Copied in the early 8th century at the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery in Northumbria, the Codex Amiatinus is the oldest surviving complete Latin Bible. Its more than 1,000 parchment leaves required the skins of about 500 calves, and the book weighs some 34 kilos. In 716, Abbot Ceolfrith set off to present it to the pope but died on the way, at Langres. Now kept in Florence, the manuscript was long thought to be Italian.
Around 2300 BCE, Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, became high priestess of the Moon god at Ur. She composed hymns to the goddess Inanna and put her name to them. She is the oldest person identified as the author of a literary work, about 1,500 years before Homer.
Squeeze Earth's 4.5 billion years into a single 24-hour day. Homo sapiens shows up around 11:59:54 p.m., roughly six seconds before midnight. All of written history, from Sumerian tablets to today, fits into the final tenth of a second. A cosmic blink.