LAOLONG

Is the i ching the oldest book in the world

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Could support that cuneiform tablets are our oldest and perhaps most closely related extant form of written words in a bound form, and so are closely related to what we call books now...   But I'd say cave drawings are the oldest 'books' in the sense that they are collections of symbols intended to communicate, preserve and share information for later use.

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The oldest corpus of texts is the Pyramid Texts dating from about 2345 BC - carved on the walls of the pyramid of King Unas (Wenis) - not a book exactly but since they show clear evidence of being copied from a master version which was probably on papyrus a book must have existed which probably dates back to at least 2500 BC.

 

The I Ching in the sense of the King Wen Judgements and the Duke of Zhou yaoci dates from about 1046 BC but of course the symbols and the art of divination probably far older - exact date unknown.

 

It all depends on what you count as being a book.

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