Nearly 3,800 years ago, in the Iraqi city of Ur, a furious customer named Nanni fired off a one-star review of a dodgy copper merchant - which survived the test of time (in more ways than one). 

And it is now the oldest known customer complaint on earth. Funnily enough, now also become a meme and internet legend.

Of all the things the ancient world might have chosen to preserve… hymns to gods, the boasts of kings, the movements of the stars… one of the most beloved surviving objects from ancient Mesopotamia is a small clay tablet on which a thoroughly annoyed man complains that his copper was rubbish. 

This copper tablet is roughly 3,800 years old. It comes from the Iraqi city of Ur, and it is, officially, the oldest known written customer complaint in human history.

Its target, a copper merchant named Ea-nasir, has since become one of the internet’s favourite villains. And probably the most interesting thing about this is that it doesn’t appear that Nanni was one of today’s ‘Karens’. After searching Ea-nasir’s house, many more complaints about his copper were found. 

Here is the story of Ea-nasir and his copper, and why it belongs on any list of reasons to care about Iraq.

---

The Ea-nasir Copper Deal (Gone Wrong)

Around 1750 BC, in the Old Babylonian period, Ea-nasir made his living as a copper trader. He would sail down the Gulf to Dilmun (today around modern Bahrain), buy copper, and bring it back to sell in the cities of Mesopotamia. 

On one occasion, Ea-nasir agreed to sell fine-quality copper ingots to a customer named Nanni. Nanni duly sent his servant with the payment to collect the goods.

It did not go well. 

According to Nanni, the copper on offer was sub-standard. Not the grade he had been promised. 

Ea-nasir’s attitude - clearly lacking in hospitality and customer care experience - was essentially take it or leave it. 

Worse, Nanni’s messenger was treated with contempt and sent back empty-handed, having travelled, Nanni pointedly notes, through less-than-friendly territory to get there. 

Money had changed hands; decent copper had not. 

And this, Nanni makes clear, was not the first time Ea-nasir had let him down.

---

The Copper Complaint Letter

So Nanni did what any of us would do with a reliably terrible supplier. He complained. In writing. And, at length. 

He had a scribe press his grievances into a wet clay tablet in Akkadian cuneiform. Honestly, commitment to the game. It’s not really in the same as opening up TripAdvisor to leave a review. 

The emotion from this complaint letter survives across the millennia with almost comic freshness... 

He accuses Ea-nasir of treating him with contempt. He reminds him of promises made and broken, not once but repeatedly. He is offended on behalf of his mistreated messenger. And he announces, with the wounded dignity of a man who has finally

had enough, that from now on he will personally inspect every ingot before accepting it, and that he reserves the right to reject anything that fails to measure up.

Strip away the cuneiform and the clay, and it reads exactly like a furious online review left this morning. Like you paid for the good version, got the bad version, watched a staff member get treated badly, and decided the seller would never hear the end of it. 

So, Nanni’s complaint letter may be over 4000 years old but it is as relatable today than it was back then. Some things never change…! 

---

The Mesopotamia Copper Trade 

All jokes aside, Ea-nasir and his complaint letter is a nice gateway into exploring the copper trade of Ancient Mesopotamia. 

Ea-nasir was part of a long-distance trade that carried copper up the Gulf from Dilmun into the cities of Mesopotamia, a network of merchants, messengers, payments, and promises that functioned across seas and borders nearly four thousand years ago. 

The very existence of a written complaint is interesting in itself as it tells us just how developed this economy was. Which is quite crazy to think of 4,000 years prior. There were agreed grades of goods, expectations of quality, a notion of the customer’s right to reject substandard product, and enough literacy and legal culture that an aggrieved buyer could put it all on the record. 

Not a primitive barter society you might have in your mind, but a genuine commercial civilisation with paperwork like we have today. (And, evidently, one with disputes - much like today, too). 

---

The Biggest Twist… Nanni wasn’t alone

Probably the unniest detail about this copper fiasco.

When archaeologists excavated what is believed to have been Ea-nasir’s house at Ur in Iraq, they did not find one complaint.

They found several. 

Nanni, it turns out, was merely one voice in a chorus of dissatisfied customers, all of whom had committed their grievances about this same merchant to clay. The evidence, dug out of the ground thousands of years later, strongly suggests that Ea-nasir was not simply having one bad day. He appears to have been, by trade and by temperament, a serial disappointment. 

If we savour the irony for a minute - Ea-nasir presumably wanted to be remembered, if at all, as a successful trader. Instead, the one thing that has carried his name across nearly four thousand years is the documented testimony of the people he ripped off. 

At least he was remembered, I suppose! 

---

Where the World’s Oldest Complaint Letter is Now 

The Nanni complaint tablet itself is unremarkable to look at… It’s basically a clay slab, about the size of a mobile phone and roughly 12cm tall. 

It was recovered from Ur by the archaeologist Leonard Woolley during the great excavations of the 1920s and 30s. Later, the complaint letter was transferred to the British Museum where it is today. 

The Guinness World Records recognises it as the oldest written customer complaint, and in recent years it has travelled on loan and, more surprisingly, exploded into internet fame.

Have a look online and you’ll find a bunch of jokes, memes, fan art, and a genuine outpouring of solidarity for poor Nanni across the digital world.

We get it, Nanni. 

---

The Importance of This Bad Copper Review

Aside from being hilarious and relatable, get yourself to Iraq and stand at Ur at the foot of its great ziggurat in southern Iraq, and imagine yourself in this ancient society 4000 years ago. To me at least, 4000 years is hard to imagine in terms of civilisation. But much like transcending geography and country border lines, this complaint letter makes me feel somewhat a lot closer and relatable to our ancestors than I previously may have done. 

Also, Ur is the land where writing itself was invented. And we tend to imagine that momentous invention being used for lofty things…. law codes, epics, the words of kings. 

And it was for sure... 

But it was also used, almost immediately, for this. For a man to tell another man, in permanent form, that his copper was garbage and his manners were worse.

When we learn about ancient worlds, it tends to be in a grandiose way, focused on profound achievements. 

It’s easy to forget that people back then were indeed just people. 

That is the quiet magic of Mesopotamia. 

Amid the temples and the empires, you keep meeting ordinary human beings behaving in ways you recognise instantly across four thousand years. Haggling, complaining, feeling cheated, standing on their dignity. 

Ea-nasir and Nanni are not kings or gods. They are a bad supplier and an exasperated customer, and their squabble has outlasted dynasties. 

Travel to Iraq for the cradle of civilisation, by all means. But save a thought, when you reach Ur, for the world’s first recorded one-star review . Proof that as long as human beings have been able to write, we have been using it to complain about the service.

---

---

Koryo Tours
Travel to Iraq