The Bible? Hamlet? What would be your guess? English is far from being the oldest language out there, but it has been around for an awful long time. Translations of stories from before the English language allow you to read something several thousands of years old. Or, do you have the distinct pleasure of having read an exceptionally old tome, like a family heirloom or out-of-print book? Share your experiences here.
The Oldest Book I’ve Read
I took a course on ancient British literature in college, which required a deep dive into Beowulf. It’s considered to be the oldest surviving story originally written in the English language, around 700 or 750 AD. English was pretty different back then, but it still counts.
The record of the New Testament portion of the Bible goes back about 2000 years, and almost everyone in the modern world has heard at least a little bit of cultural awareness of verses or stories from it. As its name implies, the Old Testament is older, but it was an oral record long before it was a written one, so does that count as being significantly older?
Ancient Greek gives us Homer’s Odyssey, but what about ancient Egyptian? Have you ever read anything translated out of a language that old? I’m not sure there is much of a narrative nature, but there have to be some, right?
I believe the traditional thought is that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving story of any kind of literary nature. Some religious texts could be earlier. I didn’t read the entire epic poem, but I remember the story paces. If you have read it too, congratulations! You’re helping do an incredible thing by keeping some of the oldest storytelling alive across thousands of years. It makes me wonder how long some stories will last.
I wrote a Book!
Look at me, mentioning my own work alongside some of the most notable written works of all time like some kind of desperate indie author! Well, that’s what I am. I wrote a fantasy novel called Withered Kingdom, and I’m using this blog to tell people about it. Here’s an ad I recently created for it:
If you can’t spare the cash to buy my book right now, please share my blog posts and other content from my social links below. It’s totally free and helps readers discover my story! You’d be doing me a much bigger favor than you know!
The Phyronian Chronicle 
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