The Oldest Books in the World

Literature. It's more than 4,000 years old. I'm not referring to mere writing, which obviously came first. Literature doesn't mean business receipts or inventory lists or just people writing their names down. Literature is a step up from that. Now, I know that's a word whose meaning is a bit flexible, but basically I'm talking about writings of a consciously artistic nature. Stories. Proverbs. Poems. Intellectual works. They started out short, but eventually would turn into books. Unfortunately, many of those books have not survived until today. We can't read them anymore, but some of them did make it. That's what we're going to talk about today as we look for the oldest books in the world. Hi, I'm David Miano. I'm a scholar of ancient history and a teacher by trade. And on this channel, I will do my best to give you the straight facts on what we know about the ancient past without appealing to fanciful tales, science fiction, or conspiracies. Now, if you Google oldest books in the world, what you're going to get at the top are the oldest surviving physical books. But that's not what I'm talking about. We're not looking for when physical objects came to be. We're looking for when content came to be. What long-form compositions are the oldest? That's what I mean by a book. According to UNESCO, a book is a bound, non-periodical publication having 49 or more pages. However, the U.S. Postal Service defines a book as a bound publication having 24 or more pages, at least 22 of which are printed and contain primary reading material, with advertising limited only to book announcements. But let me ask you, if you get a digital version of one of those, is it still a book? Most of us would say yes. Yeah, when I say a book, I don't mean a codex. I mean a literary work of substantial length. How substantial? It doesn't have to be War and Peace, but substantial. I'm going to be loose on this. They do have to be written compositions, but they can exist in any format. As long as they've survived in some form until today, they're eligible for this list. To make this more interesting, I'm going to divide the world into six major regions and give you the oldest books from each region. That way we get a taste from everywhere. The regions are East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. And I hate that I have to say this, but please remember that this is not a competition. Having the oldest surviving book does not make one country better than another country or one people better than another people. For anyone wondering, yes, I commonly do get comments of that sort whenever I cover a first-of topic, but many factors come into play with the survival of books. Sometimes it's just luck, and nobody alive today had anything to do with the writing of any of them. And perhaps it's worth mentioning that by covering this topic, I am in no way suggesting that writing cultures are superior to oral cultures. Yes, I do believe that there are better and worse ways of transmitting information, but the value of a culture or people is not determined merely by how they pass on knowledge without consideration of anything else. So what is the oldest book from East Asia? As you might guess, in East Asia, it's China that has the oldest surviving books. But even though China had writing early on, surviving books are not as old as we might like because of a significant event that occurred during the reign of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the 3rd century BCE. That would be the book burning. Yes, the emperor ordered the destruction of all books that he felt were subversive. And that was a lot of them. Particularly those written by Confucians, apparently. Following the fall of the Qin dynasty, it is believed that many books that he had preserved were destroyed in the fighting that ensued. Anyway, a series of Confucian books called the Five Classics, believed to have been compiled and edited by Confucius himself, were reconstructed from whatever had survived. How similar the reconstructed classics were to the original classics is not known, but there is no doubt the reconstructed classics contain writings that precede the Qin dynasty. Oldest among them, and this is the one that tops the list for East Asia, is the Shijing, or Classic of Poetry, which is an anthology of poems that were composed in the Western Zhou dynasty period, between the 11th and 7th centuries BCE. Scholars generally do not think that even the original Classic of Poetry was compiled by Confucius because it seems to have existed even before he was born. He lived in the 6th century BCE. Our oldest surviving manuscript of the Classic of Poetry comes from the 2nd century BCE, which is pretty old. It's hard to get copies that old. It was found in a tomb. The work contains over 300 poems written in Chinese, and is divided into three distinct books. The poems generally are folk songs and are not attributed to a single author, but they provide valuable information about customs from the time. And one of the more fascinating aspects of this work is that many of the songs appear to have been written by women, or at least from the perspective of women. Because it was believed to be associated with Confucius, the book went on to become highly influential in the time of the Han dynasty, its words being taken as wisdom that could inform political, social, and educational policy. This is one of the reasons why it survived. Honorable mentions should go to a couple of other classics that contained ancient material. The Yijing, or Classic of Changes, a divination text that also comes from the Western Zhou period. But it was updated probably several times, and the current version is probably from the 4th century BCE. And the Shijing, or Classic of History, which contains a bunch of speeches attributed to famous leaders, perhaps some authentic, dating from as far back as the 11th century, with more recent parts dating to about the 4th century BCE. There are two different versions of this book, the old text and the new text, and ironically, it probably is the new text which is older. The oldest major composition from South Asia is