Approximately 4,000 years ago, a Mesopotamian man named Nanni was so disappointed with the copper he received from a merchant named Ea-nasir that he expressed his dissatisfaction through an official complaint, engraving his grievances on a clay tablet. Today, this Bronze Age clay tablet is considered the oldest known customer complaint, and Nanni's complaint is the oldest and harshest among these records.
The history of writing is inextricably intertwined with the history of commerce, as evidenced by Nanni's formal complaint. Some of the oldest surviving written documents from ancient Mesopotamia are inventory records and accounting books, reflecting the meticulous record-keeping practices of merchants like Ea-nasir.
Since copper is the primary material in the alloy that gave the Bronze Age its name, commercial transactions related to this resource sometimes heated up, creating tensions between merchants. In ancient Mesopotamia, customers like Nanni struggled to express dissatisfaction with their orders, as there was no customer service line and no emotionless AI bot to listen to complaints.
The complaint text was translated from the Akkadian language by Assyriologist Adolf Leo Oppenheim and included in the book "Letters from Mesopotamia," published in 1967. Nanni's only option to express his dissatisfaction was to engrave his complaint on a clay tablet and send it to the seller, Ea-nasir, via messenger.
Nanni's complaint, written on a small clay tablet measuring 11.6 by 5 centimeters (4.6 by 2 inches), was clear and direct. He wrote, "The copper ingots are of poor quality. You set them before my messenger and said, 'If you want them, take them; if you don't want them, go to hell.'" The complaint covers both sides of the tablet.
It appears that Nanni had previously given money in advance to Ea-nasir for an agreed amount of copper but later realized this wasn't a wise move. Nanni wrote further, "Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Tilmun who has treated me in such a way? Only you treat my messenger with contempt!" He continued, "I sent messengers, lords like ourselves, to collect the bag with my money deposited with you, but you treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times."
During 20th century excavations in the city of Ur in modern Iraq, Nanni's clay tablet was found alongside many others addressed to Ea-nasir, including numerous complaint documents discovered in Ea-nasir's house.
"Tilmun was an important source or trading point that supplied hundreds of kilograms of copper to southern Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE," according to the records. By 1750 BCE, when Nanni wrote his complaint letter, Tilmun copper was already in decline, and products from the Magan region began to take its place.
If Ea-nasir was indeed a malicious merchant, perhaps the reason was the dwindling supply chain, likely due to his supplier's diminishing inventory. Nanni ended his letter with the words, "Now it's up to you to return my money in full. Know this, from now on, I will not accept any copper from you that is not of good quality here. From now on, I will select the ingots one by one in my yard."
Despite being a poor copper merchant, Ea-nasir was a meticulous record keeper and seems to have angered more than a handful of his customers.
