Post #4436878

actually, speaking of children in the Bronze Age, today I cracked open "Ancient Kanesh: a merchant colony in Bronze Age Anatolia" and the very first thing it talked about really caught my attention Archaeologists there found a cache of cuneiform tablets which captured one side of a prolonged family dispute. They are letters from a grandfather to his son, who apparently left his children with the grandfather to go work far away in another city. However, the grandfather is constantly sending him berating letters accusing him of being an affront to the gods, a blasphemer, a blight on the world etc etc who needs to turn his life around before he's smote. The reasons are rather unclear. And then the grandfather complains that the grandchildren, a boy and two girls, have run away from him after the truly classic refrain "you're not my real dad". They flee to a family friend, who borrows money to support them, and one infers the children were eventually reunited with their father because the boy surfaces as in his father's employ years later. We unfortunately don't have the dad's replies to the grandfather. But the fact that the grandchildren ran away from home makes me think the grandfather was intolerant and intolerable and drove everyone away from him by claiming that the gods shared all his worst opinions, a family faultline that I am sure is familiar to many today.