The ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is not the oldest surviving work of literature
talesoftimesforgotten.com
talesoftimesforgotten.com
Anyway I ended up feeling best introducing historical points in a minimal amount of implied context. "The people who wrote this textbook considered _______ to be the earliest major example of _______." or "As of 20XX this was considered to be the oldest known example of ______." etc.
I started to have a lot more luck with maintaining a positive productive engaged classroom conversation when I started doing that. And it let us dive into unstructured critiques of historical method and bias which was always a good way to run out of time in lectures.
Then I realized teaching couldn't support an adult human lifestyle and had to quit. I miss these kinds of discussions though. Always glad to see them on hn.
Teachers in countries with university graduate requirements for teaching and strong education unions have better median salaries relative to population demographics.
I thought the US required a masters and had extremely strong teacher unions?
Maybe this is why so many arguments open with the cliche "Webster defines..."
Deeply, but though we can make distinction between a modern best seller and Brian's grammatically incorrect graffiti, "Romanes eunt domus,"[1], in essence they are both literature, even if the latter is fictional and framed within the larger contemporary story, because Brian wrote a message representative of some language.
Literature is defined by writing, and writing is defined by symbols representing language. Always given less emphasis than the ancient cave art found in caves all over the world are the abstract symbols that very often accompany the graphic depictions of animals. For all we know some of those symbols may mean, "this tastes good," and regardless of being unable to decipher them, they could still be the oldest extant literature[2] so long as they could represent language and tell a story, no matter how primitive a story.
Before the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan pictographs were deciphered, there was no question that they had specific meaning behind them. Though in the strictest sense, pictography is not an alphabet, it still conveys specific messages in some once spoken language. In my opinion, if there are any abstract symbols that represent even the most primitive message, if it's clear there is even some vague attempt at communication, then it will still broadly fall under the category of literature, regardless of ever being deciphered.
While ultimately I agree that the epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest extant high, advanced, or complex literature, I think whether a written story still exists or not is an arbitrary distinction. The fact that Gilgamesh exists in the literary form that it does necessarily means earlier examples of high literature once existed but are unknown and likely lost. Between Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides there were over 300 plays written of which 33 survive. That the missing plays no longer exist should not diminish the fact that these were, in fact, written and were undoubtedly literature.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_ite_domum
[2] https://www.openculture.com/2019/03/40000-year-old-symbols-f... note: Though von Petzinger herself clarifies in her TED Talk that the common ancient symbols are not writing, I think she's hedging for some reason (probably professional caution) contradicting what her own research shows and statements she makes immediately previously.
> 1. The body of all written works.
> 2. The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group or culture.
> 3. (usually preceded by the) All the papers, treatises etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject.
> 4. Written fiction of a high standard.
So it sounds like you're basically describing definition (1). I make this judgement because "this tastes good" is not creative or fictional writing, which are key points in definitions (2) and (4).
Probably not. If 90% of classical Greek dramatic literature is lost, we can safely assume at the very minimum at least that amount of literature contemporary to Gilgamesh is also lost. There are probably at least 9 other works written around the same time, a little before or after, that would compete with its title as "first." And it is also doubtful something as complex as Gilgamesh arouse out of the blue. There would have been a progression of literature increasing in complexity leading up to it, that is lost.
Thus Gilgamesh is the earliest high literature still in existence. But there definitely had to be earlier high literature, and no judgements can be made on whether that earlier lost contemporary high literature was any better or any worse than Gilgamesh.
Definitely not. Being first does not remotely imply existence. The first gospels have long deteriorated into dust, and the earliest versions are copies of copies of copies. Further, it is astronomically unlikely that the earliest version of Gilgamesh in existence is the original.
> We can theorize that there were some previous works, but Gilgamesh is the oldest we can actually read.
There are quite a large number of works that can be no longer be read.[1] This does not mean they're literature any less than works that can still be read.
That is fine, but my assumption is supported by the history of literature. We don't see anything as complex as Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment or Twain's Huckleberry Finn in 1000BC.
> Complex oral tradition could have led directly to complex story-telling literature. All it would take is someone writing it down.
Are there any examples of "complex" oral tradition that stand in contrast to simpler oral traditions? Could we compare the early Christian oral tradition with, say, Hopi oral tradition to determine which is more or less complex? I don't think this makes a lot of sense, but I would entertain supporting argument.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puranas 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
A takeaway menu for example is not under definition 4 but if accompanied by other texts could be an example of the written works of our species.
On the other hand, apparently self improvement books are older than the first fiction :)
I was taught that Gilgamesh wasn’t the first written work of literature, but the first written work of epic story. I don’t know if this is true, but many of the other works cited are biographies, proverbs, etc.
You don't need to define "literature", it largely defines itself but not in a formal mathematical way (derived from axioms) but in a linguistic way which is rather closer to legal reasoning and quite open to interpretation.
