What is the oldest known text in the world?

Answer 1

>as far as i know [which is not at all] the oldest in tact document we have collected are the dead sea scrolls<

I need to take exception to that answer. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls aren't what could be considered "intact" documents, being mostly fragmentary. More to the point, the earliest of the Scrolls only date from about 150 BC, and we have -much- older documents than that.

Allegedly the oldest written document ever discovered is a Sumerian cuniform document (written on a clay tablet), and it is a recipe for beer. This claim has been made in a number of places (notably the Beer Institute of America), and is often repeated, though I have been unable to track down an original source for the claim.

The 12 tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh date from about the 7th century BCE. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia,

"The library is an archaeological discovery credited to Austen Henry Layard; most tablets were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum, but a first discovery was made in late 1849 in the so-called South-West Palace, which was the Royal Palace of king Sennacherib (705 - 681 BC).

Three years later, Hormuzd Rassam, Layard's assistant, discovered a similar "library" in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (668 - 627 BC), on the opposite side of the mound. Unfortunately, no record was made of the findings, and soon after reaching Europe, the tablets appeared to have been irreparably mixed with each other and with tablets originating from other sites. Thus, it is almost impossible today to reconstruct the original contents of each of the two main "libraries".

What this mean s is that the record we have of Gilgamesh can only be dated to the time of the tablets themselves, not the dates in the story.

It does not seem unlikely, however, as the oldest documents we have that can be verified are indeed Sumerian. The "Epic of Gilgamesh," for example, is widely acknowledged as being the oldest know complete story written down, and it appears on 12 Sumerian clay tablets which date from somewhere between 2150-2000 BC.

There are some earlier fragmentary Summerian fragments that go back as far as 2500 BC, and these are probably the oldest written documents of which we are currently aware. The beer recipe in question is one of these fragments, so it could well be the oldest written document known, and if not that, it is certainly the oldest written -recipe- known.

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/general.php

http://www.rsc.org/ebooks/archive/free/BK9780854045686/BK9780854045686-00001.pdf

Addendum:

The Precepts of Ptah-Hotep, c. 2200 BCE during the Sixth dynasty of Egypt is claimed to be the oldest book in the world still existing.

The oldest written _New World_ (Western Hemisphere) document currently known is a recently discovered stone slab tentatively dated to about 900 BC.

http://anthropology.net/2006/09/14/oldest-writing-in-new-world-discovered/

The oldest _English_ document known to exist is a list of accounts dating from the 6th century AD, during the reign of the Anglo-Saxon King Aethelberht of Kent.

The oldest complete _literary_ document in English is the epic poem Beowulf, the earliest version (yet discovered) of which dates from approximately the 10th century AD. There may be some fragmentary poems which are a bit older.

"English," in these cases, means /Old/ English.

Answer 2

Some of the earliest known records are Mesopotamia clay tokens from as early as early as 8000 BCE (ten thousand years ago). These probably dealt with economic records.

"The Epic of Gilgamesh" around 3,000 years old is thought to be the oldest known literary work.

Answer 3

That is a matter of debate, but writings have been found in the ruins of ancient Babylon that are dated to six thousand years ago, one of whihc was used by Carl Sandburg in his poem "Bilbea".