Dog walks into a tavern
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 2). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Old Babylonian proverb tradition, approximately 1900–1600 BCE
Region: Mesopotamia
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1900 BCE to 1600 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
ETCSL Proverbs 5.77 features a dog entering a tavern, saying it cannot see anything and will open something. The obscurity of the ending itself became part of its modern appeal.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The tavern saying is preserved in a scribal proverb collection.
What remains uncertain
Neither a recoverable original punchline nor bottom-up social circulation is established; modern popularity is separate.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria