When was the first book written?

Answer

Hi Steve,

In the past, of course, there were no books as we have them now. The printing press is less than a thousand years old. Before that, there were manuscripts that were copied over and over by monks and that could be used for scholars to study and read aloud. After all, the common people couldn’t even read.

But the earliest evidence of writing is about 5,000 years old and comes from Egypt and Mesopotamia. This is archaeological evidence of stones and tablets in which writing marks were scratched. Using physical dating methods and the context of the excavation site, the age of such characters can still be determined fairly accurately.

The oldest surviving texts that can more or less be considered a story are about 4000 to 4500 years old and they all come from Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Egypt. One of those stories is about Etana, a legendary Sumerian king who desperately wanted a child. He eventually had a son with the help of an eagle whom he saved from death. A text about Etana is said to be 4600 years old, but not much has survived.

The oldest ‘book’ from European soil is the Iliad. This story may have been written about 2700 years ago in Greece. Together with the Old Testament, which is even more than 3000 years old, it forms the oldest basis for European literary history.

Ward