Before 1700

Most literature before 1700 is anonymous by default: manuscript cultures, scribal schools, and priestly institutions rarely recorded individual authors. These entries include the oldest literature in the world, where anonymity is not a mystery but the normal condition of the text.

56 works.

Still unknown
Actio Curiosa
Date unrecorded · play
An anonymous seventeenth century Hungarian dramatic work. No author has been identified in the documented record.
Still unknown
Amduat
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book describing the sun god's journey through the twelve hours of night. Like all Egyptian funerary literature, it names no author.
Still unknown
Beowulf
Date unrecorded · poem
The Old English epic of the hero's fights with Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. Its poet is unknown, and the single surviving manuscript names no author.
Still unknown
Book of Caverns
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book depicting the sun god's passage over six caverns of the underworld. No author is recorded in the tradition.
Still unknown
Book of Dede Korkut
Date unrecorded · poem
The epic story cycle of the Oghuz Turks, framed around the legendary bard Korkut Ata. Its compilers are unknown; the bard is the frame, not a documented author.
Still unknown
Book of the Dead
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Egyptian collection of funerary spells guiding the dead through the afterlife. Tradition associates such texts with the god Thoth; no historical author exists in the record.
Still unknown
Book of the Earth
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian funerary composition showing the sun's night journey through the earth god Aker. Anonymous, like all Egyptian netherworld books.
Still unknown
Book of the Heavens
Date unrecorded · other
A group of New Kingdom compositions charting the sun's passage across the sky and through the body of the sky goddess Nut. No author is recorded.
Still unknown
Book of the Netherworld
Date unrecorded · other
The family of ancient Egyptian compositions describing the underworld's geography and the sun's night journey. All are anonymous products of priestly tradition.
Still unknown
Cantar de Mio Cid
Date unrecorded · poem
The Castilian epic of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the Cid, composed around 1200. The poet is unknown; only the copyist Per Abbat's name survives in the manuscript.
Still unknown
Chilam Balam
Date unrecorded · other
The Yucatec Maya books of prophecy, history, and medicine, compiled by unnamed town scribes and attributed by tradition to the priest Chilam Balam.
Still unknown
Coffin Texts
Date unrecorded · other
The Middle Kingdom corpus of Egyptian funerary spells painted on coffins, ancestor of the Book of the Dead. Composed anonymously within priestly tradition.
Still unknown
Corpus Hermeticum
Date unrecorded · other
Greek wisdom dialogues from Roman Egypt, pseudepigraphically attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. Their actual authors are unknown.
Still unknown
De Dubiis Nominibus
Date unrecorded · other
An early medieval Latin grammatical treatise on nouns of doubtful gender, compiled by an unnamed grammarian.
Still unknown
Debate between bird and fish
Date unrecorded · poem
A Sumerian disputation poem in which Bird and Fish argue their worth before the god Enki. Composed some four thousand years ago by unnamed scribes.
Still unknown
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Date unrecorded · other
Heian court diaries by Japanese noblewomen, transmitted in a tradition where several diarists' personal names were never recorded.
Still unknown
Dresden Codex
Date unrecorded · other
The finest surviving pre-Columbian Maya manuscript, an astronomical and ritual almanac painted by unnamed scribes around the eleventh to thirteenth century.
Still unknown
Enchiriadis
Date unrecorded · other
The ninth century 'Enchiriadis' pair of music treatises that first systematized Western polyphony. Their authors are unknown; an old attribution to Hucbald was rejected.
Still unknown
Enûma Eliš
Date unrecorded · other
The Babylonian creation epic in which Marduk defeats Tiamat and orders the cosmos. Composed by unnamed priests, probably in the second millennium BCE.
Still unknown
Eridu Genesis
Date unrecorded · other
The Sumerian flood story, in which the gods send a deluge and king Ziusudra survives in a boat. Its composers are unknown.
Still unknown
Hurrian hymn to Nikkal
Date unrecorded · poem
The oldest surviving notated music in the world, a hymn to the goddess Nikkal from Ugarit, around 1400 BCE. Composer unknown.
Still unknown
I Ching
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Chinese divination classic. Tradition credits legendary figures such as Fuxi and King Wen; its actual formation was gradual and its authors are unknown.
Still unknown
Instructions of Shuruppak
Date unrecorded · other
Sumerian wisdom literature framed as a father's counsel to his son Ziusudra, among the oldest surviving literature. Its framing sage is legend, its writers unknown.
Disputed
Kesh Temple Hymn
Date unrecorded · poem
One of the oldest surviving works of literature, a Sumerian hymn praising the temple of Kesh. Tradition links the Temple Hymns to Enheduanna, but this hymn predates her.
Still unknown
Key of Solomon
Date unrecorded · other
The most famous of the grimoires, attributed by its own tradition to King Solomon. Its actual medieval and Renaissance compilers are unknown.
Still unknown
La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin
Date unrecorded · play
The greatest French medieval farce, in which a trickster lawyer is out-tricked by a shepherd. Written around 1460 by an unknown playwright.
Still unknown
Lament for Eridu
Date unrecorded · poem
A Sumerian city lament mourning the destruction of Eridu, the oldest of cities. Composed by unnamed scribes in the early second millennium BCE.