generally regarded to be the Rig Veda. As with most works that have survived through copying, we do not have any existing copies that go back into ancient times. The oldest surviving manuscript is from the 15th century of our Common Era. Now, the Rig Veda was expanded several times, and in its current form, it has four main components. The Samhita, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads. It's the Samhita that is the original book, the oldest part, written in an early form of Sanskrit, and it is a collection of songs. The Samhita itself is made up of 10 books, and even it was updated. Books 2 through 7 comprise the original work. So when did that original work first come out? Well, that's the thing. The date is uncertain. But there are a few clues that help us out a bit. For example, the technology depicted in the text is chalcolithic, copper and stone. That places it in the period from about 2,000 to 700 BCE. Can we narrow it down further than that? Yes. We can often date text by the language, just as we might be able to distinguish the English spoken 500 years ago from the English spoken today, so we can with other languages too. Linguists place the language of the Rig Veda Samhita in the approximate period 1,500 to 1,000 BCE. I'm well aware that there are some fringe hypotheses that the Rig Veda is much older than this, but I'm giving you the scholarly consensus among experts, both Western and Eastern, on the subject. This is what I always do. It should be noted that, as in the case of the Classic of Poetry, songs of the Rig Veda Samhita were likely composed orally before being written down into a book. I would be remiss not to mention the oldest surviving book from southern India, the Tolkapiyam. It's a grammar book written in Old Tamil. It is part of a collection called Sangam literature. The date of this book is even more difficult to narrow down than the Rig Veda. It too contains additions. Legends place it thousands of years into the past, but the earliest that scholars have placed the original version is the 3rd century BCE. Its current form is from the early centuries CE. One of the things to remember about ancient texts and their survival is that if they are written on perishable materials, which most books are, then the only way that they're going to survive is if someone copies them out onto new perishable materials. So the texts that have tended to survive are those that were deemed worthy to be copied over and over again. The five classics in China survived because they were used by Confucians, who continued to copy them. And the Vedas in South Asia continued to be copied because Hindus valued them. We have a different story when it comes to West Asia. The oldest books there are rather older than the ones we've discussed so far, but they did not survive because they were copied. Oh no. In fact, they were lost to history for a long time. But they were written on clay tablets, and these tablets do not perish as easily as paper, so they survived, buried in the ground, until archaeologists discovered them. We have found literary works from the time of the early dynastic period in Mesopotamia, and the earliest known almost complete literary work is the Instructions of Shurupak, containing proverbs. But it isn't really long enough to be considered a book. For that, we have to go to the work called the Enmerkar-Lugolbanda cycle. It consists of four stories written on four tablets. These stories feature Enmerkar, the king of Uruk, and his successor, Lugolbanda. The stories fall into the genre we call historical epic, as they are poetic and recount the exploits of legendary figures from the past. The four tales are Enmerkar and the Lord of Arata, Enmerkar and Esukestana, Lugolbanda and the Mountain Cave, also known as Lugolbanda I, and Lugolbanda and the Anzu Bird, also known as Lugolbanda II. Because of the condition of the tablets, there are a few parts of these stories that are not possible to read, but mostly this book has survived. Our earliest copies come from the Isin Larsa period, around the 20th to 18th century BCE. But scholars believe it was probably composed in the earlier Ur III period, around the 22nd to 21st century BCE. When it comes to writings on tablets, it's not always easy to figure out if different tablets are part of the same book. It could be argued that Enmerkar-Lugolbanda is simply four separate stories, though they clearly are related and continue one from another. So if your assessment is that these do not form a single book, we have to go forward a little to get to the earliest known definitely long-form composition. And that is, something you may have heard of, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Based on earlier tales about Gilgamesh the King of Uruk and son of Lugolbanda, the epic itself was composed in the Old Babylonian period, around the 18th century BCE. It was titled at that time, surpassing all other kings. There also is a later standard Babylonian version, which is longer, titled He Who Saw the Abyss. It dates to between the 13th and 10th centuries BCE. The Old Babylonian version is incomplete, but we have most of the standard Babylonian version. It is the one you will find translations of. It consists of 12 tablets. OK, so now we move to Africa. And as you might guess, the earliest writings there come from Egypt. And as with West Asia, the writings have survived not through the copying process all the way down to today, but through archaeological discovery. But in this case, they are not on clay tablets, as in West Asia. But these particular writings were written on walls, the walls of tombs. Does wall writing count as a book? If so, then our oldest Egyptian book would be the Pyramid Texts from around the 24th or 23rd century BCE. The Pyramid Texts, as their name suggests, were written on the interior walls of pyramids during the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, beginning at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The texts contain prayers, spells, and other sacred utterances that were intended to help the spirits of the dead king move from the tomb to a resurrected existence. The