So, we might have litera tura as an initial path to the to past to explore for literature. Latin for something like learning from letters (characters). I've searched quite a lot and I see litera being turned into a book which I think is wrong - a book is librum in Latin.
Litera are individual letters or characters but many "letters" starts to take on a new meaning. They become words (verbum) initially, and as you deploy more verbum you get paginae and then liberae. I've probably really mashed up the singulars and plurals - soz.
So I think we have literae tura. This gives us some latitude for interpretation. For starters, literature need not be confined to books - that might be liberature and get jolly confused with notions of freedom.
Right, now we have modern language sorted out, let's worry about how old an ancient text is or are or something.
Indeed, and you're also putting a space in the middle of litteratura. It's not multiple words. What effect were you trying to create here?
> a book is librum in Latin
Close, though you'd usually cite the nominative form liber. But as you note, there is no e present in the root - liberae would mean "free women".
Also, reasoning from an etymology hardly anyone knows is not going to get you any insight into what others mean.
As mentioned in the article, in the beginning there were 5 separate stories about various adventures of Gilgamesh, written in the Sumerian language, some time around 2200 BC to 2000 BC.
A few hundred years later (around the time of Hammurabi), some Old Babylonian writer has translated the Sumerian stories into Old Babylonian, while making various changes to them in order to make them fit into a single long epic.
The Old Babylonian writer has also written several other stories, which were interleaved between the Sumerian stories and which integrated everything into a coherent epic.
Hundreds of years later, the Old Babylonian version was modified into the standard version that is best known. That version was also modified later into various other versions, some of them being translated into various languages of the neighbors of the Akkadians.
While there are many other earlier writings that can be considered as works of literature, the 5 Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh are one of the earliest examples of writings that are of the epic kind, i.e. which describe the adventures of some fictional character.
Most of the older writings mentioned in the article are not of this kind, but they may be considered as lyric, didactic or historic.
Most stories that might be older than the 5 Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh are other Sumerian stories about their gods, most of them being stories about Inanna, as mentioned in the article.
However, the age of all these Sumerian stories is not known with certainty, just that they have been written some time in the second half of the third millennium BC.
Some of the other Sumerian stories might be even a few centuries older than the 5 Gilgamesh stories, but they might as well be of a similar age.
So when talking about the earliest literature of the epic kind, it is not possible to pinpoint which is the earliest known work, but one must give a list that contains the Sumerian stories of the 3rd millennium BC, including the 5 stories about Gilgamesh.
The Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh might be the earliest where the main hero is identified as a human, not as a god.
edit: btw, I wish even a fraction of the current high-budget superhero movies had as good of a plot as Gilgamesh
While we're at it, we'd probably need to rewrite Enkidu's story, too, because the idea of a Sacred Prostitute sanitizing a wildman through several days and nights of continuous sex is sure to rile some puritan feathers.
Fate/Zero may be available on netflix but remember its an M-rated anime about modern era secret society of mages summoning legendary heroes to fight to the death, with last team standing getting their wish fulfilled. Expect goofy characters, humour, dark plots and graphic violence.
But he's there to be a villain, threaten the heroes, almost rape one of the heroes, kill some people, and eventually be killed by one of the good guys.
He's certainly not there as a protagonist.
The eponymous Gilgamesh of this one is actually split into 10 relatively forgettable characters, and the head researcher of their faction is called Enkidu or something like that. And their faction wants to wipe out most of the human race in some kind of mystical extinction event, to give rise to a superior humanity. It's a relatively common motive for the bad guys in Japanese media, I recall hearing the big bad gesticulate wildly about doing the same thing when I shelled out enough 100 yen coins with a buddy to clear the story of the "House of the Dead" on an arcade machine.
Wait what, not the king of Uruk? That is just blasphemy.
In another timeline after demons killed most humans Urik was refortified and given the name "Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia". And in that timeline they seem to sometimes call Gilgamesh King of Babylonia after they renamed the country.
All the oldest Egyptian construction was blank, but that didn't stop later pharaohs from tagging them with their own cartouches, chiseling off any older tags. Today, Egyptologists routinely date things to whoever was the last pharaoh to tag it.
But there must have been a real taboo about tagging pyramids, because none did them.
By the way, the reason noses and right hands of so much statuary is broken is that that was the standard Christian way of neutralizing the powerful magic they had enabled. Without a nose, they could not breathe in altar smoke. Without a hand, they could not bless.
Not all. See the image caption at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts . You're talking of the Giza ones I assume, which were indeed surprisingly text-free. Might have been a 5th dynasty "invention"?
> By the way, the reason noses and right hands of so much statuary is broken is that that was the standard Christian way of neutralizing the powerful magic they had enabled. Without a nose, they could not breathe in altar smoke. Without a hand, they could not bless.
This appears to be one of many theories https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/250763/1/2019%20-%20BM... .
What is definitely known is that Akhenaten would deface images of older gods, and his successors responded in kind; IIRC this would usually manifest in literal defacing rather than de-nosing.
