The oldest joke in the history of men
No one knows for sure when people started telling jokes to each other, and no one knows for sure what those jokes were about.
But at one point in time, people started to write their jokes down on papyrus, wood, clay and paper. We did find some of those.

The oldest known joke was found on a Sumerian claytablet almost 4000 years old: Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

Some other very old jokes:

How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.
(First written in hieroglyphics in 1600 BC)

Three ox drivers from Adab were thirsty: one owned the ox, the second owned the cow and the third owned the wagon's load. The owner of the ox refused to get water because he feared his ox would be eaten-by a lion; the owner of the cow refused because he thought his cow might wander off into the desert; the owner of the wagon refused because he feared his load would be stolen. So they agreed to all go together.
In their absence, the ox made love to the cow which gave birth to a calf which ate the wagon's load.
Problem: Who owns the calf?
(First written on papyrus in 1200 BC).
It appears to me that the ox drivers must have gone a long time to allow for the cow to get pregnant and deliver a calf. More importantly, an ox is a castrated bull, and not able to make a cow pregnant, no matter how much he tries. Maybe something went wrong with the translation her, and maybe the ox was not an ox in the original text. Or maybe the secret answer to the question is: No one owns the calf, because there is no calf, because the ox cannot make the cow pregnant.

A woman who was blind in one eye has been married to a man for 20 years. When he found another woman he said to her: 'I shall divorce you because you are said to be blind in one eye.' And she answered: 'Have you just discovered that after 20 years of marriage?'
(First penned in a papyrus letter containing Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1100 BC)

Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his real name is nobody. Later, Odysseus and his men escape from the Cyclops'cave and pinch out his eye. The Cyclops shouts for his friends and tells them: "Help me, nobody escaped from my cave, nobody hurt me, and I am angry with nobody!"
His friends thinks the cyclops has gone mad and leave him alone, allowing Odysseus and his men to escape.
(Homer, The Odyssey in 800 BC)

Question: What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon and three at evening?
Answer: Man. He goes on all fours as a baby, on two feet as a man and uses a cane in old age.
(Appears in Sophocles' play Oedipus Tyrannus and was first performed in 429 BC)

Man is even more eager to copulate than a donkey - his purse is what restrains him.
(First written in Egyptian hieroglyphics during the Ptolemaic Period of 304 BC - 30 BC)

Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued, he asked: 'Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?'
'No, your Highness,' he replied, 'but my father was.'
(Features in Saturnalia, by Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius around 63 BC)

Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said: 'I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died.'
(Dated to the Philogelos - widely described as the world's oldest 'jokebook' in the 4th and 5th century AD)

Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied: 'In silence.'
(Collected in Philogelos, 4th-5th century AD)

The oldest textballoons? Some examples of pre 20th century textballoons.
Religion for rats. Are humans really the creators of the world?
Beardless crusaders On prejudice, manhood, and cultural differences in the 11th century.
Pazuzu. Assyrian god or demon, or, most likely, both.
About elves and dwarves. Are dwarves really a subrace of the elves?

These articles are all written by me. These articles are brought to you as useless information, and they pretend to be nothing more than that.
Not everything I state in these articles is nessecarily true. But it is not all untrue either.

Coen de Moor