About 3,775 years ago a customer named Nanni sent a clay letter to the copper merchant Ea-nasir in Ur. He complained that the fine ingots he had been promised were poor, that his messengers had been sent back empty-handed, and that from now on he would inspect every ingot himself. The tablet, now in the British Museum, went viral in February 2015. A January 2026 paper by Gabriel Moshenska of University College London traces how one bad delivery turned its recipient into a trickster figure of the internet.
Ancient Content, October 31, 2026.
The reverse side of the Complaint Tablet to Ea-nasir, shown upside down on display at the British Museum in 2023. The museum holds the tablet as 1953,0411.71. Photo by Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Nanni’s letter demands fine copper and the return of his money bag
The letter is written in Akkadian cuneiform on a palm-sized clay tablet. In A. Leo Oppenheim’s 1967 translation, as quoted by Moshenska, Nanni recalls that Ea-nasir promised fine-quality copper ingots to a man named Gimil-Sin. According to Moshenska’s summary, the ingots handed to Nanni’s messenger, Sit-Sin, were of poor quality. Nanni then sent further messengers to collect a bag holding his money, and Ea-nasir treated them with contempt and sent them back empty-handed through enemy territory.
The question that spread across the internet is “What do you take me for”. A single mina of silver, which the translation calls trifling, features in the quarrel. Nanni also points to copper that he and a man named Sumi-abum had supplied to the palace. Published translations differ on the quantities, so this report leaves the figures aside. The letter closes with a rejection notice, “I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality.” Nanni adds that he will select the ingots himself.
Nanni’s bad copper is only the beginning. Below are the British Museum record of the tablet, the house at 1 Old Street where Ea-nasir’s archive was stored and the 2026 paper on how he became the internet’s trickster. Paid subscribers, keep reading. Free readers, upgrade to unlock the rest.
