I Want To Catch Up On Some Old Reading

Cafe Society
1
      • really old reading.
  • So I was going to be hospital-sitting for someone in for a minor procedure, and I go shopping for a new book to read. As I am browsing I find a book on the Egyptian Papyrus, “Book Of The Dead”/“Book Of The Reawakening” (more accurately), for $13 from Dover publishing. I say “okay, that’s mildly strange”, and buy it.
  • The translation itself is a bit cryptic, but it is interesting to look at and the historical analysis (of the four different types of “books of the dead”) is interesting, in terms of how they apparently were passed down through time.
  • Any other books ike this? With some sort of a story, but created in truly ancient times? I searched Google for “oldest printed text” and got lots of Sumerian stuff and entries containing “Gilgamesh”, but am wondering what else is out there… how about Oriental material?.. what are any significant ancient Oriental written works?
    ~
2

The Epic of Gilgamesh is what you were getting hits for.

The Egyptian medical encyclopedias are the Ebers Papyrus and the Edwin Smith Papyrus; finding more than snippets of them is difficult. They’re awfully interesting.

I dunno. After the Bible and the ancient Greeks, my lit kinda doesn’t start till about 1000 years ago. Beowulf, Havelock the Dane, The Tale of Genji, the Mabinogion. I don’t know how old Talmudic writings get?

3

The Epic of Gilgamesh is what you were getting hits for.

The Egyptian medical encyclopedias are the Ebers Papyrus and the Edwin Smith Papyrus; finding more than snippets of them is difficult. They’re awfully interesting.

I dunno. After the Bible and the ancient Greeks, my lit kinda doesn’t start till about 1000 years ago. Beowulf, Havelock the Dane, The Tale of Genji, the Mabinogion. I don’t know how old Talmudic writings get? The Bhagavadgita? Confuscious? Tao Te Ching?

Here’s my advice: order the textbook “Readings in Ancient History” edited by Nels M. Bailkey.

4

Try the Rig Veda–Sankrit hymns from ~1200-900 BCE. Or so the back of my book says. There are about 1000 of them, but the Penguin edition only has 108. Which is plenty for me; but I enjoyed studying them.

5

Dang. I have to learn to proofread better. Sanskrit, duh.