7 ms·

What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?

77 points by diodorus 8y ago

sillyquiet 8y ago
Just for interest, of the set of mutually intelligible Germanic dialects we lump into 'Old English', it was the West Saxon flavor that most of the works referenced in the article are written in.
lostconfused 8y ago
The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.
- dkersten 8y ago
  I was also expecting it to be about much older texts, but I guess that was a reading comprehension failure on my part since it did say "books" and not, for example, "stone tablets". As someone who has been (very, very slowly) reading the translations of ancient Sumerian texts, I was kinda hoping this would be about those. But Sumerians didn't write "books".
  - ashrk 8y ago
    You got any suggestions for the Sumerian works? I've read The Literature of Ancient Sumer, and made it through, but didn't enjoy it at all and nothing stuck. Attempted From Distant Days (Akkadian literature) but just couldn't do it. Book was poorly put together and it was pretty much the same stuff as the Sumerian book I'd just finished, which wasn't a huge surprise but man that book is bad. I read all three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature first, though, so that may have spoiled me. It's dry as hell but way better than either of those other volumes. Was good enough that I remember quite a few details and individual works from it years later, unlike those. I've got about seven volumes of ultra-early literature (the last 1.5 or so of Lichtheim aren't that early), six of which I've read or attempted (haven't made it to the Indian philosophy sourcebook yet, some of which is quite old) and of them the only one I'd recommend to the general reader is Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh, which was entirely excellent and so wildly better than any of the other Mesopotamian work from that time that I suspect Mitchell embellished heavily (IIRC reviews indicate he didn't, but still) or the modern version of the work was much improved by the time any of the copies or large fragments we have were written/chiseled. It's crazy good. A couple later Egyptian tales were of similar (though definitely lesser) quality but absolutely nothing else Sumerian or Akkadian's even got a hint of anything like that, from what I've seen. I'm not sure I'd recommend the Sumerian or Akkadian collections to anyone, really, unless that's their specialty in which case they don't need me to recommend things to them. It's possible I just chose poor collections, though. Certainly the Akkadian one was no good, though I'm not sure there's any better in English.
    - dkersten 8y ago
      I've listed the books I have below. I haven't read much of them yet (its slow going). The one that I'm currently in the process of reading is "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley. I like it so far, but its not an easy read. It gives you a relatively direct translation of the Sumerian texts, so there are many missing fragments (tablets found in different cities tended to have slightly different versions of the same stories, so you couldn't use them to complete missing bits from tablets from another city). This makes it time consuming to read, but does give you an accurate picture. The books I have and am slowly trying to get through are: "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley "History Begins At Sumer" by Samuel Noah Kramer "Guide To Understanding Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cananite And Phoenician Tablets, Slabs, Symbols And Cuneiform Inscriptions" by Maximiliien de Lafayette "Cuneiform" by Irving Fincel and Jonathan Taylor "Sumerian Mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer "Introduction to Sumerian Grammar" by Daniel Foxvog I'm not far enough through all of them to be able to properly compare and haven't read any other books, so I'm not sure if I would recommend them or not. The Cuneiform book was fun (if you're interested in Cuneiform) as cuneiform is easy to write and I was able to write my name phonetically :)
- vixen99 8y ago
  its contents
ForHackernews 8y ago
I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
- dmreedy 8y ago
  There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time. One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!" The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are nothing like me, and here's what they felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc" Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be completely empathetic to it, but at least you can learn to be sympathetic.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    I guess that's true, but IMHO Beowulf tells you nothing about what those ancient people felt. Not a single one of the characters has any inner life or motivation, it's just a chronicle of monster-slaying. You might as well read a poorly written comic book.
    - jack6e 8y ago
      What? This is entirely untrue, and I feel bad that you had a teacher or reading experience that did not focus on how much inner life, motivation, and emotion are in this poem. I have had the exact opposite experience: people think of Beowulf as a monster-fighting action poem and are disappointed or surprised when they read it and discover most of the content is songs, conversation, historical reminiscences, and not-fighting. Take as just one brief example these passages from XXXIV lines 52-7 and XXXV lines 5-7 [0]: So to hoar-headed hero ’tis heavily crushing To live to see his son as he rideth Young on the gallows: then measures he chanteth, A song of sorrow, when his son is hanging For the raven’s delight, and aged and hoary He is unable to offer any assistance. Every morning his offspring’s departure Is constant recalled ... So the helm of the Weders Hrethel grieves for Herebald. Mindful of Herebald heart-sorrow carried, Stirred with emotion, nowise was able To wreak his ruin on the ruthless destroyer This is a description of an experience almost (but not totally) unknown in modern American/western culture. To dmreedy's point, this captures the duality that on the one hand, these were humans just like us, and fathers who have lost sons violently in war or crime who are weighed down with the burden of that grief and the inability to do anything, to take any vengeance, can probably identify with this ancient father. These words can be a foil that gives voice to their own hearts. On the other hand, we can consider how different Anglo-Saxon society was by looking at the culture of vengeance and reciprocal warfare that resulted in this son's death. Very few of us even experience war, much less can imagine a life in which we expect every spring/summer to be attacked by, or to go out and attack, some neighboring city. What forces shaped society to develop those systems? How can we prevent returning to that? What was good about life then - what did the people enjoy, and what was evil? These are all questions that are worth asking and trying to answer. But we only get to explore those questions if we approach these texts, as the article's author states, as texts with presence in time and place, creations of real people from a certain time, encoding their particular moment with all its similarities and differences to ours. Lastly, it does sound better in Old English [1]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm#XXXIV https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm#XX... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROghKY1jmuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROghKY1jmuE (edit for formatting)
SubiculumCode 8y ago
It must be pointed out that the title is misleading as the article's subject matter is restricted to several books from western Europe.
adictator 8y ago
By "Us", if you mean mankind then our oldest "books" are probably the Vedas — the Santana Dharma scriptures. Sanatana incidentally means "eternal" & Sanatana Dharma is the original name for Hinduism, Dharma loosely translated as "Law" - a law that can be applied to philosophy, ethics, logic, physics, cosmos, chemistry, medical etc. But surprisingly & quite disappointingly, the hackernews crowd is quite ignorant of such facts.
forkLding 8y ago
Thought they meant ancient books from the whole world from all the old civilizations like Egyptians, Roman etc.

