Its funny to me when a joke is literally translated so we miss the pun.
And when the pun is explained and then the joke is retold in the native language, I often still don’t thinknits funny.
Terrible that comedy is often hard to translate.
That’s the difficulty of localization
Just like how the Torah was full of puns that were lost in translation into the old testament
wat
Oldest known Bar joke
The meaning behind the proverb is also subject to debate among scholars. Gordon suggested that the inn also apparently served as a brothel (he notes that the word used in the proverb for inn or tavern, “éš-dam”, can also be translated as “brothel”, and it was common in ancient Mesopotamia for prostitution to take place in these establishments[3]), and thus “the dog wanted to see what was ‘going on behind closed doors’”.[4] Nett suggests that the punchline could be a pun that is incomprehensible to modern readers, or a reference to some figure who was well known at the time but similarly unfamiliar to modern readers. Gonzalo Rubio, another Assyriologist, cautions that this ambiguity ultimately means it is simply not possible to definitely categorize the proverb as a joke, though he and other scholars like Nett do point to the recurring use of innuendo in such proverbs as indicating that many were indeed intended to be humorous.[3]
Just pasting for people as lazy as me.
Tldr: nobody knows what the joke is, which itself is the joke.
It would be quite hilarious if the oldest known joke was an anti joke.
Bone hurting joke.
what’s ancient sumarian for 67?
They used base 60, so our 67 is their 17, and their 67 is our 367.
So it might be more about cheek clappers than knee ones, but we can’t be sure.
Thanks
That joke never gets old.
A man walks into a heavy metal bar, Ea-nasir says “It’s a copper ingot, wanna buy?”
If Ea-Nasir were blind it might explain some things.
Now you got me thinking about whether cuneiform in clay tablets could actually be read by blind folks like Braille. Do we have anyone in the overlap of knowing enough about reading Braille and about cuneiform to weigh in on whether it would be clear enough to reliably distinguish by touch?
