The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1200–1101 BC
2 works
c. 1200 BC
Egyptian
Amenemope son of Kanakht
Thirty chapters of counsel for an official: do not move the boundary stone, do not lean on the scales or falsify the weights, do not befriend the hot-tempered man, and do not strain to seek excess — for wealth makes itself wings like geese and flies away.
standard version c. 1200 BC; older material from c. 2100 BC
Akkadian
Sin-leqi-unninni
A king and the wild man sent to match him become friends, kill a monster and a bull, and then one of them dies. Gilgamesh, unable to accept it, crosses the waters of death to find the survivor of the flood, who tells him how the gods sent it, how he built the boat and sent out the dove, the swallow, and the raven — and who cannot give him what he came for.
2 of 1780 works