2018·The platform era
The complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir
A furious letter about substandard copper, written in cuneiform around 1750 BC, adopted by the internet as one of its own.
You might remember it as Ea-nasir copper complaint
A meme
This Moment spread as an image people copied and reposted, not as a video upload. Originally published on physical.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
A clay tablet about eleven centimetres high, excavated at Ur and held by the British Museum. In Akkadian cuneiform, a customer named Nanni tells a copper merchant called Ea-nāṣir exactly what he thinks of the goods delivered, the treatment of his servant, and the contempt he has been shown. Guinness recognises it as the oldest known customer complaint.
It first appeared in 2018, during the platform era.
The internet did not adopt it because it is old. It adopted it because it is *familiar* — the register, the escalation and the specific injured dignity are identical to a modern one-star review, and reading a stranger's fury across thirty-seven centuries turns out to be genuinely funny and slightly moving at once. Ea-nāṣir has since acquired an online reputation as history's worst businessman.
The tablet became a fixture of internet humour from around 2018, with a substantial body of jokes, merchandise and fan fiction, and museum staff have remarked on visitors arriving specifically to see it. It went on loan to the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi in 2025.
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Related
Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment spread as an image people copied and reposted, not as a video upload. Originally published on physical.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- A clay tablet about eleven centimetres high, excavated at Ur and held by the British Museum. In Akkadian cuneiform, a customer named Nanni tells a copper merchant called Ea-nāṣir exactly what he thinks of the goods delivered, the treatment of his servant, and the contempt he has been shown. Guinness recognises it as the oldest known customer complaint.