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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.
Primary sources in classical studies include all the literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence from the ancient world.Ancient literary sources such as Livy's History of Rome and Plutarch's Parallel Lives, even though they relied on even older literary sources, are considered primary sources for the purposes of classical studies.
This wall painting found in the Roman city of Pompeii is an example of a primary source about people in Pompeii in Roman times (portrait of Terentius Neo).. In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time ...
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 Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known surviving law code. It is from Mesopotamia and is written on tablets, in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE . It contains strong statements of royal power like "I eliminated enmity, violence, and cries for justice."
Ancient literature comprises religious and scientific documents, tales, poetry and plays, royal edicts and declarations, and other forms of writing that were recorded on a variety of media, including stone, clay tablets, papyri, palm leaves, and metal.
For broader world history, recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BCE, and it coincides with the invention of writing. For some geographic regions or cultures , written history is limited to a relatively recent period in human history because of the limited use of written records.
In the study of history as an academic discipline, a "primary source" (also called an "original source") is a first hand account of events by someone who lived through them. "Primary sources were made during the historical period that is being investigated." [3]