In 1953, explorer Sir Leonard Woolley discovered and acquired the tablet from what is believed to be the ruins of Ea-nasir's home while on an expedition to the city of Ur. Several other similar tablets complaining about poor copper quality were also recovered, suggesting Ea-nasir frequently sent his customers poor-quality goods. The tablet is currently held at the British Museum.
A few of the most viral Tumblr posts about this meme:
https://probablybadrpgideas.tumblr.com/post/171826102481/your-players-are-faced-with-an-ancient-sumerian
https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/645195882465230848/ea-nasir-is-that-you
Translation of the tablet:
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows : "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!"
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.
How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
Ever wanted to know how to pronounce the name of our favorite Ur copper merchant, Ea-nāṣir? If you haven't looked it up, I can almost guarantee that you are saying it wrong, but fret not. I will share the secret with you (or at least the buest guess modern experts have).
The reconstruction of how to pronounce his name currently looks like this in the IPA:
[e.a.ˈnaː.t͡sʼiʁ]
If that looks daunting, keep reading.
While Ea-nāṣir may be remembered to us as a Sumerian, he did not speak Sumerian. The Sumerian language was all but extinct in his day, and Sumerians now spoke an unrelated language called Akkadian.
The infamous complaint tablets are written in Akkadian Cuneiform, which is a complicated writing system that it is difficult to figure out the pronunciation of after the fact. Pronunciations have shifted considerably during the time that modern people have studied it. All the same, we have a "buest guess" at pronunciation.
The first thing to note is that Akkadian has phonemic vowel quantity, which is a fancy way if saying that the length of a vowel is really important. Ea-nāṣir's name has four vowels, and three are short and one is long. The long one is the A with a bar on top (called a macron, pronounced MACK-ron or MAKE-ron). If you see that symbol in other languages it is probably also a long vowel (you'll see this in Arabic, Latin, and many other languages).
This also tells us where to stress the word. While Akkadian has somewhat complicated rules for stress, Ea-nāṣir's case is simple: stress the syllable with the long vowel.
The vowels themselves are the vowels you would find in Spanish, Japanese or Swahili: the E is closest to the English vowel in dress, the As are between trap and palm, just like Spanish gato, and the I is somewhere around sheep or fear.
So far, intuitively, you're probably pronouncing it something like "e-a-NAW-sir", which is getting closer to the accurate idea, but we haven't looked at the consonants yet, and unfortunately they are the hardest parts (for an English speaker).
The N is just a regular N. This isn't too surprising since N is one of the single most common sounds across all spoken languages (perhaps only beaten by M).
The R, while contested among scholars, seems to be leaning towards a "back R" or "guttural R", the way French people and some Germans do it.
That leaves the ṣ. Oh boy. It is, first of all, an affricate, like the Z in pizza. "e-a-NAAT-sir" would as such be a good try. It is, however, also something called an ejective, which is a notoriously tricky type of consonant where you block the airflow while saying it, only to release it immediately after.
You know the T-dropping that some brits do, or the way you rapidly close off air flow at the back of your throat when saying ah-ah-ah (and perhaps wagging your finger)? Try putting an air release like that right after the ts sound. If the closest you get is "e-a-NAT-suh-ir" then you are already doing a good job.
If you are a perfectionist, here is an old youtube video of a person making the noise, with decent audio.
And that's it, really. That is a complete breakdown of the best guess we have at how Ea-nāṣir's name would have been pronounced.
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