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The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
Spitzer Manuscript folio 383 fragment. This Buddhist Sanskrit text was written on both sides of the palm leaf (recto and verso). [1]The Spitzer Manuscript is the oldest surviving philosophical manuscript in Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit, [2] [3] and possibly the oldest discovered Buddhist Sanskrit manuscript of any type related to Buddhism.
An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text date to c. 1500 BC, [1] while the oldest known manuscripts date to c. 1040 AD. [2] Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD. [3]
The oldest text of the entire Christian Bible, including the New Testament, is the Codex Sinaiticus dating from the 4th century CE, with its Old Testament a copy of a Greek translation known as the Septuagint. The oldest extant manuscripts of the vocalized Masoretic Text date to the 9th century CE. [1]
The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls).
The oldest manuscripts were written in a form of scroll, the medieval manuscripts usually were written in a form of codex. The late manuscripts written after the 9th century use the Masoretic Text. The important manuscripts are associated with Aaron ben Asher (especially Leningrad/Petrograd Codex). [1]
Codex Gigas, the largest manuscript of the World, 13th century; Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century; Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, 4th century; Codex Bezae, 5th century; Codex Washingtonianus, 4th or 5th century; Dead Sea scrolls; Freising manuscripts, 10th century; The Garland of Howth, late 9th to early 10th centuries; Gospels of Tsar Ivan ...
The scroll is written in Hebrew and contains the entire Book of Isaiah from beginning to end, apart from a few small damaged portions. [2] It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, being approximately 1000 years older than the previous oldest Hebrew manuscripts known before the scrolls' discovery.