Exactly. Think of the purpose the inscriptions inside a tomb. Nobody is going to see them, so why bother? The Pyramid Texts mark the beginning of an Egyptian magical tradition where writings and images can help the deceased in the afterlife. This tradition apparently started with Unas in the 5th dynasty and developed into the Coffin Texts, Book of the Dead scrolls, and finally hypocephali at the very end of Pharaonic Egypt.
With Khufu (4th Dynasty, Great Pyramid), the inscriptions are in his mortuary temple right outside the pyramid because that's where people would actually visit, not the interior of the sealed pyramid.
The Valley of Kings tunnel tombs are lousy with texts, sealed in. So it can't have been meant for visitors.
I am always mystified at how there could be never any soot on the ceilings. We look at these things all brightly lit up, but people writing them were in a very deep hole in the ground.
A simpler explanation for why the Pyramids of Giza were not usurped: By the time royals began routinely usurping earlier royal tombs (late New Kingdom/early Third Intermediate Period), the pyramids and mastabas of the Old Kingdom were long out of fashion as burial sites.
The Valley of Kings tombs were tunneled deep into living bedrock. How they did, I do not know, but ancient people worldwide seemed to have no difficulty cutting unlimited amounts of stone.
There's also the problem of applying the criterion of "fiction" to cultures that had no such concept. (The beginning of this article goes into it: https://theamericanscholar.org/fictions-revenge/ .)
The article is kind of a straw-man - nobody have claimed Gilgamesh is the first writing we have.
Reproductions are kinda nasty and very low ABV from what I’ve heard and read. But a ton of calories and no amoebas. Perfect for a hard day’s pyramid building.
[0] https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/...
The straw part is brilliant. I image that kind of like traditional Yerba Mate.
It’s kind of interesting that the fruit peel as a yeast source and aromatics are used in different Belgian brewing today. Modern beer only uses a few strains but these open vat brewing facilities can end up developing their own.
But it was interesting to me that all the earliest writing about trading and inventory of beer was not so much about cultures that prioritized getting smashed, but that beer was a utilitarian dietary staple.
And I guess for the most part, all alcoholic beverages have been “acquired tastes.” I’ve tried some meads with honey. I wouldn’t pick them out of today’s selection, but they’re not bad.
I really would be curious to try this. I also wonder if it’s the same as Egyptian beer. More hesitant on the Mongolian airag, but I’d probably give that a shot out of adventurism. The more commoner ones fascinate me more than the fancy elite beverages.
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel1995beer.pdf
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel1996beer.pdf
http://www.ancientgrains.org/samuel1996science.pdf
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel1999art.pdf
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel2000aemt.pdf
Plenty more at http://ancientgrains.org
...of which we have knowledge now.
Keeping it humble is a general challenge. However, one feels confident that human knowledge is still closer to the beginning than to the fullness of any macro, micro, or historical understanding of the universe.
Were we capable of observing this romantic past, one surmises that we'd be shocked at how normal and boring it all is. Modulo technology, Solmon's observation holds constant: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Eccl1:9)
For a start there is Göbekli Tepe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Göbekli Tepe was nearly as long before cuneiform writing as cuneiform was before now.
It's not really about cities. It's about cultures that wrote stuff down.
Images from the article for the earliest Sumerian writing forms look very similar to Göbekli.
Writing with pictures goes back a very very long way
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Shuruppak
But, I’d like to share my favorite, the Egyptian “The Instructions of Hardjedef”, supposedly written in the 25th century BC:
* Clean yourself in your own eyes before someone can clean you. * When you grow, build a house. * Take a wife who has mastered her heart and multiply. * You build for your children when you house yourself. * Build a strong house in the grave and a noble place where the sun sets. * Death lowers us, life lifts us. * The house of death is for life.
That last line, that the house of death is for life, suggests that the tombs were for the living, to support memories, traditions and cultural continuity. It makes tomb building less of a selfish affair.
Several other regions of the world have extremely rich traditions, oral traditions of literature, predating by centuries events of the Middle East.
Secondly, I think it's a fair assumption that there were oral traditions long before the invention of writing, but this is likely true for people living in the Middle East, or elsewhere. And as a sidenote, how can you prove the existence of extremely rich oral traditions?
The brahman was the reciter of hymns from the atharvaveda who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made.
So at least when it comes to accuracy, it was very resilient.
I think my history teacher also mentioned something similar for the Jewish priesthood.
It is just that we don't know anything about oral traditions thousands of years ago, since they leave no archeological trace. What we can know about is what is written down on durable material, and Sumer happens to have some of the very oldest surviving writing.
Stories are probably as old as language, but this is pure speculation.
Isn't that contradictory? You have oral traditions, and then you have literature ("literature" means written work)
Caveats:
* There are still gaps in the text. You're going to have to fill in the blanks in places.
* The story is from a distant cultural context that feels alien in a way that Greek stories don't.
Be aware that is is only partially preserved, so there is a lot of missing passages in the text which may make it a jumpy and somewhat confusing read compared to say Homer.