Enveloped in Suspicion
By: Judith Donath
Tags: Email, Letters, Agora, Privacy, Ancient Greece

Envelopes are one of those banal objects of everyday life we seldom think much about. They are, however, an ancient — and at one time controversial — privacy technology.

Envelopes render their contents secret. Today, once sealed inside a simple paper envelope, all kinds of messages — bills, birthday greetings, college acceptances and rejections —are safe from prying eyes as they travel across town or continents to the intended recipient. In the United States, it is a federal crime to open someone else’s mail without permission, and, for the most part, government officials need a warrant to do so.

Private letter with envelope Assyria, 19th or 20thc. BCE

Before writing was invented, the only way to send a message without delivering it yourself was via a messenger who would memorize and repeat it— a person who would of necessity be privy to the contents. Cuneiform script was invented in Mesopotamia around 3200 B.C.E. and by the time of King Sargon of Akkad (about 2334–2279 B.C.E), people were writing personal letters — and sealing their inscribed tablets inside clay envelopes. Unlike the oral message, the contents of such letters could be kept private, known only to the writer and recipient¹.

Letter writing was popular among the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Thousands of cuneiform letter tablets have been found, including many encased in privacy ensuring envelopes (though remains of envelopes are less common, unsurprising given that they need to be broken to get to the message). There are records of such correspondence between kings to their representatives in far-flung outposts, and also of more modest exchanges between business partners, friends and family members.

But in ancient Greece, although writing was used extensively for record-keeping and inscriptions, personal letters were relatively uncommon. For the Greeks, the privacy that letters conferred rendered them suspicious. Why seek secrecy unless one is plotting or lying? Several of Euripides’ plays have plots featuring deceptive letters and claims of forged or false letters were not uncommon in orators’ speeches. Both Herodotus and Thucydides recount intrigues and betrayals enabled by deceitful letters. Clearly, although the Greeks associated letters with deceit and manipulation, they still at times wrote them.

Why was letter writing esteemed in the Mesopotamian civilizations, yet distrusted by the Greeks? One explanation is their differing regard for the public sphere. For the Greeks, and especially the citizens of democratic city state, the public sphere of the agora was idealized. One’s business, it was felt, should be carried out in the open. Private letters were a threat to the democratic process; even when generals and ambassadors wrote letters reporting news from far away, they were not private: the messages were read publicly to the assembly. In contrast, other ancient civilizations were ruled by powerful kings and emperors, often believed to be emissaries or descendants of the gods; in such societies, even if public life was cherished, there was no equivalent near-compulsory participation in open discussion and debate².