What Is the Oldest Poem in the World?
Quick answer: What is the oldest poem in the world? The Epic of Gilgamesh usually takes the title, though Sumerian temple hymns from around 2600 BCE are older still.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, composed in Mesopotamia with its earliest Sumerian poems dating to around 2100 BCE, is usually named the oldest surviving poem in the world. Strictly speaking, though, some shorter Sumerian works are older still: the Kesh Temple Hymn and the Instructions of Shuruppak survive on tablets from around 2600 BCE. Which one wins the title depends on whether you count a fragmentary hymn or insist on a substantial literary work.
Poetry itself is far older than any of these. Verse existed for millennia as an oral technology, its rhythm and repetition designed to make knowledge memorable before writing existed. The oldest poem we have is really just the oldest one that happened to be pressed into clay that survived.
Gilgamesh: the oldest great poem
The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a king of Uruk who, shattered by the death of his friend Enkidu, travels to the ends of the earth seeking immortality and comes home with something wiser: the knowledge that meaning lives in mortal life. It grew from separate Sumerian poems into a unified Akkadian epic, with the most complete version, the twelve tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, dating to the seventh century BCE.
What startles modern readers is how contemporary its concerns feel. Grief, the fear of death, the consolations of friendship, even a great flood story that predates the biblical one. Four thousand years turn out to change the furniture, not the feelings.
The other record holders
The Kesh Temple Hymn and the Instructions of Shuruppak, both Sumerian and both attested around 2600 BCE, are the oldest written literature of any kind. Around 2300 BCE comes a different landmark: Enheduanna, a high priestess of Ur and daughter of Sargon of Akkad, whose hymns to the goddess Inanna make her the first author in history whose name we know. The first named poet in human history is a woman.
Other traditions hold their own ancient titles. The Pyramid Texts of Egypt date to around 2400 to 2300 BCE. The Sanskrit hymns of the Rigveda were composed around 1500 to 1200 BCE and transmitted orally with extraordinary precision for centuries before being written down. The oldest surviving love poem, a Sumerian piece often called the Love Song for Shu-Sin, dates to around 2000 BCE and reads like a wedding song.
Why the oldest literature is poetry, not prose
It is no accident that humanity's earliest surviving literature is verse. Before cheap writing surfaces, memory was the storage medium, and metre, rhyme and repetition are compression and error-correction for the human mind. A rhythmic line survives retelling; a loose paragraph mutates. Epics, laws, genealogies and farming advice were all versified because verse is what lasts.
That origin still explains poetry's power. The features that made a hymn survivable in 2600 BCE, strong rhythm, vivid images, memorable phrasing, are the same features judges and readers respond to now. When you tighten a line until it is memorable, you are using the oldest information technology we have.
What poets can take from this
- Read a modern translation of Gilgamesh; Sophus Helle's and Andrew George's are both excellent ways in.
- Look up Enheduanna if you want a genuinely startling fact: the first named poet is a woman from 2300 BCE.
- Notice how ancient poems use repetition as structure, then try the device in your own work.
- Treat ancient epics as poems to enjoy, not homework; they were entertainment first.
- Remember oral traditions predate all of these, so 'oldest written' is the only title anyone can hold.
Try it yourself
Write a poem addressed to a reader four thousand years from now, telling them one thing about your daily life you suspect will still be true and one thing that will need explaining.
Questions
Who was the first poet in history?
The first poet whose name survives is Enheduanna, a Sumerian high priestess of around 2300 BCE who signed her hymns to the goddess Inanna. Countless poets came before her; she is simply the first the record names.
Is the Epic of Gilgamesh older than the Bible?
Yes, by well over a thousand years. Gilgamesh's earliest poems date to around 2100 BCE, while the oldest biblical texts were composed in the first millennium BCE. Its flood narrative notably predates and parallels the story of Noah.
What is the oldest poem in English?
Caedmon's Hymn, a nine-line Old English praise poem composed in the late seventh century CE, is generally counted the oldest surviving English poem. Beowulf, the first great English epic, was composed sometime between the eighth and eleventh centuries.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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