On the island of Philae in Egypt, an inscription dated 24 August 394 is the last known text in hieroglyphs. After some 3,500 years of use, the knowledge died with the last priests who could read them. It took until 1822 and Champollion, more than 1,400 years, for anyone to understand the signs again.
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.