Who really said it

The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents, and the end of the world is evidently approaching

Q: Did An Assyrian clay tablet, c. 2800 BC say "The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents, and the end of the world is evidently approaching"?

No. There is no Assyrian tablet. No museum holds it, no excavation report describes it, no Assyriologist has published a translation of it, and no cuneiform text corresponding to it has ever been produced. The oldest version anyone has traced appears in Bassett's Scrap Book for August 1908 — an American magazine for cyclists — where it is credited not to an Assyrian tablet but to 'Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.' The now-standard wording, with the date 2800 B.C. and the words 'the end of the world is evidently approaching,' was fixed by George S. Godard, State Librarian of Connecticut, in his annual report of 1922.

Nobody in Assyria — a modern American invention Unknown Anonymous · earliest located appearance August 1908, in print

Disputed Free to reuse

There is no Assyrian tablet. No museum holds it, no excavation report describes it, no Assyriologist has published a translation of it, and no cuneiform text corresponding to it has ever been produced. The oldest version anyone has traced appears in Bassett’s Scrap Book for August 1908 — an American magazine for cyclists — where it is credited not to an Assyrian tablet but to ‘Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.’ The now-standard wording, with the date 2800 B.C. and the words ‘the end of the world is evidently approaching,’ was fixed by George S. Godard, State Librarian of Connecticut, in his annual report of 1922.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents, and the end of the world is evidently approaching” There is no Assyrian tablet. The earliest known version appeared in Bassett's Scrap Book, August 1908; the "Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C." framing dates from a Connecticut state library report of 1922.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to An Assyrian clay tablet, c. 2800 BC. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the world of Assyrian clay tablet — a source that does not exist. Theme: "The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents, and the end of the world is evidently approaching". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents, and the end of the world is evidently approaching". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Origin: Modern — no ancient original
Earliest located: Bassett’s Scrap Book, August 1908, p. 84
Credited there to: ‘Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.’ — not a tablet
‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’: First fixed in 1922, in Connecticut

Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching. Connecticut, 1922

The 1922 wording, as printed in a US state librarian’s annual report — the moment the floating complaint acquired its permanent costume of ‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’ Read it as what it is: an American librarian’s wry aside about too many books, dressed for antiquity.

Quote Investigator — tracing it to 1908 and 1922

How we traced it

Quote Investigator’s survey of the digitised record puts the earliest known instance in Bassett’s Scrap Book for August 1908, page 84. The text there reads ‘We have fallen upon evil times, the world has waxed old and wicked… Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book’ — and it is credited to Naram Sin at 5000 B.C., supposedly from the Imperial Museum in Constantinople the trail ↗.
Over the following fifteen years the attribution wandered freely: 3800 B.C., then 2800 B.C.; Constantinople, then Istanbul, then unnamed museums; an apocalyptic clause about ‘the end of the age’ appears by 1920. The wandering is the tell. Genuine artefacts do not change date by two millennia and museum by continent from one printing to the next.
The version quoted above — the one now reproduced everywhere — comes from the Report of the State Librarian to the Governor, State of Connecticut, 1922, page 93, where George S. Godard presents it as an Assyrian tablet of 2800 B.C. Every later ‘Assyrian tablet’ citation we have seen descends from this form.
Afterwards it kept travelling: reassigned to Egyptian priests by 1925 and again in 1948, and to Cicero by 2001. A saying that can be handed to a Sumerian king, an Assyrian scribe, an Egyptian priest and a Roman senator without anyone noticing is not a translation of anything.
One internal giveaway is worth naming. ‘Every man wants to write a book’ is a complaint about a print culture with cheap publishing and too many authors. It is a natural thing to say in 1908 and a strange thing to inscribe in wet clay.

Public domain

The 1908 magazine item and the 1922 Connecticut state report are both American publications well before 1929 and are in the public domain in the United States; as anonymous or official texts of that age they are equally free in the UK and EU. There is no ancient original whose rights could be at issue, and no translator to hold any, because nothing was translated. Reproduce it freely — but reproduce it with the true date attached, which is the whole point. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

Most disputed quotations have a real author who has been swapped for a more famous one. This one is stranger: there is no earlier version to recover, because the antiquity is the invention.

