Ancient literature
The History of literature 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 such as the Rigveda may predate their fixation in written form by several centuries, or, in extreme cases, even millennia. In ancient Iran , Avesta and Gahani poems and Gathas were written about a millennium before Christmass. 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 scholars put it to the 10th century BC at the very earliest.
An early example is the so called Egyptian Book of the Dead Papyrus of Ani 250 BC but probably dates from about the 18th century BC .
List of ancient texts
Bronze Age
Early Bronze Age (3rd millennim BC) approximate dates shown
Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000 to 1600 BC) approximate dates shown
Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 to 1200 BC) approximate dates shown
Iron Age
Iron Age texts predating Classical Antiquity (12th to 8th centuries BC):
Classical Antiquity
See also Ancient Greek literature , Latin literature , Indian literature , Chinese literature
7th century BC
6th century BC
5th century BC :
The odes of Pindar
Yasht The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides The Suppliants The Persians Seven Against Thebes Oresteia Aeschylus Oedipus the King Oedipus at Colonus Antigone Electra 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 Euripides The Acharnians The Knights The Clouds The Wasps Peace The Birds Lysistrata Thesmophoriazusae The Frogs Ecclesiazousae Plutus Aristophanes The Five Classics Classic of Poetry Classic of History Book of Changes Classic of Rites Annals of Spring and Autumn Confucius )
composed over the time spanning roughly the 5th c. BC to the 4th c. AD: Sanskrit Epics (Mahabharata Ramayana 4th century BC :
Anabasis Cyropaedia Xenophon Nicomachean Ethics Metaphysics Aristotle Euthyphro Apology Crito Theaetetus Parmenides Symposium Phaedrus Protagoras Gorgias Meno Menexenus Republic Timaeus Plato Elements Euclid Book of Job (present form-- story is from at least 6th century) 3rd century BC :
2nd century BC :
Late Antiquity
References
See also
References
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