Early Bronze Age: 3rd millennium BCE (approximate dates shown). The earliest written literature dates from about 2600 BCE (classical Sumerian).[2] The earliest literary author known by name is Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess and public figure dating to ca. the 24th century BCE.[3]
Certain literary texts are difficult to date, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which was recorded in the Papyrus of Ani around 1240 BCE, but other versions of the book probably date from about the 18th century BCE.
Sanskrit:Kālidāsa (speculated): Abhijñānaśākuntalam (अभिज्ञान शाकुन्तलम्, "The Recognition of Shakuntala"), Meghadūta (मेघदूत, "Cloud Messenger"), Vikramōrvaśīyam (विक्रमोर्वशीयम्, "Urvashi Won by Valour", play)
^
Karimi, Edith (2016). Mimetische Bildung durch Märchen: Phantasie, Narration, Moral [Mimetic education through Märchen: phantasy, narration, morality]. European Studies in Education (in German). 34. Münster: Waxmann Verlag. p. 110. ISBN9783830984726. Retrieved 2018-10-25. Manche Märchen ordnet [August] Nitschke den Jägern und Hirten der letzten Eiszeit zu, andere den Bauern und Fischern im Mesolithikum, wieder andere den Seefahrern der Meglithgesellschaft oder den Helden der Indogermanen. [August Nitschke assigns many fairy-tales to the hunters and herders of the last Ice Age, other ones to the farmers and fisherfolk of the Mesolithic, and still other ones to the seafarers of the megalith cultures or to the heroes of the Indo-European peoples.]
^Oberlies (1998:155) gives an estimate of 1100 BCE for the youngest hymns in book 10. Estimates for a terminus post quem of the earliest hymns are far more uncertain. Oberlies (p. 158) based on 'cumulative evidence' sets wide range of 1700–1100
^Thorkild Jacobsen (1978). The treasures of darkness: a history of Mesopotamian religion. Yale University Press. pp. 167–168, 231. “Perhaps it was brought east with the Amorites of the First Dynasty of Babylon.”
^ abAlan Lenzi (2008). "The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions. 8 (2): 137–169. doi:10.1163/156921208786611764.
^according to ancient Jewish and Christian tradition, and some modern scholars; see above inline citations.
^Josephus, Flavius (1926). "11:8". The Life. Against Apion. (Loeb Classical Library). Loeb Classical Library. p. 448. ISBN978-0-674-99205-4. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another (as the Greeks have) but only 22 books, which are justly believed to be divine; and of them, five belong to Moses, which contain his laws, and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.
^Stuart, Douglas K (2006). New American Commentary Vol. II: Exodus. Holman Reference. p. 826. ISBN978-0-8054-0102-8.
^RA Torrey, ed. (1994). "I-XI". The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (11th ed.). Baker Academic. ISBN978-0-8010-1264-8.
^Hoffmeier, James K (1999). Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition. Oxford University Press. p. 280. ISBN978-0-19-513088-1.
^Zvelebil, Kamil (1973). The Smile of Murugan on Tamil literature of South India. Leiden: Brill. ISBN9789004035911.
^The Consolation of Philosophy (Oxford World's Classics), Introduction (2000)
^Dante placed Boethius the “last of the Romans and first of the Scholastics” among the doctors in his Paradise (see The Divine Comedy).