earliest version is in the Pyramid of Unas, but the longest version, containing over 2,000 columns and lines, is found in the Pyramid of Pepi I. No two versions are exactly alike, though they have many common passages. The Pyramid Texts from the Old Kingdom would develop into the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, which in turn would develop into the Egyptian Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom. From the same time, we have another contender, and that would be a completely different type of text, the Autobiography of Winnie the Elder. Yes, autobiographies are a common feature of Old Kingdom tombs beginning in the Fifth Dynasty, but sadly for us, not in king's tombs. These feature in nobles' tombs, and the reason for this has to do with the purpose of the autobiography, which was to present a case to the gods that the deceased was worthy of a positive judgment and could pass on to the next life. Kings did not need to defend themselves in this way, and were expected to go somewhere else entirely. Many of these autobiographies are short, but the Autobiography of Winnie is the longest ever found and can be said to be of book length. It was written in his Mastaba tomb at Abidas, and recounts his long career under the kings Teti, Pepi I, and Merenre of the Sixth Dynasty. It's probably our most important historical inscription from the time. But if you are looking for an actual published book from Egypt, read by many, we need to go a little bit further. Most ancient Egyptian writings were made on papyrus, but papyrus, as you may guess, is perishable and is not likely to survive unless copied. Popular papyrus writings were copied in dynastic Egyptian times, but they became lost a time later. We're fortunate, however, to have found some papyrus writings that were protected underground in tombs in Egypt's dry climate. The oldest book of this sort is the one we call the Precepts of Tahotep. The oldest preserved manuscript we have of it is the Priest's Papyrus, which dates to the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. However, we think the book was composed earlier, perhaps as early as the 6th Dynasty, circa 2000 BCE. This is a book of wisdom, containing proverbs and moral instructions. It purports to be the work of Tahotep, a vizier of King Isese of the 5th Dynasty, who was legendary for his wisdom. But scholars think the attribution is more for effect than historical accuracy. This book has survived complete. So now we get to Europe, and the oldest surviving books we have come from the Greeks. Although we have records from the Mycenaean times, there are no extant books. You might be able to guess what the oldest are. They have survived until today through copying. These are the works of Homer and Hesiod. Homer, if he was a real person, and there is some doubt about that, and Hesiod, are estimated to have lived between around 750 and 650 BCE. Homer was a bard, and he is the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But he did this orally, so they were not books right away. In his day, there were other epics composed by others, and they too were set in the time of the Trojan War. But those other epics have not survived. Only Homer's have. And this is because his were considered the best, and therefore worth preserving. In fact, it's believed that the Greek alphabet was invented just so that the Iliad and the Odyssey could be preserved. Bards had memorized these works after the original composer had died, but they knew if they didn't get them down in writing, they probably would not survive. They wrote down the other epics too, but somewhere along the line, they just didn't continue to be copied. Hesiod was a poet, and although he wrote many books, the two books of his that we still have are Theogony, which describes the origins of the gods and their accomplishments, and Works and Days, part agricultural manual, part moral guidebook. And now we get to the Americas. We know that the Maya of Mesoamerica were illiterate people, and before the Spaniards arrived there, they had written books of history, genealogies, mythology, medicine, and flora and fauna. Unfortunately, none of these pre-Columbian books have survived, except for four manuscripts. They are known as the Maya Codex of Mexico, the Dresden Codex, the Paris Codex, and the Madrid Codex, the final three being named for the places that they ended up. They all appear to have originated in the Yucatan Peninsula. The first, the Maya Codex of Mexico, formerly known as the Grolier Codex, is the only one still residing in its homeland. It is the oldest of the three, and dates to between 1021 and 1154 CE. It is an almanac on the movements of Venus, but it is incomplete. The Dresden Codex, which dates to the 1200s, is the second oldest. It is mostly a treatise on divination and astronomy, and is 78 pages long, so this is our oldest complete book. The Paris Codex, largely a ritualistic and astrological text, and the Madrid Codex, devoted to horoscopes and almanacs for determining agricultural and religious activities, were both written probably between 1200 and 1450. Honorable mentions should go to the Popol Vuh, a mythological and historical text written by the K'iche' Maya around 1550, and the books of Chilambalam, nine chronicles written by Maya scribes in Yucatec in the 17th and 18th centuries. All of these books contain stories from pre-Columbian times, but they show Spanish and Christian influence as well. So there you have it, the oldest surviving books from around the world. If you would like to add any to this list that you believe deserve mention, please do it in the comments below. If you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up, and if you liked it a lot, a super thanks would be much appreciated. You might like my little e-booklet, Why Ancient History Matters. It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important, even in the modern world. You might also wish to use it to help spread the word. So feel free to share it with someone you know. It's free for anyone who wants it. I've left a link in the description box below the video for you to grab a copy. Catch you later.