Wisdom from the Two Rivers

The First Recorded Case of Burnout (ca. 2000 BCE)

Today’s Mesopotamian Maxim is something that I think most people can relate to today….burnout.

‘Hard work is a dog, walking always behind a man.’

We’ve all had those mornings. The alarm goes off, your eyes feel like they’re full of sand, and the mere thought of opening your laptop or driving to work fills you with a deep, existential dread.

Over four thousand years ago an exhausted Sumerian scribe sat down and wrote this raw and very human description of exhaustion. It says work is a predatory animal tracking you. It’s that shadow of obligations, tasks, and economic survival that follows you home, breathes down your neck on weekends, and sits waiting at the foot of your bed every single morning.

The text comes from the Sumerian Proverbs: Collection 2, and was recovered on multiple schoolhouse and library tablets dating to the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 1900–1600 BCE). The texts now are split between the Penn Museum and the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

If you read further into these tablet collections, the complaints get even more familiar. Another line from the same archive laments:

‘A junior scribe is too concerned with feeding his hunger; he does not pay attention to the scribal art.’

Translation: I am too exhausted and underpaid to care about this job.

The next time you feel completely drained by the demands of your week, take a deep breath. You aren't failing; you are just experiencing a condition so fundamentally human that we've been comparing our jobs to stalking predators for four millennia.

Please take time to rest and switch off if you can on the weekends!

(Image source: Penn Museum)