What Is the World's Oldest Book?

Books are both fragile physical objects and conceptual works as eternal as storytelling itself. Learn about the quest to find the oldest book in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/oldest-book-in-the-world.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Bolgabam here with today's question, what's
the oldest book in the world. At Bulgaria's National Museum
of History, there lives one top runner, a book comprising
six pages of beaten twenty four carrot gold covered with

(00:22):
a Truscan script, which is one of the few writing
systems that modern scholars have yet to fully comprehend, mostly
because there are so few lengthy examples of its surviving.
The book also features illustrations of a horse rider, a mermaid,
a harp and soldiers. According to reports, the book, exhibited
in two thousand three, was estimated at about two thousand,

(00:43):
five hundred years old, was found in southwestern Bulgaria in
an old tomb, and was donated to the museum by
the finder, who remained anonymous. Its age and authenticity were
confirmed by two independent scientists whose names also remain unknown.
This book is often cited as the world's oldest book
because it is the oldest book containing several pages that

(01:05):
we know about. There are older pages around, but not
bound together in any books, but the case isn't closed.
The question of what is the oldest book in the
world will likely never be answered. First, there's the question
of what exactly is a book? Books are slippery artifacts.
Think of your most read paperback novel. It has a

(01:28):
physical presence, a specific shape and form that fits on
a shelf and requires dusting. It also has a non
physical form, the story itself and what it means to
you and the memories and emotions it conjures. And so
is the book more of a physical presence or is
the content more important than the shape or do they
both play an equal role? And take it a step

(01:50):
further and ask what if your favorite book wasn't printed
but handwritten, and that's still a book. What about if
you read it on an electronic device or it was
narrated to you. If printing defined what a book was,
then the oldest book would be the Guttenberg Bible, printed
in about fourt Of course, that was printed with movable type.

(02:13):
Chinese cultures were printing pages of book like structures using
carved wood plates and simple presses hundreds of years before Guttenberg.
And then take the Egyptian pharaohs. Their scribes were creating
songs and prayers to them close to three thousand years ago,
but these were on papyrus scrolls, which could be considered
a book, albeit with only one very long page. When

(02:37):
writing the article this episode is based on the staff
at house stuff works dot Com interviewed Laurent Ferry, a
curator of rare books and manuscripts at Cornell University, about
all of this. He explained, these are questions scholars are
still wrestling with. For me, a book would be defined
by having a binding and supporting a world view by

(02:59):
this definition, and the collection of clay tablets maintained by Cornell,
also the largest collection in the world, wouldn't be considered
the world's oldest books. They aren't bound, and most are
legal proceedings or financial accountings, and don't espouse a worldview.
With his own definition in mind, for he said his

(03:19):
bet on the oldest books in the world would be
Homer's Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Indeed, the British
Museum's version of the Gilgamesh tale, written on clay tablets,
dates to about the seventh century d C. However, the
tablets aren't bound, so they're technically not a book in
that way, but they do come close, especially in the

(03:40):
sense that they propose a certain view of the world,
but we don't really know when the stories started or
how they evolved. For he said, this is another situation
to consider. These two stories are the product of a
very long oral tradition. We know roughly when the text
was fixed, but the stories pre existed the physical book,

(04:02):
and so the questions turn. Some people believe the Bible
was written shortly after the world was created, making it
necessarily the oldest book. Yet biblical scholars say the books
that make up the Bible were written over many hundreds
of years, and that many of the stories included in
it were set down centuries after the events that they
explore happened. Bringing religion or other worldviews into the question

(04:26):
begets more twists and turns. The eaching. The foundation book
for Daoist philosophy was allegedly written more than two thousand
years ago, and there are likely other more obscure religions
that claim to have a toe hold in centuries further
in the past, and that there are more recent printings
are merely modern manifestations of those ancient texts. For free,

(04:48):
the quest for the world's oldest book is just that
a quest, he said, If you find the oldest book,
you find, the oldest truth, the oldest revelation. This is
a rev elation of original things. This is what humans
always look for. So although today's question will likely never
be answered conclusively, this may not be a bad thing.

(05:12):
The simple asking of the question leads to insight, whether
from an archaeological perspective or a philosophical perspective, and it
addresses the ultimate point of books, whether they're on clay
tablets or online. Summed up by free we wouldn't be
human without books. Today's episode is based on the article

(05:35):
what is the oldest book in the World on how
stuff works dot com written by Eric Baxter. Brain Stuff
is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how
stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
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