HowTo books (historically)

Books were the logical next step after humans figured out a written language. And since that was a good while ago, some 4000 years, unfortunately their books haven't survived very well to today. Clay and stone tablets were a reliable way to record government records, like taxes and laws. Imagine you're sitting on your stone chair with a pick chiseling Village 4's tax offerings and you mismark the second to last input. Now you have to ask your supervisor for another tablet to start over again (because autocorrect doesn't exist yet). Archaeologists dig up buried tablets, which are basically indestructible, all the time.

Ironically, there is a tablet known as the first customer complaint from a man, Nanni, who received crappy copper by a merchant in Ur in 1750 BC. So, as one would, Nanni sat down and chiseled an entire complaint in cuneiform on a clay tablet to send to his supplier. It's five-ish inches, and it lives in the British Museum, I've seen it. It was actually pretty funny. This little thing that is thousands of years old, probably made while Nanni grit his teeth and glared as he chiseled out his rage, sitting in its little case with a cute plaque. Its modern-day equivalent is an angry woman who was slighted at a cafe aggressively giving the establishment two starts and a scathing review while she sits in her car outside.

I've never read the complaint, but I imagine it goes something like this: I bought copper. I received flawed ingots. The bargain was plain. I am insulted. My servant was wronged. I have no promised wares. Return the money. Faulty goods bring no payment.

Anyway, customer complaints aside, the use of more degradable stationary was also used but did not survive. Egyptian papyrus chronologically was used along with the tablets, and many books have been preserved. Hieroglyphic writing was more suited to papyrus than cuneiform engravings, and the papyrus it was written on was well suited to the desert climate and was successfully preserved for hundreds of years buried in the sand.

The history of books is interesting to me. Maybe I will look at more Egyptian influence.