No Assyrian tablet exists no artefact

No accession number, no museum, no excavation report, no published cuneiform text. The date 2800 B.C. is also awkward for anyone checking: it sits before the Assyrian empire people picture when they read the word, in a period whose surviving tablets are overwhelmingly administrative the investigation ↗.

Naram Sin, 5000 B.C. earliest located

The oldest instance found credits a Sumerian-era king — the historical Naram-Sin reigned in the 23rd century B.C., not the 50th — and places the object in Constantinople. Within fifteen years the king had vanished and the tablet had become Assyrian.

George S. Godard, Connecticut State Librarian the wording we use today

This is where ‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’ is fixed, along with ‘the end of the world is evidently approaching.’ That does not make Godard the fabricator — he was repeating a story already in circulation, and we have no evidence he coined it. It makes his report the ancestor of every later citation.

Egyptian priests; Cicero drift

Reassigned to Egyptian priests in 1925 and 1948, and to Cicero by 2001. The complaint is stable; the civilisation is interchangeable. That is the signature of a floating saying rather than a document.

A separate fake different item

The ‘children now love luxury, they have bad manners and contempt for authority’ line credited to Socrates is a different fabrication with its own paper trail. People often cite the two together as mutually corroborating. Two unsourced quotations do not corroborate each other.

No Assyrian original exists. The earliest located version is an American magazine item of August 1908 crediting a different king and a different millennium; the ‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’ form dates from 1922 the trail ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the most comforting fake in circulation. Every generation suspects the young are worse and the world is ending, and this hands you a 4,800-year-old scribe saying the same thing, which means the panic is old, therefore wrong, therefore you can relax. That is a genuinely useful thought — it just did not come from Assyria.

There is a cost to the shortcut. The line is usually deployed against people who are worrying about something real, and it works by borrowing authority it does not have. The honest version of the argument survives without the prop: complaints about generational decline are extremely well documented across recorded history, and you can cite the documented ones.

Every man wants to write a book. Said the ancient scribe, in clay, apparently.

How the story mutated, decade by decade

1908: Bassett’s Scrap Book prints it as Naram Sin, 5000 B.C., held in Constantinople. No apocalypse clause yet — just evil times, corrupt politics and too many authors.

1908–1913: the date slides to 3800 B.C. and then towards 2800 B.C. as it is reprinted.

1920: the first version that ends with the world approaching its end.

1922: George S. Godard’s Connecticut state library report fixes the canonical text and the ‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’ label.

1925 and 1948: reassigned to Egyptian priests. 2001: reassigned to Cicero. Still no tablet.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Change Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Ancient Tablet: The World is Speedily Coming to an Endquoteinvestigator.com

The archival investigation: the 1908 first appearance, the 1922 Connecticut version, and the century of drifting attributions.

Assyrian Books and Quote Chasingscienceblogs.com

A physicist’s account of trying to run the tablet down, and why ‘every man wants to write a book’ gives the game away.

Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happensmithsonianmag.com

Useful for the genuine ancient end-of-the-world material, which exists and looks nothing like this.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on an Assyrian tablet

Assyrian clay tablet

c. 2800 BC · a source that does not exist

The tablet is the only ‘author’ on this site that has never existed. Assyria is a real civilisation with an enormous surviving literature — tens of thousands of catalogued cuneiform tablets, many in the British Museum, covering law, omens, letters, epic poetry and a great deal of accounting — which is exactly what makes the fake work. Readers know the tablets are real, assume this is one of them, and never ask for a catalogue number. Genuine Assyrian and Babylonian texts do complain, at length, about bad times and worse neighbours. None of them complains that everyone wants to write a book.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Anonymous. Bassett’s Scrap Book, August 1908, p. 84 (as ‘Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.’). ‘Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.’ wording from Report of the State Librarian to the Governor, State of Connecticut, 1922, p. 93. No Assyrian original exists.

MLA (9th ed.)

“The earth is degenerating…” Bassett’s Scrap Book, Aug. 1908, p. 84. Earliest located instance; no Assyrian original.

APA (7th ed.)

The earth is degenerating… (1908, August). Bassett’s Scrap Book, p. 84 [earliest located instance; no Assyrian original].

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The earth is degenerating, children no longer obey their parents’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-earth-is-degenerating-children-no-longer-obey