77 points by diodorus 8y ago

Just for interest, of the set of mutually intelligible Germanic dialects we lump into 'Old English', it was the West Saxon flavor that most of the works referenced in the article are written in.

lostconfused 8y ago

The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.

dkersten 8y ago
I was also expecting it to be about much older texts, but I guess that was a reading comprehension failure on my part since it did say "books" and not, for example, "stone tablets". As someone who has been (very, very slowly) reading the translations of ancient Sumerian texts, I was kinda hoping this would be about those. But Sumerians didn't write "books".
- ashrk 8y ago
  You got any suggestions for the Sumerian works? I've read The Literature of Ancient Sumer, and made it through, but didn't enjoy it at all and nothing stuck. Attempted From Distant Days (Akkadian literature) but just couldn't do it. Book was poorly put together and it was pretty much the same stuff as the Sumerian book I'd just finished, which wasn't a huge surprise but man that book is bad. I read all three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature first, though, so that may have spoiled me. It's dry as hell but way better than either of those other volumes. Was good enough that I remember quite a few details and individual works from it years later, unlike those. I've got about seven volumes of ultra-early literature (the last 1.5 or so of Lichtheim aren't that early), six of which I've read or attempted (haven't made it to the Indian philosophy sourcebook yet, some of which is quite old) and of them the only one I'd recommend to the general reader is Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh, which was entirely excellent and so wildly better than any of the other Mesopotamian work from that time that I suspect Mitchell embellished heavily (IIRC reviews indicate he didn't, but still) or the modern version of the work was much improved by the time any of the copies or large fragments we have were written/chiseled. It's crazy good. A couple later Egyptian tales were of similar (though definitely lesser) quality but absolutely nothing else Sumerian or Akkadian's even got a hint of anything like that, from what I've seen. I'm not sure I'd recommend the Sumerian or Akkadian collections to anyone, really, unless that's their specialty in which case they don't need me to recommend things to them. It's possible I just chose poor collections, though. Certainly the Akkadian one was no good, though I'm not sure there's any better in English.
  - dkersten 8y ago
    I've listed the books I have below. I haven't read much of them yet (its slow going). The one that I'm currently in the process of reading is "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley. I like it so far, but its not an easy read. It gives you a relatively direct translation of the Sumerian texts, so there are many missing fragments (tablets found in different cities tended to have slightly different versions of the same stories, so you couldn't use them to complete missing bits from tablets from another city). This makes it time consuming to read, but does give you an accurate picture. The books I have and am slowly trying to get through are: "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley "History Begins At Sumer" by Samuel Noah Kramer "Guide To Understanding Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cananite And Phoenician Tablets, Slabs, Symbols And Cuneiform Inscriptions" by Maximiliien de Lafayette "Cuneiform" by Irving Fincel and Jonathan Taylor "Sumerian Mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer "Introduction to Sumerian Grammar" by Daniel Foxvog I'm not far enough through all of them to be able to properly compare and haven't read any other books, so I'm not sure if I would recommend them or not. The Cuneiform book was fun (if you're interested in Cuneiform) as cuneiform is easy to write and I was able to write my name phonetically :)
vixen99 8y ago
its contents

