Early Humor

Have you ever wondered why there are no jokes in the early written word? Being a lover of humor the question has crossed my mind. Recently I heard about an ancient tablet (around 3,500 years old) discovered in what was once Babylon (modern day Iraq) in 1976 that contained six riddles probably considered highly amusing for that time. The subject matter of the riddles is sex,beer,and mothers. Some parts of the riddles have been lost and what parts are still preserved are translated from cuneiform so the results aren't too straight forward but it leaves room for your own interpretation, or to put it another way...I guess you had to be there. Here are a couple of examples: the incomplete riddle about someone's mother is "of your mother is by one who has intercourse with her,then a who/what question is posed,but the answer was lost from the tablet" ( I bet you're dying for the punchline!) The second example "The deflowered girl did not become pregnant. The undeflowered girl became pregnant. What is it? answer Auxiliary forces." Who knows? They may have been real side splitters in that era