
What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us? - diodorus
https://newrepublic.com/article/152111/oldest-books-say-us
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sillyquiet
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.

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

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

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ForHackernews
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.

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dmreedy
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.

~~~
zandl
This is what I find fascinating about the annals of Lü Buwei (239bc Qin
Dynasty), in that he brought together the best philosophers of the time to
create a book of all the knowledge, arts, sciences, food, almanacs and state
leadership for future generations. Some of his leadership advice I actually
haven’t seen elsewhere and learned from. So exactly what he had in mind after
over 2200 years ago.

I think the other thing one realizes with history is how much makes up the
present, it’s part of our cultures today. We didn’t invent ideas of equality,
women and animal rights, Aristotle references ancient states with these ideals
— notably he mentions them as vulnerable to demagogues. Almond milk was used
as a milk substitute in medieval French cooking since it’s easier to use. I
feel we’re dismisive of previous generations and think of our selves as better
when really nothing has changed outside of technology and our physical
sciences.

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chimprich
> Some of his leadership advice I actually haven’t seen elsewhere and learned
> from.

Intriguing, could you give us a flavour?

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zandl
One example, the leader of a state shouldn’t be doing anything since this
biases their judgment, instead they should always rely on their ministers to
be experts, and the fewer decisions one makes the more ideal the leader. It’s
not just simple delegation that they’re talking about, it’s that at least on
person has to have a clear view of the whole picture to make subtle
adjustments, and if the leader is wrapped up in doing the work himself then
it’s no longer possible. They have very strong words for leaders who do work
themselves as being unfit and bluntly stupid. It certainly resonated for me as
being completely correct, and adjusted my management style.

~~~
lostconfused
Ah that sounds pretty much the same type of management philosophy as espoused
in "Clouds Above The Hill"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_no_Ue_no_Kumo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_no_Ue_no_Kumo)

The author attributes the successes of early Imperial Japanese Navy to the men
in leadership roles being wise enough to focus on enabling their competent
subordinates do their jobs and nothing more. At least a lot early 2nd volume
is spent on organization and management structure. Japan spent a lot of time
studying Chinese culture so it would make sense that they would addopt similar
ideas.

This article [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-
myt...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth) claims
this "loose tight" for of leadership is responsible for collapse of Enron.

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

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dkersten
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
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.

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dkersten
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 :)

