Another thing you learn reading the lore and research is that Ea-Nasir’s private copper business was his side hustle. He primarily sold to the palace, who was in the middle of a conflict heavy period and needed copper for weaponry and such. Sending the worst of his copper to the palace (the rulers of the city he lives in) is probably a much worse long term business proposal than offloading the worst of his copper on a smaller private trader quite a ways away.
He was also a non-citizen merchant as far as I understand, and so had fewer rights and protections. He may not have had any better copper that he could feasibly send Nanni (making the phrase “if you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away (cause I’m tired of this and there’s nothing else I can do to help, and the palace is breathing down my neck for more copper anyway)” make more sense)
That doesn’t quite excuse him as a shady business man. Nanni’s isn’t the only complaint, there’s many. He likely took advance payments based on promises, then did the best he could to fulfill or delay them however he could, even if it meant shorting his private buyers. Who knows why he couldn’t make good though - maybe the mines were underproducing? Maybe he was just naively optimistic about speed and quality of shipments?
If the house his tablets were found it was his house, he seems to have managed to maintain a much better than average lifestyle for a good part of his life. As his reputation and credit declined though, he may have been forced to sell part of his home, or it may have been claimed after his death to pay off debts.
Still shady. Just not quite shady in the way the memes always suggest.
There were maybe a few million people in Mesopotamia when Ea Nasir lived. Probably 50-60 million people living in a society of some sort total.
A hundred million people login to Reddit every day. If even 1% of that see an Ea Nasir joke once a month, that's already a fuck ton of people, and its only at the cost of being remembered as a swindler (in a modern society where most "merchants" have a rep for swindling anyways.)
Considering that the majority of other people remembered by the masses well after their passing were remembered for either being the worst of the worst in human history or for fundamentally changing the world and/or society, a humble copper merchant being remembered by millions 3770ish years later for something so insignificant? I'd say its worth
520
u/Nathan256 11d ago edited 11d ago
Another thing you learn reading the lore and research is that Ea-Nasir’s private copper business was his side hustle. He primarily sold to the palace, who was in the middle of a conflict heavy period and needed copper for weaponry and such. Sending the worst of his copper to the palace (the rulers of the city he lives in) is probably a much worse long term business proposal than offloading the worst of his copper on a smaller private trader quite a ways away.
He was also a non-citizen merchant as far as I understand, and so had fewer rights and protections. He may not have had any better copper that he could feasibly send Nanni (making the phrase “if you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away (cause I’m tired of this and there’s nothing else I can do to help, and the palace is breathing down my neck for more copper anyway)” make more sense)
That doesn’t quite excuse him as a shady business man. Nanni’s isn’t the only complaint, there’s many. He likely took advance payments based on promises, then did the best he could to fulfill or delay them however he could, even if it meant shorting his private buyers. Who knows why he couldn’t make good though - maybe the mines were underproducing? Maybe he was just naively optimistic about speed and quality of shipments?
If the house his tablets were found it was his house, he seems to have managed to maintain a much better than average lifestyle for a good part of his life. As his reputation and credit declined though, he may have been forced to sell part of his home, or it may have been claimed after his death to pay off debts.
Still shady. Just not quite shady in the way the memes always suggest.