Ancient literature
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The History of literature begins with the history of writing, in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively.
Texts handed down by oral tradition may predate their fixation in written form by several centuries, or, in extreme cases, even millennia. Classical Antiquity is usually considered to begin with Homer, in the 8th century BC. Many older literary texts are known, but often difficult to date. This includes the texts in the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch being traditionally dated to the 15th century BC, while modern scholarship puts it to the 10th century BC at the very earliest. A very early example is the so called Egyptian Book of the Dead which was eventually written down in the Papyrus of Ani in approximately 250 BC but probably dates from about the 18th century BC.
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[edit] List of ancient texts
[edit] Bronze Age
- Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2500 to 1800 BC) approximate dates shown
- 2400 BC Egyptian Pyramid Texts, including the Cannibal Hymn (in parts likely composed from as early as 3000 BC[citation needed])
- 2350 BC The Maxims of Ptahhotep
- 2270 BC Sumerian Enheduanna tablet hymns
- 2050 BC Sumerian Ur-Nammu codex
- 2000 BC Egyptian Coffin Texts inscriptions
- 2000 BC Sumerian Lament for Ur
- 1900 BC Egyptian Westcar Papyrus; assumed age of the text, the surviving papyrus copy dates to ca. 1700 BC.
- 1950-1750 BC Kultepe texts
- The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian version)
- The Story of Sinuhe
- Enûma Elish
- Atrahasis Epic
- Late Bronze Age (ca. 1800 to 1000 BC) approximate dates shown
- 1780 BC Babylonian Code of Hammurabi stele
- 1750 BC Hittite Anitta tablets
- 1650 BC Egyptian Ipuwer papyrus
- 1500 BC Hittite military oath
- 1400 BC Hurrian & Ugaritic Amarna Letters
- 1700-1200 BC archaic Sanskrit Rigveda (redaction likely around 800 BC)
- 1550 BC Egyptian Book of the Dead
- 1330 BC Great Hymn to the Aten
- 1078 BC Egyptian Story of Wenamun
- the Babylonian Poor Man of Nippur
- the Epic of Gilgamesh (Akkadian version)
[edit] Iron Age
- undated or controversial, ca. 12th to 7th century BC
- 700 BC Chinese Classic of History (or earlier)
- 600 BC Chinese Tao Te Ching (or earlier)
- Sanskrit Epics, from roughly the 6th c. BC, redaction between the 1st and 4th c. AD.
- The Ramayana
- The Mahabharata (includes the Bhagavad Gita)
[edit] Classical Antiquity
- See also Ancient Greek literature, Latin literature.
- 8th century BC:
- The Trojan War cycle, including the Iliad and the Odyssey
- The Theogony by Hesiod
- 6th century BC
- 5th century BC:
- The odes of Pindar
- The Histories of Herodotus by Herodotus
- History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
- The Suppliants, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Oresteia by Aeschylus
- Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Electra by Sophocles
- Alcestis, Medea, Heracleidae, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba, The Suppliants, Electra, Heracles, Trojan Women, Iphigeneia in Tauris, Ion, Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes, Bacchae, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Cyclops, Rhesus by Euripides
- The Acharnians, The Knights, The Clouds, The Wasps, Peace, The Birds, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, The Frogs, Ecclesiazousae, Plutus by Aristophanes
- The Five Classics (Classic of Poetry, Classic of History, Book of Changes, Classic of Rites, and Annals of Spring and Autumn, traditionally by Confucius)
- 4th century BC:
- Anabasis, Cyropaedia by Xenophon
- Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics by Aristotle
- Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Theaetetus, Parmenides, Symposium, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Menexenus, Republic, Timaeus by Plato
- Elements by Euclid
- Book of Job (present form-- story is from at least 6th century)
- 3rd century BC:
- 2nd century BC:
- 1st century BC:
- 1st century:
- The books of the New Testament
- Germania by Tacitus
- Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- Natural History by Pliny the Elder
- Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter
- Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, Against Apion by Josephus
- Book of Han by Ban Gu
- 2nd century:
- Anabasis Alexandri by Arrian
- Almagest by Ptolemy
- Deipnosophistae by Athenaeus
- Enchiridion by Epictetus
- The Golden Ass by Apuleius
- Liber Memorialis by Lucius Ampelius
- Description of Greece by Pausanias
- Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
- 3rd century:
- 4th century:
- 5th century:
- The City of God by Augustine of Hippo
- Vulgate of St. Jerome
- Psychomachia by Prudentius
- Consentius' grammar
- Hou Hanshu compiled by Fan Yeh