Featured Image Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / DEA / A. VERGANI/De Agostini via Getty Images
Topics: Health, Science, World News
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Health, Science, World News
An over 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet has exposed some of the gobsmacking reasons given by workers when they were absent from work.
Turns out we're not the only ones who skive off work, but the Ancient Egyptians were at it too.
While building pyramids is certainly a lot more physically gruelling than most of our 9-5 office desk jobs, a tablet has since revealed some of the impressive reasons some Egyptians used to take a day off work.
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The limestone tablet - known as ostracon - is in the possession of The British Museum, which has identified it as dating back to 1250 BCE.
The tablet holds the records of forty employees' attendance in New Egyptian hieratic script written in red and black ink and counts every day each employee missed work and a reason they allegedly gave as to why.
And if you thought excuses like, 'My dog ate my homework' at school or 'I overslept' were pretty outrageous, just wait until you hear the imagination of a workforce of Ancient Egyptians.
On 'month four of Winter, day 24,' as quoted by My Modern Met, one employee named Pennub missed work.
His reason? His mother was ill - which is fair enough really.
Other employees were also sick that day, listing their own illnesses - once again, very valid - however, it's when the scroll gets to a worker named Seba when the reasons get a bit spicier.
Seba, well, Seba was bitten by a scorpion - a wild reason to say the least.
Other reasons were listed such as collecting stones and helping the scribe.
And they just get more peculiar - at least by today's standards - from there.
The most outlandish reason of them all - many workers gave the reason for their absence from work as 'brewing beer' - clearly a group of employees with their priorities straight.
Despite how most of our employers would laugh us out the office should we even dare try to use such an excuse, 'brewing beer' takes on a lot more significance in Ancient Egyptian times.
The British Museum explains: " In ancient Egypt, beer was so essential it was treated principally as a type of food – it was consumed daily and in great quantities at religious festivals and celebrations.
"Beer was an essential for labourers, like those who built the pyramids of Giza, who were provided with a daily ration of 1⅓ gallons (over 10 pints). Yet it still had divine status, with several gods and goddesses associated with beer."
Some employees said they stayed home to help their 'wife or daughter bleeding' and no, this doesn't mean they'd got in an accident, but needed help while menstruating - which I could definitely get behind.
Oh and many workers listed their reason as 'embalming relatives,' which is basically just like when we take time off for a funeral.
So, how about taking some inspiration from the tablet next time you don't really fancy working one day?