Why were people complaining about bad copper 4000 years ago?

Somewhere in the British Museum lies a clay tablet barely the size of a palm, covered in cuneiform script, more than 3700 years old. Not a royal decree, not a love poem, not a religious text. A complaint. A customer furious about the quality of the copper he'd ordered, reporting it in full detail to the seller. Welcome to the world's oldest consumer drama.

In short

• The complaint tablet is more than 3700 years old and now sits in the British Museum.
• Customer Nanni complained that the copper ingots from trader Ea-Nasir were "of no good quality".
• The copper travelled along long trade routes all the way from present-day Oman to Ur.
• Around 2015 the tablet became an internet phenomenon, complete with memes, T-shirts and songs.
• It's now regarded as one of the oldest known written customer complaints in the world.

Who was Ea-Nasir?

Around 1750 BC, a man named Ea-Nasir traded copper from the city of Ur, in ancient Mesopotamia, the region we now know as Iraq. Copper was a valuable, strategic raw material at the time. It came from far away, via long trade routes from present-day Oman, and anyone who traded in it did serious business.

One of Ea-Nasir's customers, a man named Nanni, had ordered a shipment of copper ingots and paid handsomely for it. When the delivery arrived, the quality turned out to be far below the agreed standard. Nanni was anything but quiet about it.

The complaint that survived the centuries

Nanni had his displeasure recorded on a clay tablet, addressed to Ea-Nasir himself. In short, he wrote that he had sent his messenger to Ea-Nasir with the message that the delivered copper ingots were of no good quality. He described how he had been humiliated throughout the entire trade route, how he'd had to wait in the marketplace while others discussed his business, and left no doubt that he wanted his money back.

The tablet, along with dozens of other business letters from Ea-Nasir, was excavated in Ur and now resides in the British Museum. Around 2015, the document found its way onto the internet, where it grew into a genuine phenomenon: memes, T-shirts, even songs, all devoted to the fury of a customer who, three thousand four hundred years ago, already knew exactly what he should be able to expect from a copper supplier.

What this story actually shows

Behind the humour of the internet phenomenon lies something surprisingly familiar. Almost four thousand years ago, there already existed a market for copper large and organised enough to have customers, suppliers, quality expectations and, apparently, disappointments. People back then already knew the difference between good and bad copper. They didn't quietly accept inferior quality, and they had the language and the means to say so loud and clear.

That says something about how long copper has been a valued, seriously regarded material: precious enough to complain about when it wasn't right, and valuable enough to be worth all that trouble.

From Ea-Nasir to today

Three thousand four hundred years later, the core of Nanni's complaint is still very much alive: if you pay for copper, you want to get copper that lives up to the name. No alloy with a vague copper percentage, no questionable purity, but pure, verifiable copper. That's what we stand for at Kopero, thirty-four centuries after Nanni first voiced his complaint.

Want to make sure you don't end up in Nanni's shoes? Our complete buying guide: how to recognise real copper is the modern counterpart to his clay tablet: four thousand years later, but with exactly the same question. How do you know you're getting copper that deserves the name?

Curious what Kopero has to offer? Browse our full collection of copper products and experience the difference quality makes.