The earliest extant reference to the first foliation of the Nowell Codex was made sometime between 1628 and 1650 by Franciscus Junius ( the younger ).

The earlier date, first proposed in modern times by John Robinson in a closely argued chapter of " Redating the New Testament " ( 1976 ), relies on the book's internal evidence, given that no external testimony exists earlier than that of Irenaeus, noted above, and the earliest extant manuscript evidence of Revelation ( P98 ) is likewise dated no earlier than the late 2nd century.

Urukagina ( reigned c. 2380 BC – 2360 BC, short chronology ) had an early code that has not survived ; a later king, Ur-Nammu, left the earliest extant written law-system, the Code of Ur-Nammu ( c. 2100-2050 BC ), which prescribed a formal system of penalties for specific cases in 57 articles.

The first known reference to one was by Johann Speth in 1693 and the earliest such extant signed and dated clavichord was built in 1716 by Johann Michael Heinitz.

Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one.

The author identifies himself as " James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ ", with " the earliest extant manuscripts of James usually dated to mid-to-late third century.

One of his earliest extant plays, Medea, includes a speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time, though he has put it in the mouth of the play's heroine:

He seems not to have used it in his early plays at all, The Trojan Women being the earliest appearance of it in an extant play-it's symptomatic of a curious archaizing tendency evident in his later works.

The earliest extant version of this trilemma appears in the writings of the skeptic Sextus Empiricus.

The earliest extant samples of connected ( north ) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528.

He figures in the earliest extant cuneiform inscriptions throughout the region and was prominent from the third millennium down to Hellenistic times.

The earliest extant Chinese transverse flute is a chi ( 篪 ) flute discovered in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at the Suizhou site, Hubei province, China.

Derived from Greek oikoumenikos (), " ecumenical " means " worldwide " but generally is assumed to be limited to the Roman Empire in this context as in Augustus ' claim to be ruler of the oikoumene / world ; the earliest extant uses of the term for a council are Eusebius ' Life of Constantine 3. 6 around 338, which states "" ( he convoked an Ecumenical Council ); Athanasius ' Ad Afros Epistola Synodica in 369 ;< ref >

According to, the Śulba Sūtras contain " the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world, although it had already been known to the Old Babylonians.

The earliest extant use of gospel to denote a particular genre of writing dates to the 2nd century.

For this reason, Gardnerian Wicca is usually considered to be the earliest extant tradition of Wicca, from which most subsequent Wiccan traditions are derived.

Some of his earliest extant writings, such as The Ox ( 1510 ) and The Labyrinth ( 1516 ), attacked the mercenary system using allegory and satire.

However, the earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece.

Thus, for example, around 60 manuscripts are extant containing Welsh-language versions of the Historia, the earliest of which were created in the 13th century ; the old notion that some of these Welsh versions actually underlie Geoffrey's Historia, advanced by antiquarians such as the 18th-century Lewis Morris, has long since been discounted in academic circles.

In the earliest extant manuscripts it is referred to as Liber episcopalis in quo continentur acta beatorum pontificum Urbis Romae, and later the Gesta or Chronica pontificum.

The earliest extant mandolin was built in 1744 by Gaetano Vinaccia.

Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.

In 1676 Huang Zongxi's son, Huang Baijia, who learned martial arts from Wang Zhengnan, compiled the earliest extant manual of internal martial arts, the Nèijiā quánfǎ.

Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod.

David Diringer noted that " the first mention of Egyptian documents written on leather goes back to the Fourth Dynasty ( c. 2550-2450 BCE ), but the earliest of such documents extant are: a fragmentary roll of leather of the Sixth Dynasty ( c. twenty-fourth century BCE ), unrolled by Dr. H. Ibscher, and preserved in the Cairo Museum ; a roll of the Twelfth Dynasty ( c. 1990-1777 BCE ) now in Berlin ; the mathematical text now in the British Museum ( MS. 10250 ); and a document of the reign of Ramses II ( early thirtheenth century BCE ).".

Thus, while it remains possible that the Babylonians and/or the Pythagoreans may perhaps have had the magic square of three before the Chinese did, more definite evidence will have to turn up from the Middle East or the Classical World before China can lose her claim to the earliest known magic square by more than a thousand years.

Such an analysis speedily reveals why the middle number of the Lo Shu, 5, was so vitally significant for the Chinese ever since the earliest hints that they had a knowledge of this diagram.

The earliest known written documentation of the Chinese abacus dates to the 2nd century BC.

Parallels to the earliest Babylonian ( Sumerian ) star catalogues suggest that the ancient Chinese system did not arise independently from that of the Ancient Near East.

" These pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese.

The findings at Anyang include the earliest written record of Chinese past so far discovered: inscriptions of divination records in ancient Chinese writing on the bones or shells of animals – the so-called " oracle bones ", dating from around 1200 BC.

This formulary was also the earliest Chinese medical text to group symptoms into clinically useful " patterns " ( zheng 證 ) that could serve as targets for therapy.

The earliest Chinese document mentioning a crossbow is in scripts from the 4th – 3rd century BC attributed to the followers of Mozi.

The earliest evidence of the Chinese calendar is found on the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty ( late second millennium BC ), which seem to describe a lunisolar year of 12 months, with a possible intercalary 13th, or even 14th, added empirically to prevent calendar drift.

The two oldest printed Chinese calendars are dated 877 and 882 ; they were found at the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Dunhuang ; Patricia Ebrey writes that it is no surprise that some of the earliest printed items were calendars, since the Chinese found it necessary to calculate and mark which days were auspicious and which were not.

The Classic of History, one of the Five Classics of Chinese classic texts is one of the earliest narratives of China.

The Spring and Autumn Annals, the official chronicle of the State of Lu covering the period from 722 BCE to 481 BCE, is among the earliest surviving Chinese historical texts to be arranged on annalistic principles.

The Zuo Zhuan, attributed to Zuo Qiuming in the 5th century BC, is the earliest Chinese work of narrative history and covers the period from 722 BCE to 468 BCE.

It contains examples of the earliest Chinese prose.

The earliest known Chinese metal tokens were made ca.

The " Gong An story " （ 公案小说, literally ：" case records of a public law court "） is the earliest known genre of Chinese detective fiction.

Another method specified by Chinese texts — the earliest dating to 1110 — specified the use of saponin ( from the beans of Gleditschia sinensis ) to extract hormones, but gypsum ( containing calcium sulfate ) was also known to have been used.

The earliest known Chinese kites were flat ( not bowed ) and often rectangular.

At this battle the Mongols not only used gunpowder in early Chinese firearms but in the earliest grenades as well.

A Chinese alchemical text dated 492 noted saltpeter burnt with a purple flame, providing a practical and reliable means of distinguishing it from other inorganic salts, thus enabling alchemists to evaluate and compare purification techniques ; the earliest Arabic and Latin accounts of saltpeter purification are dated after 1200.

The earliest ( surviving ) examples of Chinese painted artwork date to the Warring States Period ( 481-221 BC ), with paintings on silk or tomb murals on rock, brick, or stone.

Evidence for the earliest Chinese inks, similar to modern inksticks, is around 256 BC in the end of the Warring States Period and produced from soot and animal glue.