Still unknown
Lament for Nippur
Date unrecorded · poem
A Sumerian lament for the religious capital Nippur and its restoration by king Ishme-Dagan. Its composer is unnamed.
Still unknown
Lament for Sumer and Ur
Date unrecorded · poem
The Sumerian lament for the fall of the Ur III empire to Elamite invasion, around 2000 BCE. Composed anonymously in the scribal tradition.
Still unknown
Lament for Ur
Date unrecorded · poem
The masterpiece of the Sumerian city laments, mourning Ur's destruction through the voice of the goddess Ningal. Its poet is unknown.
Still unknown
Lament for Uruk
Date unrecorded · poem
A Sumerian city lament for Uruk, Gilgamesh's city, destroyed in the collapse around 2000 BCE. Composed by unnamed temple scribes.
Still unknown
Litany of Re
Date unrecorded · other
A New Kingdom Egyptian funerary text invoking the sun god in seventy five forms. Produced by priestly tradition; the record names no author, only 'the clergy'.
Still unknown
Musica enchiriadis
Date unrecorded · treatise
The ninth century treatise that first taught polyphony in the West. Long attributed to Hucbald, an attribution now rejected; its author is unknown.
Still unknown
Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan
Date unrecorded · essay
An eyewitness account of Aztec Mexico by a member of Cortes's expedition, known to scholarship only as the Anonymous Conqueror.
Still unknown
One Thousand and One Nights
Date unrecorded · other
The great Arabic story cycle of Scheherazade, assembled over a thousand years from Indian, Persian, and Arabic sources by unnamed storytellers and compilers.
Still unknown
pasquinade
Date unrecorded · other
The anonymous satirical verses posted on Rome's 'talking statues' since the fifteenth century, aimed at popes and the powerful. Anonymity was the whole point.
Still unknown
Pierre Marteau
Date unrecorded · other
The fictitious imprint 'Pierre Marteau of Cologne' under which printers across Europe issued banned and scandalous books for two centuries.
Still unknown
Pyramid Texts
Date unrecorded · other
The oldest religious texts of ancient Egypt, carved in pyramids from the twenty fourth century BCE. Institutional priestly compositions with no recorded author.
Still unknown
Scolica enchiriadis
Date unrecorded · treatise
The ninth century dialogue commentary on Musica enchiriadis, foundational to Western music theory. Formerly attributed to Hucbald; author unknown.
Still unknown
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Date unrecorded · other
The late fourteenth century masterpiece of Middle English romance. Its author, called the Pearl poet, has never been identified.
Later revealed
Skibby Chronicle
Date unrecorded · other
A sixteenth century Danish chronicle found walled up in Skibby church, written anonymously. Scholarship identifies the Carmelite Poul Helgesen as its author.
Still unknown
Spell of the Twelve Caves
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian funerary composition enumerating twelve caves of the underworld and their gods. Anonymous priestly tradition.
Still unknown
St. Erkenwald
Date unrecorded · poem
A fourteenth century alliterative poem in which a pagan judge's corpse speaks to a bishop of London. Sometimes linked to the Pearl poet; author unknown.
Still unknown
The Aesop Romance
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Greek folk biography of Aesop the fabulist, composed and elaborated by unknown hands over centuries.
Still unknown
The Battle of Maldon
Date unrecorded · poem
The Old English poem of the 991 battle against Viking raiders and the loyalty of Byrhtnoth's men. Its poet is unknown.
Still unknown
The Book of Gates
Date unrecorded · other
The New Kingdom Egyptian netherworld book of the twelve gates of the night. An institutional priestly composition with no recorded author.
Still unknown
The Lady of Escalot
Date unrecorded · other
The medieval Arthurian tale of the maiden who dies for love of Lancelot, transmitted anonymously in the romance tradition.
Still unknown
The Second Shepherds' Play
Date unrecorded · play
The masterpiece of English medieval drama, from the Wakefield cycle, written by an unnamed playwright scholars call the Wakefield Master.
Still unknown
Voynich manuscript
Date unrecorded · other
The fifteenth century codex written in an undeciphered script and an unknown language. Author, purpose, and meaning all remain unidentified.
Pseudonym
Gesta Hungarorum
Published 1200 · other
The oldest surviving Hungarian chronicle, written around 1200 by an author who signed only 'P. dictus magister', known ever since as Anonymus.
Still unknown
The Secret History of the Mongols
Published 1240 · other
The oldest surviving Mongolian literary work, an inside chronicle of Genghis Khan written after his death in 1227 by an unnamed court author.
Still unknown
Poetic Edda
Published 1260 · poem
The Old Norse collection of mythological and heroic poems preserved in the Codex Regius. Long misattributed to Saemundr the Learned; its poets are unknown.
Disputed
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Published 1499 · other
The lavish 1499 Venetian dream romance whose chapter initials spell an acrostic pointing to Francesco Colonna. The identification remains likely but unproven.
Still unknown
Lazarillo de Tormes
Published 1554 · novel
The 1554 Spanish novella that founded the picaresque, published anonymously to dodge the Inquisition. Despite centuries of candidates, its author remains unknown.
Still unknown
Theophrastus redivivus
Published 1659 · other
The clandestine 1659 Latin compendium of atheist argument, the boldest irreligious text of its century. Its compiler has never been identified.
Still unknown
Vertue Rewarded
Published 1693 · novel
A 1693 Irish novel of love and virtue during the Williamite war, published anonymously and never attributed.

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