yep, the worlds oldest shirt was found in an ancient rubbish pile in eygypt, nice shirt, but obviosly thrown out from ancient wear and tear.....it NEVER rains in eygypt...or to be exact any area can expect rain once in 400 years or something ludicrous, so ya stuff just sits, and in just the right conditions lasts for millenia, so we have ancient chit chat letters sent back and forth between women that represent the earliest first person dialogs in existance

edit, on reflection there are older summerian letters sent back and forth by traders in....cloth, who had a "shop" in one city/country but the main production was in mesoptsmia proper, and if memory serves the distant trader was a woman asking for more products to sell, and again other chit chat, but both instances required exceptional conditions and the use of very durable materials, papyrus paper and dried and protected clay

We're never going to let Ea-nasir live this down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...

> it NEVER rains in eygypt...or to be exact any area can expect rain once in 400 years or something ludicrous,

The northern part of the country receives some rainfall in the winter. heavy winter rains occasionally cause flooding in Cairo, Ptolemaic Egypt was centered around Alexandria, which gets the most rain in the country - about 200 mm (7.87 in) annually. while that's still relatively low, it's not nearly as extreme as you make it seem.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Egypt#Rainfall

> but both instances required exceptional conditions and the use of very durable materials, papyrus paper and dried and protected clay

Note that papyrus is not a "very durable material"; it's an extremely fragile one.

Papyrus records survive in Egypt, and only in Egypt, because nothing ever spoils in Egypt no matter how fragile it might be.

Cuneiform records survive all over the cuneiform-using world because they are very durable if you set fire to them.

Great context, but in reminding me of Bob Dylan’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, potentially many conversations from even those most auspicious regions went unpreserved.