| 1st | Top years in literature |
The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to several centuries after the invention of writing; to the mid 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Shuruppak and Urukagina, dating to ca. the 27th and 24th centuries BC, respectively.
Texts handed down by oral tradition such as the Hindu 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 around 1000 BC. 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 which was eventually written down in the Papyrus of Ani around 1240 BC, but other individuals' versions of the book probably date from about the 18th century BC.
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Iron Age texts predating Classical Antiquity (12th to 8th centuries BC):
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