Working Life in the Ancient World: Excuses, a Strike and a Customer Complaint
Unexpected excuses for skipping work, a strike by workers whose wages were late and the letter of an angry customer. The troubles of office life are much older than we think.
Translated from the Turkish original: Türkçesini oku
IN SHORT
In Egypt, the attendance register of the workmen of Deir el-Medina records excuses ranging from brewing beer to scorpion stings. When their rations were late, workers from the same village staged the first strike known in history. In Ur, a customer named Nanni wrote the oldest known letter of complaint to Ea-nasir, a merchant who sold poor-quality copper.
We are not the first people who did not want to go to work on a Monday morning. Nor are we the first employees to protest because our wages were late, or the first customers to write an angry letter to customer service. Documents more than three thousand years old show this clearly.
The list of absentees
How were workers' absences recorded in ancient Egypt?
The craftsmen who dug and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived in a small village called Deir el-Medina. One of the documents from this village is a large piece of limestone now in the British Museum. On it is an attendance register from the 40th year of the reign of Ramesses II, around 1250 BC.1
The register lists the names of about forty workmen. Next to those who did not come to work, the scribe noted their excuses in red ink. The most common excuse is illness. Some had trouble with their eyes, and one record reads “stung by a scorpion”. But the list does not end there:
- Attending to the funeral of a relative
- His wife’s or daughter’s menstruation
- Building his own house
- “Being with his boss”, in other words doing a private job for his superior
- Brewing beer
Yes, brewing beer is among the recorded excuses.2 And one workman’s entry reads “drinking with Khonsu”. Of the forty workmen, only two have a perfect attendance record. As in every workplace, model employees were a minority here too.
The first known strike in history
When did the first known strike in history take place?
About a century later, the craftsmen of the same village faced a bigger problem. Their wages were paid not in money but in rations such as grain. In the 29th year of the reign of Ramesses III, around 1157 BC, these rations began to arrive late.
The scribe Amennakht recorded the events on a papyrus. According to this document, now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, one day the workers passed the guard post shouting “We are hungry!” Then they went and sat down behind the temple of Thutmose III. It was already the eighteenth day of the month and the rations still had not arrived.3
The officials listened to the workers and the rations were eventually distributed. But the problem did not end once it was solved; the workers stopped work several more times that same year.4 Even the men building the pharaoh’s tomb had to chase their wages.
The oldest known customer complaint
What is the oldest known customer complaint?
In the city of Ur in Mesopotamia, around 1750 BC, there lived a copper merchant named Ea-nasir. A customer named Nanni had agreed to buy good-quality copper ingots from him. But the merchant showed Nanni’s men poor-quality copper and told them: “Take it or leave it.”
Nanni poured his anger into a clay tablet. In his letter he accuses the merchant of breaking his word and of treating him with contempt. He writes that the men he sent to collect his money came back empty-handed several times, and had to pass through enemy territory as well. He adds that he will no longer accept poor-quality copper.5
The tablet is now in the British Museum and is considered the oldest known written customer complaint.6 It is also famous on the internet. Ea-nasir is a merchant who, about four thousand years later, has become the symbol of bad customer service.
What has changed?
Lists of excuses, late wages and angry customers… If the craftsmen of Deir el-Medina and Nanni of Ur walked into an office today, they would not feel out of place. The only thing that has changed is that we write our complaints in emails rather than on clay tablets. Then again, emails can go unanswered just as easily as clay tablets.
Notes
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British Museum, EA 5634. For a detailed study of the excuses in the register, see Janssen (1980). ↩
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Janssen (1980) classifies the reasons for the absence of the Deir el-Medina workmen. ↩
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The Turin Strike Papyrus (Museo Egizio, Cat. 1880), year 29 of Ramesses III, second month of the inundation season, day 10. ↩
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Edgerton (1951) examines the sequence of the strikes and the text of the papyrus. ↩
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For a translation of the letter, see Oppenheim (1967), pp. 82–84. ↩
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British Museum, 1953,0411.71. On the seafaring merchants of Ur, see Oppenheim (1954). ↩
References
- Černý, J. (1973). A community of workmen at Thebes in the Ramesside period. Institut français d’archéologie orientale.
- Edgerton, W. F. (1951). The strikes in Ramses III’s twenty-ninth year. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 10(3), 137–145.
- Janssen, J. J. (1980). Absence from work by the necropolis workmen of Thebes. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur, 8, 127–152.
- Oppenheim, A. L. (1954). The seafaring merchants of Ur. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 74(1), 6–17.
- Oppenheim, A. L. (1967). Letters from Mesopotamia: Official, business, and private letters on clay tablets from two millennia. University of Chicago Press.
