All Books
25 books available
The Iliad
Ancient Greece • 700 BCE
The Odyssey
Ancient Greece • 700 BCE
Homeric Hymns
Ancient Greece • c. 6th–5th century BCE
Theogony
Ancient Greece • c. 700 BCE
Works and Days
Ancient Greece • c. 700 BCE
Beowulf
Anglo-Saxon England • c. 700–1000 CE (Old English manuscript, Nowell Codex)
The Book of the Dead
Ancient Egypt • c. 1550–50 BCE, with versions continuing through the Ptolemaic period
The Poetic Edda
Medieval Iceland (Norse mythology) • c. 1270 CE (Codex Regius manuscript)
The Prose Edda
Medieval Iceland • c. 1220 CE
The Saga of the Volsungs
Medieval Iceland (drawing on older Germanic oral tradition) • c. 1250–1270 CE (Iceland)
The Mabinogion
Medieval Wales • c. 1350–1450 CE (Red Book of Hergest, White Book of Rhydderch manuscripts)
The Táin Bó Cúailnge
Ancient Ireland • c. 12th century CE (manuscripts: Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Leinster)
The Tale of Genji
Classical Japan (Heian Period) • c. 1008–1010 CE
The Ramayana
Ancient India • c. 500–100 BCE (compiled in Sanskrit)
The Mahabharata
Ancient India • c. 400 BCE – 400 CE (compiled in Sanskrit)
The Aeneid
Ancient Rome • 19 BCE (unfinished at Virgil’s death)
Metamorphoses
Ancient Rome • 8 CE
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Babylon) • c. 1200–1100 BCE (Standard Babylonian version by Sin-leqi-unninni)
Enuma Elish
Ancient Mesopotamia (Babylon) • c. 12th century BCE (standardized in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar I)
The Atrahasis
Ancient Mesopotamia (Babylonia) • c. 17th century BCE (Akkadian tablets, later copies into 7th century BCE)
The Descent of Inanna
Ancient Sumer (Uruk, later adopted by Akkadians and Babylonians) • c. 1900–1800 BCE (Old Babylonian period, surviving tablets)
The Book of Changes
Ancient China • 700 BCE
The Tao Te Ching
Ancient China • 400 BCE
The Nibelungenlied
Medieval Germany • 1200 CE
The Kalevala
Finland • 1835 (first edition), 1849 (expanded edition)