you"

"I lost six silver coins in the baths and it was definitely stolen by either Steve or Joe or Peter, please bring your divine wrath upon the head of either Steve or Joe or Peter for this terrible deed"

Because people have always been people, and we have always needed a way to complain about the petty daily bullshit we have to put up with

(You can read more of them here on Wikipedia)

[weaselle]

i'm here again to hype Nanni of Ur, who was the one Ea-Nasir tried to rip off and who is the author of the complaint letter. Having worked in customer service, i know it is tempting to pick Ea-Nasir's side, but listen.

Ea-Nasir is basically Big Copper of ancient Mesopotamia. He started his career buying and selling copper for the palace at Ur, and then he moved on, selling wholesale/industrial ingots, as well as finished copper products.

In the second half of his career, he has clearly become shady and kind of an asshole. We also have a tablet from one of his business partners, who tells him, basically, "hey, i'm sending you a customer that will be good for business, please show him actual good copper. Also, don't be a dick for once"

In fact, there have been found many complaint tablets to him. It basically seems like, with leads based on his previous position with the palace, he was taking a lot of people's money, promising super great copper, the best! and then not delivering the copper when he said he would.

The people who already paid for this great copper would try to chase him down through their mutual market contact, and after a lot of "it's in the mail, i swear" kind of bullshit, Ea-Nasir would send a bunch of really shitty copper and be like "whatever, it's copper, either take it or i'll find someone else to sell it to."

Eventually it all caught up with him, there are signs his wealth declined, and it even appears he had to sell part of his home to the people next door to be walled off from him and connected to their own house. Around this same time, it seems he was forced out of the copper business altogether, and sort of desperately tried to start several other businesses like real-estate, and produce, and finally ended up selling second-hand clothing.

Despite there being a good number of tablets upset at Ea-Nasir for his shitty business dealings, we all know of Ea-Nasir primarily through that one strongly worded letter from Nanni, who says "Who am I that you are treating me in this manner -- treating me with such contempt?" and "You will learn that here in Ur I will not accept from you copper that is not good." like, he's heated, as well he should be, because as i read it, he and one of his colleagues basically had to provide the royal palace with a bunch of copper out of their own pockets because Ea-Nassir didn't come through on his promises.

So, while i think it is fitting that we remember what a shitty copper merchant Ea-Nasir was, I think it would be nice if we also recalled Nanni of Ur, the customer who wrote the angry letter which made him infamous in modern times.

other authors of complaint tablets to him include:

Arbituram

Nigga-Nanna (some kind of a middle-man between Ea-Nasir and his customers)

Imgur-Sin (who in one tablet writes "do you not know how tired of you I am?")

Appa

Ili-idinnam, and

Ilsu-ellatsu, seemingly the exasperated business partner he took on when his business began to fail

[peripaltepsy]

♡] YANDERE SUMERIAN! [♡

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who makes you buy him as a slave.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who helps you hide your valuables before the tax man comes.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who takes you to the public execution and whispers how he's gonna do that to everyone who wronged you.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who smears cow shit on the houses of people whom looked at you a little too long.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who learns to write so he can make you love clay tablets, but doesn't teach you to read because he can recite them aloud and frankly, you don't need to be reading anyone else's clay tablets.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who kills Ea-Nasir for selling you fake copper.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who gifts you a two-headed figurine that worryingly looks like you two stitched together.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who sacrifices his best livestock to your matron goddess just to impress you.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who locks you inside because you keep over-working on the fields. LET HIM DO IT FOR YOU.

♡》 Yandere Sumerian who sings to you about how future generations will remember your love story forever... as you die from skin cancer and then he poisons himself.

"Darling, my love for you is greater than Gilgamesh's fame~ ♡"

[destinationisirrelevant]

Do we know Ea-Nasir's copper was actually bad quality? What if he was keeping those tablets to remember who not to do business with again because they were full of crap and trying to scam him for discounted product in the future. Is the easiest answer that he was a petty jerk? Does that make it the correct answer? I don't know, but I have questions.

[andmaybegayer]

Was going to go buy a doorstop from the plastic tchotchke shop but then I remembered I have a machine dedicated to manufacturing plastic tchotchkes.

this copper finish is SO funny it's going to end up everywhere in the Thicket. Ea Nasir's Premium Fake Copper

[iamthepulta]

@everentropy I also figured it was to recycle them, or simply keep track of which people he sent poor supply so he could rectify it later. His house doubled as his shop as well (the front portion contains metalworking furnaces), so it wouldn't be that unusual to keep work records.

What's the first question that really pops into peoples' minds about Ea-Nasir? I'm trying to write this history down, but I'm struggling.