Book of Oldest Jokes Has Dead Parrot Ancestor

I've written about the world's oldest recorded joke, which, truth be told, wasn't very funny. (Guess you had to be there or be an ancient Egyptian or both.) Now a new translation of a fourth century Greek joke book has a story similar in structure to the "Dead Parrot" sketch of Monty Python fame.

How Do You Entertain a Pharoah?

Q. How do you entertain a pharoah?

A. Sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and tell the pharaoh to go fish.

That joke was recorded in 1600 B.C. (or B.C.E. for those not fond of a Christian-centric approach to global dating) and is the result of some research that the University of Wolverhampton took up in conjunction with a humor site that now has the ten oldest recorded jokes listed. Looking through them, I'm convinced that the reason we don't have more recorded humor from ancient times is a lack of gag doctors.