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The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text date to c. 1500 BC, [1] while the oldest known manuscripts date to c. 1040 AD. [2] Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD. [3]
Scholars have disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like literature, but the oldest surviving literary texts date from a full millennium after the invention of writing. The earliest literary author known by name is Enheduanna, who is credited as the author of a number of works of Sumerian literature, including Exaltation ...
A link exists between 6,000-year-old engravings on cylindrical seals used on clay tablets and cuneiform, the world’s oldest writing system, according to new research.
More than half of the writing was destroyed, and what was preserved seemed at first hopelessly unintelligible. But after several days of concentrated study, its contents began to become clear and take shape, and I realized with no little excitement that what I held in my hand was a copy of the oldest law code as yet known to man.
Writing in ancient Sumer was a time-consuming activity known to few. For this reason, writing was mainly used to keep necessary economic records. Literacy in Uruk was also likely limited at the time. [1] A clay tablet detailing a trade transaction contains one of the first examples of rebus writing. [2] It reads "28,086 [a] measures barley 37 ...
Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system [6] [7] and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian.
The man’s remains were uncovered in a peat bog in Vittrup, Denmark, during peat cutting in 1915. His right anklebone, lower left shinbone, jawbone and fragmented skull were found alongside a ...