Who Was Kushim???

 

Sitting erect, writing, even with something that might turn into a smile, it's obvious that this scribe is enjoying what he is doing. Maybe he is the Egyptian who wrote a warning against laughing at a cat??? Or could he be the notorious Kushim, counting his - or his boss's (?) - sale of beer? Naahhh, he looks too Egyptian to be from the Uruk period of Sumer which now is known as the South-Central of Iraq, then the Southern Mesopothamia.

This guy is more like what Kushim may have looked like. However, this is only guessing as nobody really knows who or what Kushim was, except that the name may belong to the very first human being in history with a name. There has been some speculations that "Kushim" may be the name of the beer or the brewery, but I don't find that likely. IF, as I for one, believe, "Kushim" is the name of an ancient scribe - e.g. an actual man - then he worked as a scribe and immortalized his name by signing it on several clay tablets that presumably date back to between c. 3500 and c. 3000 BC. For instance there are 77 other tablets signed by "Kushim" from the goddess Inanna temple so he must have been a very diligent scribe. This particular tablet reads: "29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim."

As this tablet most likely offers the very first signature in history it's strange to know that it has been up for sale several times as for instance at Bloomsbury Auctions on July 8, 2022. The estimate was measley £70,000-90,00 but it was sold at auction for £175,000 ($229,000).

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/print-edition/2020/june/2447/news/tablet-with-the-earliest-known-record-of-any-personal-name-in-history-offered-at-bloomsbury-auctions/

https://beer-studies.com/en/explorer?geo=87&chrono=136&theme=312

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/whos-the-first-person-in-history-whose-name-we-know 

 

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/transcript-of-dont-laugh-cat 

 

Wikipedia