The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
2400–2301 BC
1 work
c. 2400 BC
Egyptian
Attributed to Ptahhotep
An ageing vizier asks permission to train a successor and sets down thirty-seven maxims: do not be proud of your knowledge, take counsel with the ignorant as with the wise, good speech is more hidden than malachite yet found among servant girls at the grindstones.
1900–1801 BC
1 work
c. 1900 BC
Egyptian
Anonymous
A man weary of life argues with his own soul about whether to die. Death is before me today, he says, like the scent of myrrh, like the clearing of the sky, like a man's longing to see his house again after years in captivity. The soul argues back and finally agrees to stay with him.
1200–1101 BC
1 work
c. 1200 BC
Egyptian
Amenemope son of Kanakht
Thirty chapters of counsel for an official: do not move the boundary stone, do not lean on the scales or falsify the weights, do not befriend the hot-tempered man, and do not strain to seek excess — for wealth makes itself wings like geese and flies away.
200–101 BC
2 works
c. 180 BC; Greek translation c. 132 BC
Hebrew
Ecclesiasticus
Jesus ben Sira
A Jerusalem teacher's collected wisdom on friendship, money, daughters, physicians, table manners, and the fear of the Lord, ending with a hymn in praise of famous men that runs from Enoch to the high priest Simon coming out of the sanctuary.
c. 200–100 BC
Hebrew and Greek
Attributed to Baruch son of Neriah
Read aloud by the exiles in Babylon and sent home with money for sacrifices: a confession that the disaster was deserved, a poem identifying Wisdom with the book of the commandments, and a lament in which Jerusalem speaks as a widow watching her children led away.
100–1 BC
1 work
c. 50 BC – AD 20
Greek
Anonymous
Written in Alexandria in the voice of Solomon. The ungodly reason that life is short and set a trap for the righteous man who calls himself a child of God; Wisdom is described as a breath of the power of God and a spotless mirror; and idolatry is traced to a grieving father who made an image of his dead child.
101–200
3 works
c. 150–230
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
A female voice speaks entirely in contradictions: the first and the last, the honoured and the scorned, the whore and the holy one, the barren woman with many sons. There is no narrative and no cosmology, only the paradoxes.
c. 150–200
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Trimorphic Protennoia
Anonymous
A feminine divine voice speaks in three descents — as Voice, as Speech, as Word — putting on the likeness of each order of being in turn until she takes the form of a man and is not recognised.
c. 180–200
Greek
Sextus
Around four hundred and fifty one-line maxims on self-mastery, speech, wealth, and desire, adapted from pagan gnomic collections with the seams still showing. A wise man is God's likeness; use the tongue sparingly; possess nothing you cannot lose without grief.
201–300
1 work
c. 250–300
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
A father's advice to a son in the manner of Proverbs, urging him to make reason the guide, to know that the mind is a lamp and the passions are wild beasts, and to bring Christ into the house of the soul as a guest.
1401–1500
1 work
1450
Latin
Idiota de Sapientia
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
An unlettered spoon-carver in the Roman forum instructs a professional orator and a philosopher, arguing that wisdom cries out in the streets and not only in books.
11 of 1774 works