Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 April 13

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April 13

What was the first book ever written?

Basically just that. 2600:8801:1A00:6E0:2CFE:977F:DD21:2E1 (talk) 02:56, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

• See: History of books (It depends on what you consider to be "books").

In the fourth millennium BCE, cuneiform clay tablets originated as a form of record keeping; by the third millennium BCE, they included such things as poetry. The Epic of Gilgamesh or the Mahabharata is generally considered as being the first (known) "book". (Dating is often problematic for archeologists, which is why they seldom get married.)

Using the definition of a book as bound multi-page text, the earliest known surviving book might be one known as the 'Etruscan Gold Book'.^{[1],[2], [3]} 107.15.157.44 (talk) 04:44, 13 April 2020 (UTC) Edit:09:57, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

The thing is, a "book" didn't even used to be written in a format that would be recognizable today. Longer texts used to just be written on really long scrolls; what we think of as a "book" is really more formally called a codex, which is a format relatively recently introduced. Perhaps the OP means the "oldest work consisting of bound sheets of paper" when saying "the first book ever written", which would be sometime during the Roman Empire; the article on the codex notes references to the format dating from the 1st century AD, and that the format was widespread among early Christian and Gnostic scholars in the 2nd century AD. That article notes using two libraries as reference points, one from 79 AD where all of the texts were in scroll format, and one in 390 AD where all of the texts were in codex format. That kinda gives some bookends on when the transition from scrolls to codices occurred in the Western world. The oldest extant codex is (I believe) the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, a fragment of the Gospel of John from the 2nd century AD. That same article notes that the codex form was adopted at a later date in both East Asia and in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. --Jayron32 16:54, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, "The history of the book came into existence in the latter half of the 20th century." Maybe someone who understands what that is supposed to convey could clarify it.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:54, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

That would be a good question to ask Drmies (talk · contribs).[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:28, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

From reading other parts of the article, I think it's trying to convey that the history of books starte tod became a significant field of study around then. But I agree it needs re-wording. Nil Einne (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

It depends on what a "book" is. We describe the Chinese Classic of Poetry as a poetry collection dating to the 11th to 7th centuries BC; the Yi Zhou Shu as a textual history from the Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) era; and the I Ching as a “divination manual” dating back to 1,000-750 BC. However, Cuneiform writing dates back to fourth millennium BC Egypt. DOR (HK) (talk) 11:31, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I think you mean fourth millennium BC Sumer... --Jayron32 13:02, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

The other thing to consider is that the earliest forms of writing, in most civilizations, consist basically of accounting ledgers. Like a symbol for someone's name followed by a cow and a few numeric symbols meaning "So-and-so owes the government 4 cows in taxes" and stuff like that. Narrative text comes much later; the oldest narrative text is not in cuneiform, but rather in hieroglyphs, and is the Pyramid Texts, which consists of a series of prayers and the like, and while they are poetic and narrative, aren't the sort of thing one would call a book. --Jayron32 13:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

This is certainly true if we define the count noun "civilization" as "a society that keeps accounting ledgers" :).  --Lambiam 13:26, 14 April 2020 (UTC)