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 ).".

The earliest known owner of the Beowulf manuscript is the 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named, though its official designation is British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. XV because it was one of Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton Library in the middle of the 17th century.

The earliest example we have of a recognisable ballad in form in England is ‘ Judas ’ in a 13th-century manuscript.

In the earliest manuscript of Dracula, dated 8 March 1890, the castle is set in Styria, although the setting was changed to Transylvania six days later.

The earliest document mentioning a Barnabas gospel which is generally agreed to correspond with the one found in the two known manuscripts is reported to be contained in Morisco manuscript BNM MS 9653 in Madrid, written about 1634 by Ibrahim al-Taybili in Tunisia.

Probably the earliest surviving New Testament manuscript, Rylands Library Papyrus P52 is a Greek papyrus fragment discovered in Egypt in 1920 ( now at the John Rylands Library, Manchester ).

The earliest cited English usage in connection with marital status is from a manuscript of c. 1200, when Mary ( mother of Jesus ) is described as “ handfast ( to ) a good man called Joseph ”.

In historical archaeology, the ancient literature of the Iron Age includes the earliest texts preserved in manuscript tradition.

The earliest surviving Greek manuscript that contains the Testimonium is the 11th century Ambrosianus 370 ( F 128 ), preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which includes almost all of the second half of the Antiquities.

A less obviously legendary account of Arthur appears in the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, which is often claimed to date from the early 11th century although the earliest manuscript of this text dates from the 15th century.

The earliest Laos legal document ( and the earliest sociological evidence about the existence of the Lao people ) is known as " the laws of Khun Borom " ( also spelled " Khun Bulom "), still preserved in manuscript form .< ref >

The earliest surviving lute music is Italian, from a late 15th century manuscript.

Additionally, the earliest manuscript of the Gospel, dated circa AD 200, ascribes the work to Luke ; as did Irenaeus, writing circa AD 180 ; and the Muratorian fragment from AD 170.

For example, the earliest surviving copies of parts of the Roman historian Tacitus ' main work, the Annals of Imperial Rome ( written in 116 AD ), come from a single manuscript written in 850 AD, although for other parts of his work, the earliest copies come from the 11th century, while other parts of his work have been lost.

The textual variation among manuscript copies of books in the New Testament prompted attempts to discern the earliest form of text already in antiquity ( e. g., by the 3rd century Christian author Origen ).

In a manuscript written between 1456 and 1461, an unknown mathematician recorded the earliest reference to a fifth perfect number, with 33, 550, 336 being correctly identified for the first time.

Rudolf is the earliest recorded owner of the mysterious Voynich manuscript, an unbound tome whose author and purpose, as well as the language and script it is written in, remain unidentified to this day.

Fiammetta narrates this tale, whose earliest source is a French manuscript written by a man named Thomas.

* c. 1095 – 1099: earliest extant manuscript of the Song of Roland

* The earliest known manuscript of The Proverbs of Alfred, a collection of sayings of England's Alfred the Great, is written.

The earliest major manuscript with information on Rus ' history is the Primary Chronicle, written in the late 11th and early 12th centuries.

The Great Service was in existence by 1606 ( the last copying date entered in the earliest surviving manuscript source ) and may date back as far as the 1590s.