Oldest surviving things Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ Is Not the Oldest Surviving Work of Literature

If you think you know one thing about the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, then, chances are, you probably think that the epic is the oldest surviving work of literature in the whole world. This claim pervades basically all non-academic discussion of the epic. I was taught it in my history and literature classes all throughout my K-12 education, it is endlessly repeated on the internet, and, whenever I happen to talk to someone about the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is usually one of the first claims to come up.

The truth, however, is that the standard Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (which is what most people mean when they talk about the Epic of Gilgamesh) is not even close to being the oldest surviving work of literature. In fact, it’s not even the oldest surviving poem about Gilgamesh.

Who Was the First God?

All the historical evidence that is currently available strongly suggests that humans have been believing in and worshipping deities for a very long time. The worship of deities almost certainly predates the advent of writing by tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands. Given this ancient history, it comes as no surprise that many people have wondered who the oldest deity or deities were.

In this post, I will explore some of the oldest deities that humans are known to have worshipped, starting with possible examples from the Upper Paleolithic and continuing through the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Finally, I will conclude with the very earliest deities whose names are directly attested in writing in ancient Sumer in the Late Uruk Period (lasted c. 3500 – c. 3100 BCE).

How Difficult Is It to Determine If an Ancient Artwork Is Authentic?

Fake ancient artifacts are all over the antiquities market. For a layperson with no expertise in ancient art, telling the difference between a bust created by a forger to look like an ancient bust and a real ancient bust is virtually impossible. For a trained expert, it is easy to spot certain obvious forgeries, but there are still many forgeries out there that are good enough to fool even the best experts.

The antiquities market, though, is incredibly sketchy at the best of times and downright illegal at the worst of times. If you’re trying to buy ancient artifacts, forgeries should be the least of your worries.

What Was the First Novel?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about when the novel as a literary form developed. Many people think that the novel arose at some point during the Early Modern Period (lasted c. 1450 – c. 1750). Many works dating to this period, such as Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and Le Morte d’Arthur are often cited as “the first novel.” The popular perception, however, is incorrect.

The novel as a literary form definitely dates at least as far back as the second century BC and probably dates to long before that. Not a single one of the works usually cited as “the first novel” is even close to being old enough to actually be “the first novel.”

The fact is, we don’t know exactly what the first novel was, but, since we have record of works that can only be described as novels dating as far back as at least the second century BC, anything written within the past 2,200 years can’t possibly be “the first novel.”

Here Are Some of the Most Ancient Christmas Carols

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is singing carols with my family. Nowadays, we tend to think of many of our carols as being extremely old and traditional. After all, as I discuss in this article I wrote about the history of Santa Claus, even the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—arguably one of the least traditional Christmas songs—is over seventy years old. Nonetheless, most of the songs we know today are actually relatively young compared to some of the other songs that have been sung historically. Few of the songs we know today were composed before the nineteenth century.

Here I have collected a few of my favorite extremely old Christmas songs, some of which date all the way back to the Middle Ages. I have gathered songs from places as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, late medieval Spain, Renaissance Finland and Sweden, and Early Modern England. All of these songs were composed before the nineteenth century and nearly all of them were originally composed in languages other than English. Enjoy!

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?

Nearly everyone loves music and the ancient Greeks loved music as much as anyone. Many of the poems that have survived to us from ancient Greece are actually song lyrics that were originally meant to be sung. Unfortunately, nearly all ancient Greek music has been irretrievably lost; no one alive will ever hear the original choruses of Aischylos, Sophokles, or Euripides sung with their original melodies.

Remarkably, though, a number of ancient Greek musical compositions have survived to the present day with musical notation, allowing us to reconstruct their original melodies—or at least something reasonably close to their original melodies. These few surviving compositions offer us a tiny window into a world of music that has been gone for well over a thousand years.

A Life of Herodotos

The ancient Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos is renowned today as the “Father of History,” a title that was first conferred on him by the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BC) in his dialogue On the Laws. Herodotos is often credited with having been the first person to methodically collect and critically analyze different accounts of events from different sources, compile them into a detailed historical narrative, and attempt to assess the causes of those events and analyze the motives and politics behind them.

Herodotos did these things in a book in nine volumes titled Ἱστορίαι (Historíai), meaning “researches” or “inquiries,” describing his research on the Greco-Persian Wars and their historical context. It is from the title of Herodotos’s book that we have gotten our English word history. Ironically, even though Herodotos has contributed so much to our understanding of history, very little is known about Herodotos’s own, personal history. In this article, I intend to discuss what is known about Herodotos’s own life.

Misconceptions about Ancient Greek Drama

Most high school students in the United States read at least one work of ancient Greek drama at some point in one of their English classes and, when they do, they are usually taught lots of Greek words like tragedy, comedy, hubris, and hamartia. Unfortunately, a lot of these terms have been egregiously misunderstood over the years and do not actually mean what many English teachers—and consequently English students—think they mean.

Not only are Greek terms often misunderstood; so are the Greek plays themselves. One of the most commonly taught Greek plays is Oidipous Tyrannos (Oedipus Tyrannus). Partly on account of its popularity, this particular play has been widely misunderstood by English teachers and students alike.

Some of these misunderstandings can even prevent students from fully appreciating Greek drama, so I think it is worthwhile to address them here. Below I address some of the most widespread misconceptions about Greek drama.

What Did the Ancient Greeks Contribute to Modern Civilization? A Lot, It Turns Out.

Most people are aware that the ancient Greeks made a lot of significant contributions to modern civilization, but not everyone knows exactly what they contributed. I cannot possibly hope to list all of the ancient Greek contributions to civilization here, since I could write a whole book on the subject and still not cover everything. Nonetheless, here are just a few of the ancient Greeks’ most famous—and, indeed, most obvious—contributions. These are numbered in no particular order:

Fascinating Ancient Artifacts

It is true that very little has survived from our classical past, but sometimes the objects that have survived can amaze us. When we see ancient artifacts in museums, we often like to imagine that they might have been touched by someone truly famous, but, with a few rare objects, we know that they were.

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