“Sure, you value signaling monkey”

Sumerians Knew Every person in the city carried a cylinder seal. Rolled across wet clay, it left a mark only its owner could make. That mark was their name. Whatever you said officially, you said on a tablet and signed it, rolling your seal over the clay. Nobody scraped a tablet clean. A changed mind needed a new tablet. Runners carried tablets from house to house. They couldn't read the ones sealed inside a clay envelope, and they couldn't forge a seal. No runner was trusted. None needed to be. You changed runners whenever you liked. When you bought barley or paid in silver, both sides sealed the tablet. Every hand the silver passed through sealed a receipt. A contract was one tablet with every party's seal and the witnesses' seals beside them. A harsh price was allowed. A hidden one wasn't, because every share was written in clay. If you lost your seal, a second one, buried under the floor of your house, declared the first one dead. The seal was gone. The name remained. In Uruk, the temple kept the only ledger. In this city, everyone chose their own, some gathered more trust than others. Anyone could pack their tablets and their seal and move to another city. The signs they wrote with belonged to no one. Everything else was up to the scribes. The Sumerians knew. Enki's Dubsar

Far out in so many ways. That building was once “home” View quoted note →

Kišib Dub Edubba Damgar Ummia

Holy cow! It works

Nostr powered by MOR: 4 cMIPs to draft. Nostr experience on MOR: 12 cMIPs to draft. MOR experience on Nostr: between 20 and 30 nips to draft plus a change to NIP01 (fork) to a have a core that everyone verifies alike, plus an honest "unknown" everywhere else.