You must have already written letters to your mother, complaining about the most diverse things, during your adolescence. It turns out that, apparently, this habit of young people is much older than one might imagine. After all, young Babylonians were already doing this!
Here, we are not using the slang “Babylonians”. We are, literally, talking about people who lived in the old Babylon, more than 3 thousand years ago.
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Recently, a letter from a student from Babylon, written to his mother, dated 1792 to 1750 BC, went viral on TikTok. W. The content of the document was published by the ILFSciente website.
In the lines, the boy, Iddin-Sin, complains about his clothes. He wants new models. Isn't this a super current conflict? Keep reading and find out more!
It's not possible
Yes, the translation was provided by the Faculty of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
However, the young man is not as “offensive” as you might have imagined. In fact, the introduction to the letter is extremely polite and polite.
“Tell Lady Zinû: Iddin-Sin sends the following message”, reads the letter, which was written on a clay tablet and written in cuneiform, the mother tongue of ancient Mesopotamia. “May the gods Šamaš, Marduk and Ilabrat keep you forever in good health because of me”, adds the boy.
Afterwards, the boy begins to detail his complaints about the costumes. “Gentlemen's clothes improve every year; however, you decrease the quality of my clothes from year to year,” he said.
“Did you get rich by reducing and reducing my clothes?”, she pointed out, in a clearly jabbing tone. “While wool is consumed like bread in our house, you have reduced my clothes”, added the young man.
“You are not everyone”
It is possible to see that even the comparisons are the same, the young man even compares himself with his colleagues. He claims that the son of one of his father's employees has newer clothes than his.
And it's still dramatic: “While you gave birth to me, his mother [the aforementioned colleague] adopted him. And although his mother loves him, you don’t love me.” In other words, teenagers have always been the way they are today. It really is the fault of hormones.
At least as far as we know, the young complainant did not have his request answered by his mother. At least no answers have been found by archaeologists.
It makes you wish you could have been a little fly 3,800 years ago to know if his mother really made him new clothes.
Graduated in Social Communication from the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.