Ciphers

In which Rat has a wild guess

Good time of day, humans!

One of the origins of writing was likely property marks and accounting ledgers. Unsurprising, quite a lot of deciphered early writing artifacts are created by private merchants — so we know, for example, that Ea-nāṣir of Ur sold some really low quality copper some 3,770 years ago¹.

But what if there’s a correlation between the share of private business in the corpus of a writing system and the ease of deciphering it — and those remaining undeciphered consist mostly of government produce?

Minoan Linear A is known from a multitude of different inscriptions, you’d say —could all these be produced by the governments? Well, private merchants in the Mediterranean could have used more perishable materials. What about those inscriptions on pottery? We should consider a possibility they say something along the lines of:

Priest General’s warning: undiluted wine impairs your ability to operate a donkey

1. Think customer service is bad now? Read this 4,000-year-old complaint letter, National Geographic, May 31, 2024; there’s also a whole subreddit dedicated to Ea-nāṣir.