3,200-Year-Old Egyptian Tablet Records Excuses for Why People Missed Work: “The Scorpion Bit Him,” “Brewing Beer”, “His Wife Was Bleeding.”

    by Jaguar_Willing

    32 Comments

    1. StaatsbuergerX on

      I may be culturally biased here, but if I were the supervisor, I would accept brewing beer as a valid excuse for being absent from work.

    2. I suspect ‘brewing beer’ was acceptable because beer was drank instead of water a lot of the time, since river water, and particularly the Nile, has a lot of bacterial stuff in it that you wouldnt want to drink

    3. HR lady here to say excuses haven’t changed much over the millennia. I just had an employee call off work because his daughter was having her first period and apparently it was an all hands on deck family event. LOL

    4. ProfessionalBag9505 on

      Its interesting that there’s a debate around women getting time off during their period due to intense cramps and fatigue and general shitty feeling, but way back then the husband even got time off.

    5. If there’s anything I’ve learned, if you are legimately stung by a scorpion, are brewing beer, and your wife is unexpectedly bleeding all in the same morning, only mention the scorpion or they won’t believe you.

    6. I don’t know why but tablets that talk about super mundane daily life stuff are the coolest to me.

    7. I remember reading these excuses in the manual of the city-builder-game Pharaoh, though I remember the beer-part referencing more about not being able to build a pyramid because of being hung-over

    8. krombopulosmfart on

      I once had one of my coworkers (who was an older man in his mid 60s) call in because he “ate too many chocolate covered almonds, couldn’t sleep and stayed up all night on youtube.”

    9. “The Scorpion Bit Him” the way this is worded makes me think it’s a euphemism for a hangover.

    10. I wonder if there is a “pollution” angle to the “wife is bleeding” one. As in that menstruation would make her “unclean” for certain activities and, therefore, the husband has to perform them. The rules for making priests and priestesses “clean” for entering the sanctuary/ performing rituals etc mostly make sense (washing, washing some more, shaving everything) but the one against onions is a little baffling. Maybe the gods disliked bad breath.

      [In the 19th Century, there was a (supposedly) debate in the British Medical Journal as to whether a menstruating woman’s touch would turn a ham rancid. The doctors concerned clearly never considered that their cook/maid etc was a menstruating female. Alternatively, they were indulging in debate just because they thought folk superstitions were funny and worth shit-posting about.]

    11. Interesting_Pickle33 on

      His wife was bleeding. Look at how bad cramps are without the chemicals women have to shove down their throat. They needed someone to tend to them, it is that hard.

      Now some men expect women to share half of house expenses- lol!

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