ForHackernews 8y ago

I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.

dmreedy 8y ago
There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time. One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!" The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are nothing like me, and here's what they felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc" Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be completely empathetic to it, but at least you can learn to be sympathetic.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  I guess that's true, but IMHO Beowulf tells you nothing about what those ancient people felt. Not a single one of the characters has any inner life or motivation, it's just a chronicle of monster-slaying. You might as well read a poorly written comic book.
  - jack6e 8y ago
    What? This is entirely untrue, and I feel bad that you had a teacher or reading experience that did not focus on how much inner life, motivation, and emotion are in this poem. I have had the exact opposite experience: people think of Beowulf as a monster-fighting action poem and are disappointed or surprised when they read it and discover most of the content is songs, conversation, historical reminiscences, and not-fighting. Take as just one brief example these passages from XXXIV lines 52-7 and XXXV lines 5-7 [0]: So to hoar-headed hero ’tis heavily crushing To live to see his son as he rideth Young on the gallows: then measures he chanteth, A song of sorrow, when his son is hanging For the raven’s delight, and aged and hoary He is unable to offer any assistance. Every morning his offspring’s departure Is constant recalled ... So the helm of the Weders Hrethel grieves for Herebald. Mindful of Herebald heart-sorrow carried, Stirred with emotion, nowise was able To wreak his ruin on the ruthless destroyer This is a description of an experience almost (but not totally) unknown in modern American/western culture. To dmreedy's point, this captures the duality that on the one hand, these were humans just like us, and fathers who have lost sons violently in war or crime who are weighed down with the burden of that grief and the inability to do anything, to take any vengeance, can probably identify with this ancient father. These words can be a foil that gives voice to their own hearts. On the other hand, we can consider how different Anglo-Saxon society was by looking at the culture of vengeance and reciprocal warfare that resulted in this son's death. Very few of us even experience war, much less can imagine a life in which we expect every spring/summer to be attacked by, or to go out and attack, some neighboring city. What forces shaped society to develop those systems? How can we prevent returning to that? What was good about life then - what did the people enjoy, and what was evil? These are all questions that are worth asking and trying to answer. But we only get to explore those questions if we approach these texts, as the article's author states, as texts with presence in time and place, creations of real people from a certain time, encoding their particular moment with all its similarities and differences to ours. Lastly, it does sound better in Old English [1]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm#XXXIV https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm#XX... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROghKY1jmuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROghKY1jmuE (edit for formatting)

SubiculumCode 8y ago

It must be pointed out that the title is misleading as the article's subject matter is restricted to several books from western Europe.

adictator 8y ago

By "Us", if you mean mankind then our oldest "books" are probably the Vedas — the Santana Dharma scriptures. Sanatana incidentally means "eternal" & Sanatana Dharma is the original name for Hinduism, Dharma loosely translated as "Law" - a law that can be applied to philosophy, ethics, logic, physics, cosmos, chemistry, medical etc. But surprisingly & quite disappointingly, the hackernews crowd is quite ignorant of such facts.

forkLding 8y ago

Thought they meant ancient books from the whole world from all the old civilizations like Egyptians, Roman etc.