I taught prehistory for a long time and got really tired of playing the, this is the first example of _______ game. It's fundamentally flawed unless you assume that we can ever know everything about anything, which is completely insane imnho. And it changed constantly for prehistoric artifacts which was awesome but super tiring.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
It sounds like the disagreement here is over the definition of literature. I generally regard wiktionary's fourth entry (high fiction) to be its definition, whereas this seems somewhere between that and the second (collected creative writing of a culture). I was shaking my head at most of the examples given. Now I see we are operating from two different foundations.<p>Maybe this is why so many arguments open with the cliche "Webster defines..."
It is still the oldest surviving Epic, a blockbuster if you like, even though it had several remakes by Akkadians and others.<p>edit: btw, I wish even a fraction of the current high-budget superhero movies had as good of a plot as Gilgamesh
Curiously, the "Pyramid Texts" the author cites were not incribed in pyramids. The pyramids are all unaccountably blank. The oldest stonework is of best quality: mirror finishes, perfect right angles and flat surfaces cut into the hardest of rock. Likewise, the biggest one-piece stone columns and statues are oldest. Later dynasties stacked their columns.<p>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.<p>But there must have been a real taboo about tagging pyramids, because none did them.<p>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.
I don't get why people are defining "literature" so narrowly as to exclude things like wisdom literature. Ecclesiastes isn't literature? Or the poetry of Hesiod? That's pretty eccentric.<p>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: <a href="https://theamericanscholar.org/fictions-revenge/" rel="nofollow">https://theamericanscholar.org/fictions-revenge/</a> .)
> Over the course of this period, Sumerian urban communities grew into the very first true cities anywhere on earth.<p>...of which we have knowledge now.<p>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.<p>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)
I love wisdom literature. The author gives the Instructions of Shurappak as the oldest literature on his list. Many maxims are metaphorical, like Pythagorean sayings.<p><a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Shuruppak" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Shuruppak</a><p>But, I’d like to share my favorite, the Egyptian “The Instructions of Hardjedef”, supposedly written in the 25th century BC:<p>* 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.<p>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.
This article has a sensationalist headline, but it reiterates the old thought — that everything began in the Middle East.<p>Several other regions of the world have extremely rich traditions, oral traditions of literature, predating by centuries events of the Middle East.
Really don't like the author or his writing style. It reeks of academic superiority complex. If you are in history and cannot admit that much of history is built on very flimsy and thin evidence and at least admit there is some merit to alternative theories you are just a snob.
Simple question: Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories we have. Is it good? Is it worth reading today? Or is just just preserved for history's sake? Actually curious