The first alphabet letters: the Canaanite alphabet Early Canaanite alphabet Each of the letters of the early Canaanite alphabet was the first sound of the most ordinary words in their language. The [...]
A Parthian noblewoman This is a story from the Parthian Empire, but the earliest written version that we still have is by the Islamic poet Gorgani, about 1050 AD: King Mobad of Marv saw the beautiful [...]
Sohrab and Rustem: The death of Sohrab (Iranian painting) Where did this story come from? This story is probably an old Indo-European story that Persian people told even before they moved south into Iran [...]
This inscription from Kandahar, in Afghanistan, has Greek writing at the top, translated into the Aramaic alphabet at the bottom. The Mauryan Indian king Ashoka put it up about 258 BC. [...]
Cuneiform writing (now in LACMA, Los Angeles) Early Sumerian writing West Asia is probably the first place in the world where people figured out how to write. (Though Egyptian people began writing [...]
Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fight the monster Humbaba, on an Assyrian cylinder seal from the 600s BC The real king Gilgamesh The Epic of Gilgamesh is [...]
Enheduanna wrote this poem - this is a later copy of it, in cuneiform on a clay tablet Was Enheduanna her name? Nobody knows Enheduanna's real name, if she had [...]
Aramaic language: Comparing different ancient alphabets When did Aramaic get going? As people began to settle down in towns in West Asia, about 4000 BC, they began to speak differently from their [...]
Egyptian temple to Hathor at Serabit in the Sinai Early Writing Before about 1800 BC, all people in the world wrote using pictures that each stood for a word or a [...]
Ottoman literature: A copy of one of Mustafa Ali's books, from about 1600 AD Ottoman literature in the 1500s and 1600s Despite the lack of printing presses, some writers and [...]
