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3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

openculture.com

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Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#351

Post by leaflets2 »

jamesfisher wrote: post #198
blakesterz wrote: post #54

The original with ALL of the excuses is at the British Museum here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634

cat excuses | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn 67 ILL 49 WITH HIS BOSS 17 BREWING BEER 13 WITH AAPEHTI 8 WITH THE SCRIBE 6 MAKING REMEDIES FOR THE SCRIBE’S WIFE 5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER 5 OFFERING TO THE GOD 5 HIS WIFE WAS BLEEDING 5 FETCHING STONE FOR THE SCRIBE 4 WITH KHONS MAKING REMEDIES 4 SUFFERING WITH HIS EYE 4 OFF ABSENT 4 HIS DAUGHTER WAS BLEEDING 3 WITH HOREMWIA 3 WITH HIS BOSS DITTO 3 LIBATING TO HIS…

Are these for a single person, or for many people?

If the latter, then, seems their parents (mother) died a lot (5) in comparison to how often they themselves were ill (67)

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#352

Post by pugets »

leaflets2 wrote: post #351
jamesfisher wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cat excuses | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn 67 ILL 49 WITH HIS BOSS 17 BREWING BEER 13 WITH AAPEHTI 8 WITH THE SCRIBE 6 MAKING REMEDIES FOR THE SCRIBE’S WIFE 5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER 5 OFFERING TO THE GOD 5 HIS WIFE WAS BLEEDING 5 FETCHING STONE FOR THE SCRIBE 4 WITH KHONS MAKING REMEDIES 4 SUFFERING WITH HIS EYE 4 OFF ABSENT 4 HIS DAUGHTER WAS BLEEDING 3 WITH HOREMWIA 3 WITH HIS BOSS DITTO 3 LIBATING TO HIS…

Are these for a single person, or for many people? If the latter, then, seems their parents (mother) died a lot (5) in comparison to how often they themselves were ill (67)

Sorry boss, can’t come in today. My mother died again.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#353

Post by revicon »

mr_toad wrote: post #348
jamesfisher wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cat excuses | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn 67 ILL 49 WITH HIS BOSS 17 BREWING BEER 13 WITH AAPEHTI 8 WITH THE SCRIBE 6 MAKING REMEDIES FOR THE SCRIBE’S WIFE 5 WRAPPING (THE CORPSE OF) HIS MOTHER 5 OFFERING TO THE GOD 5 HIS WIFE WAS BLEEDING 5 FETCHING STONE FOR THE SCRIBE 4 WITH KHONS MAKING REMEDIES 4 SUFFERING WITH HIS EYE 4 OFF ABSENT 4 HIS DAUGHTER WAS BLEEDING 3 WITH HOREMWIA 3 WITH HIS BOSS DITTO 3 LIBATING TO HIS…

Something that hasn’t changed in 3200 years is inconsistent labelling of data.

Hard to implement a drop down menu on a stone tablet :)

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#355

Post by yyyk »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #70
blakesterz wrote: post #54

The original with ALL of the excuses is at the British Museum here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634

Interesting that the dates are "Month 3 of Summer, Day 24" etc. The curious bit to me being the enduring use of 4 distinct seasons, when there are obviously other ways to mark a year. Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

I can't think of an ancient Middle Eastern culture with 4 seasons. Hittites had 3, various Mesopotamian cultures had 2. It really only made sense in Europe to divide into 4.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#357

Post by voidfunc »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50
amanj41 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't really think SWEs are being taken advantage of the same way other employees at successful tech companies are. (Coming from the perspective of an SWE)

My vote for most taken advantage of is the on-call Ops people. Salaries sometimes half that of the SWEs, expected to be woken up at 3am, interrupted all day by "urgent" requests ("I can't connect to the server I need access now " -> "whoops it was my SSH key"), responsible for the product running 24/7, respond immediately to security incidents ("patch this asap"), stay up overnight for maintenance or deploys to legac…

Hits too close to home after I've been on bridges since 10am 10/26 (its now 1am 10/27).

I want to get off this wild ride.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#358

Post by bryanrasmussen »

the_af wrote: post #220
wesleywt wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knew that Egypt was so progressive that guys can take off when their wife or daughter has a period.

Maybe they, like in some Abrahamic religions to come later, considered women "impure" when they had the period, and this somehow translated to the men in the household? Wild speculation, of course.

Menstruation, Menstrual Hygiene and Woman's Health in Ancient Egypt http://www.mum.org/germnt5.htm

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#359

Post by bryanrasmussen »

spoonjim wrote: post #344
the_af wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Why would they have to take over? Women on their period are not invalids. Though maybe the weren't allowed to do household tasks?

Now imagine women without modern feminine hygiene products. It’s a very different story.

right, a woman with a particularly heavy period might need to be cared for on the worst day.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#360

Post by jrsj »

robinsoh wrote: post #336
thechao wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some ... but I think it misses two really important ones (and this is just off the top of my head): 1. The Romans had an eight day "week"; and, 2. The mesoamericans had a 260 day "week" (or, at best, interlocking 13 and 20 day "weeks"). I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.

> I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world. The 7-day week originated in Sumerian Babylon culture from 2100 BC and has to do with quartering moon phases. I worry when seeing many things attributed to "Judeo-Christian culture" which actually originated from other cultures, many aspects of what's in "Judeo-Christian…

They definitely didn’t invent it, but I would say it’s fair to give Christianity itself credit for converting Rome to a 7 day week & then most of the rest of the world after. It takes a religion with certain characteristics to accomplish that.
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