Oldest Religious texts

[Kowalski]

Would anbody be suprised to learn they come from Egypt ? take yourself down to the Egyptian mythology forum, and I've posted a little piece there. I haven't talked much about Egypt, but I have been studying this subject for twenty years.

If you know of any older texts, I'd be suprised to learn of them.

Cheers

K

 

[Sunstone]

What about texts from Sumer? Aren't some of those, like the tale of Gilgamesh, older than Egyptian texts?

 

[Kowalski]

I think the Gilgamesh tale is Babylonian, and later. The Pyramid texts represent the first written corpus of what we would call Religious texts, in so far as they are concerned with the King, the Gods (Living God) and his jounrney to the Afterlife, where he would continue to exert a beneficial influnce upon Egypt.

Cheers

K

 

[Sunstone]

There's a Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic, but there are also earlier versions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

 

[Darkdale]

I think the Gilgamesh tale is Babylonian, and later. The Pyramid texts represent the first written corpus of what we would call Religious texts, in so far as they are concerned with the King, the Gods (Living God) and his jounrney to the Afterlife, where he would continue to exert a beneficial influnce upon Egypt.

Cheers

K

From what I've read the Pyramid texts are indeed the oldest "religious texts".

 

[Kowalski]

Yes, thanks. There are texts from Sumer, but they aren't of the type you find in the Pyramid texts which give us our earliest written record of an evolved and evolving theology, as I said, they are a mixture of Archaic, and up to the minute Fourth Dynasty thinking. It's in the Fourth Dynasty that the Kings first adopt the title. s3-r', Son of Ra, ie Son of the Sun (God)

K