Posted on 07/31/2008 7:55:23 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Academics have unearthed what they believe to be Britain’s oldest joke, a 1,000-year-old double-entendre about men’s sexual desire.
They found the wry observation in the Codex Exoniensis, a 10th century book of Anglo-Saxon poetry held at Exeter Cathedral.
It reads: “What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before?’ Answer: A key.”
Scouring ancient texts, researchers from found the jokes laid down in delicate manuscripts and carved into stone tablets up to three thousand years old.
Dr Paul MacDonald said ancient civilizations laughed about much the same things as we do today.
He said jokes ancient and modern shared “a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.”
“Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research,”.
Lost civilisations laughed at farts, sex, and "stupid people" just as we do today.
But they found evidence that Egyptians were laughing at much the same thing.
"Man is even more eager to copulate than a donkey - his purse is what restrains him," reads an Egyptian hieroglyphic from a period that pre-dates Christ.
The study, for a digital television channel, took more than three months to complete.
They trawled the internet, contacted dozens of museums, and spoke to numerous private book collectors in a bid to track down modern, interpreted versions of the world's oldest texts.
Dr McDonald said only those jokes that were amusing in an historical and modern context were included in the list.
The world's oldest surviving joke "is essentially a fart gag", he said.
The 3,000-year-old Sumerian proverb, from ancient Babylonia, reads: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I don’t get it.
I have heard others like this, in a Medieval Studies class. It’s amazing what those monks wrote! Clever, sex-deprived guys!
Those Sumerians, I tell ya, Johnny, they haven't met my ex!
1000 year old joke is the oldest joke? Everyone before them must of been really boring.
Hey, they stole that bit from Don Rickles!
Great post. Many thanks.
I’m glad humor has evolved over the years. Of course, if your life was as brutish, diseased and short as theirs was, anything to laugh about must have been good.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
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To lick the lady’s leg!
ping
monks were the forefathers of computer programmers.
This one goes way back:
How do you breaketh a Phillistine’s finger?
You puncheth him in the nose.
(Stole that from an old Mad Magazine...)
GGG ping
What would Jerry Seinfeld have sounded like 3000 years ago?
There aren’t any older, unfunny jokes than those that Bob Hope as a standup comedian told.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Acropolis.......
Take my concubine, please....
Thank you very much. I’m here until the XVth.
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