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No nation in particular 'invented' literature, since all had individuals who memorised stories and songs about gods and ancestors. Of those that survive today as written down, among the earliest, is 'The Epic of Gilgamesh', the story of a Sumerian King who lived in the Iraq area about 2700 BC. Early Chinese, Hindu and Hebrew texts (the beginning of The Bible) have been dated to around 1000BC.

Greek literature was also concerned with myth and composed to be spoken in front of an audience who were attending a religious ceremony or gathering. Pindar of Thebes (500BC) composed poems to be accompanied by a lyre (lyric). He mainly praises the achievements of winning athletes. The longer poems (epic = 'words'), by Homer, describe the Greeks in victory and defeat. In Athens they concentrated on theatre (drama = 'deed') eg by Aeschylus and Euripides, which were made for performance in religious festivals.

It is hard to say how influential these texts were because they were largely unknown in Europe from the 5th until the 15th century. Arabic and Anglo- Saxon poetry developed without reference to them and English drama emerged from Christian festivals (mystery plays).

If literature includes non-fiction, then Greek philosophers (Aristotle), historians (Thucydides) and geographers (Strabo, Ptolemy) can be said to have invented new forms of literature that are in use today.

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