Unopened mail from 4,000 years ago

In this case, the envelope was still completely sealed – so the original receiver never got to see the letter! How this came to be, we do not know.

The envelope was broken in the previous century, and only then, nearly 4,000 years later, its message was read for the first time. It turned out to be a letter from a trader to his mother. The tone of the letter is not very friendly: the son feels insulted because his mother criticized his way of trading and he, in turn, doesn’t agree with the way she treats her staff. So, for the sake of family ties, the fact that the mother never got to see the letter was probably for the best.

This clay tablet is one of around 3000 tablets owned by NINO, the Netherlands Institute for the Near East.

In this collection you’ll find, apart from this envelope that was broken into, some envelopes that are still sealed, such as the one on the left-hand side of the box.