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Advice from a Royal Scribe to his Apprentice Middle Kingdom Egypt, Twelfth Dynasty
Nebmare-nakht
The Papyrus Lansing is a letter of instruction from the royal scribe (and “chief overseer of the cattle of Amun-Re, King of Gods”) Nebmare-nakht to his apprentice Wenemdiamun. It seems to ...
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Ancestor Worship and Human Sacrifice from the Shi Jing
Anonymous
During both the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1556-1046 BCE; 1046-256 BCE) families, both noble and common, worshipped and sacrificed to their ancestors. These sacrifices were of the utmost ...
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Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer
Anonymous
Composed in Akkadian and consisting of 480 lines distributed over four tablets, this poem is a protest against one man’s undeserved suffering. The author is tormented but cannot determine ...
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The Bhagavad Gita
Anonymous
The Bhagavad Gita comprises the sixth book, and is the central component, of the Mahabharata. Because it centers on the struggles between kings and princes, the Mahabharata can be read as a ...
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The Canon of Shun
Anonymous
Shun was thought to be one of the three “Sage Kings” who ruled China between 2852 and 2205 BCE, after the reign of the “Yellow Emperor.” The achievements of these kings are recorded—though ...
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The Epic of Gilgamesh
Anonymous
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the greatest literary work from ancient Mesopotamia. Its roots extend back to the earliest literary traditions at the end of the third millennium BCE (writing in ...
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Excerpts from the Book of Odes (Shi Jung)
Anonymous
Over 300 poems of various lengths were anthologized and transmitted by Confucius in the early fifth century BCE. Philosophers of the Confucian school cherished the Odes and cited them ...
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The Great Hymn to the Aten
King Akhenaten
This hymn to the Egyptian sun god Aten has been attributed to King Akhenaten (“the devoted adherent of Aten”), the Pharaoh formerly known as Amenhotep IV. While Akhenaten’s experiment in ...
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Hymn to Creation from The Rig Veda
Anonymous
The Rig Veda is the oldest of the Vedic texts, and consists of 1028 hymns. It was transmitted orally for centuries, and probably assumed its present shape c. 1200 BCE. There are three other ...
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Hymns to Agni, from the Rig-Veda, Book II
Anonymous
The worship of Agni, as the fire principle animating a burnt offering to the gods, features prominently in the Rig-Veda. The voice of Agni was thought be heard in the crackling of the fire ...
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Iron Sword with Jade Handle, Earliest Cast-Iron Object (Western Zhoe), from Henan Museum, Guo State, Sanmenxia City
Anonymous
When this sword was discovered in 1990, it challenged conventional wisdom about when and under what circumstances Chinese people made the first cast-iron object. The dating of the object to ...
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The Mystery of the Harappan Seals
Thomas R. Trautmann
Few things are more tantalizing to historians than an undeciphered script. Hundreds of broken and intact Harappan seals have been discovered in numerous sites throughout the Indus Valley, ...
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The Odyssey
Homer
The Odyssey as a literary work is a mixture of fact and fiction. It was composed around 800 BCE, but it may have originated even later. Authorship, composition date, and ...
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Quipu from the Caral-Supe Culture, Peru
Anonymous
Recent archaeological discoveries in the Caral-Supé valley have pushed back the timeline of cultural development in the Andes by several millennia. A fixture of later Incan culture, the ...
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Sketch of the Palace Complex at Knossos, Minoan Crete
Arthur Evans
In 1900, Sir Arthur Evans discovered the remains of a vast palace complex on the island of Crete in the southern Aegean Sea. Christening the civilization “Minoan” after the legendary King ...
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“The Unvarying Way”
Lao Tzu
“Laozi” is a title meaning “Old Child;” little is known about the historical reality that lay behind that accolade. It is perhaps fitting that Laozi is a mysterious figure, as the dao that ...
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