- Will these ancient knee-slappers crack you up?
Jokes can get old. But we bet you’ve never heard of jokes this old.
Humans have been entertaining each other with funny stories for probably as long as we’ve been able to tell them. Fortunately, not all of them have been lost to time.
Some jokes have been preserved in old manuscripts, carvings, and even dedicated joke books from thousands of years ago. Some of them can still make you laugh, while others leave you scratching your head in confusion because they require a cultural context we no longer have.
Here are nine jokes from the ancient world that we still know today. Find out if any of them tickles your funny bone.
9. The King’s Haircut
Origin: Greece
Time period: 4th century
A king was about to get a haircut from the royal barber. “How shall I cut my lord’s hair?” the barber asked.
“In silence,” replied the king.
This joke originates from Philogelos (Laugh Lover), the world’s oldest known dedicated joke collection of around 250 jokes from 4th-century Greece. It just shows that people have disliked overly chatty barbers since times immemorial.
8. The Bored Pharaoh
Origin: Egypt
Time period: 1600 BCE
How do you entertain a bored pharaoh?
Dress a boatload of young women in nothing but fishnets, sail them down the Nile, and ask the pharaoh to go fishing.
Most jokes we know from Ancient Egypt are a bit on the naughty side and this one’s no different. It originates from the Westcar Papyrus, a collection of various Egyptian stories — and jokes.
7. The Dead Slave
Origin: Greece
Time period: 4th century
A furious man came up to a slave trader in the market. “The slave you sold me yesterday just died!” he exclaimed.
“I’ll be! He never did such a thing when he was with me!” replied the trader.
This one’s also from Philogelos. Is it just us or are you getting some Monty Python vibes from this as well?
6. The Emperor’s Doppelganger
Origin: Rome
Time period: 50 BCE – 50 CE
The Emperor Augustus was traveling through his empire when he met a stranger who looked precisely like him. “Tell me, did your mother use to work at the Imperial Palace?” the Emperor asked.
“No,” the man replied, “but my father did.”
This joke just proves that “your mom” quips are anything but a modern invention. Wonder if anyone ever had the guts to tell it to the emperor, though.
5. The Stupid Student
Origin: Greece
Time period: 4th century
A teacher was complaining to his friend about how stupid his student is. “The other day, my student went swimming and almost drowned,” the teacher said. “Now, he swears he’ll never touch water again until he’s learned to swim!”
Here’s one last joke from Philogelos. This one still holds up well enough that we just couldn’t pass it.
4. The Crafty Smuggler
Origin: Turkey
Time period: 1200s
Every day, a man took a donkey to the neighboring town and returned with sacks of straw. When the guards asked him if he was smuggling, the man always replied, “Yes.” Yet, when searching him and the straw sacks, the guards never found anything illegal.
Years later, the guard captain met the old smuggler in a tavern. “You can tell me now, old friend. What were smuggling that we could never catch?” he asked.
“Donkeys,” the smuggler replied.
You may have heard a modern variant of this joke about a man with a wheelbarrow full of sand. If anything, it proves that a good joke will last forever, even if it gets updated for the modern day.
3. The Dog in the Tavern
Origin: Sumer
Time period: 1800 BCE
A dog walks into a tavern. He says: “I can’t see a thing! I’d better open this one.”
Whatever it was that made this joke funny has clearly been lost over the millennia. It’s probably a pun that doesn’t translate at all, or there’s some ancient Sumerian connection between dogs, taverns, and eyesight we don’t know about. If nothing else, though, it shows that people have always been making jokes about someone walking into a bar.
2. The Oldest Joke in English
Origin: Britain
Time period: 10th century
What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole it’s often poked before?
A key.
Although there are certainly older jokes told in English, this is the oldest one that has been written down. Wonder which ones of our current dirty jokes will stand the test of time?
1. The Oldest Recorded Joke
Origin: Sumer
Time period: 1900 BCE
Here’s something that has never occurred since times immemorial — a maiden did not fart in her husband’s lap.
It’s somehow fitting that the oldest recorded joke in human history is a fart joke. The double negatives make this one a bit awkward to read, but it’s probably part of Sumerian humor. Still, this joke shows that toilet humor never gets old.