Kitab al-Aghani ( Book of Songs ), a collection of poems and songs with the stories of the composers and singers in many volumes from the oldest epoch of Arabic literature down to the 9th cent.

We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.

File: Sleeping Reindeer 4512630872 d31dcb1207 o. jpg | Room 3-Swimming Reindeer carving, France, Ice-Age 13, 000 years ( both one of the world's oldest works of art, as well as the oldest work of art in the British Museum's collection )

The city comprises a large number of theatres and many museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the world's oldest art collection accessible to the public.

The most recent study on the ante-Aesopic fables or the fables in ancient Near Eastern languages by Akimoto discovers the rich fable traditions in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia ; for example, the Ninurta-uballitsu Assyrian fable collection which is the oldest known fable collection with the compiler's autograph and the completion date 883 BCE, the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual fable collections are embedded in a long myth and the storyteller tells after each fable his / her own moral.

The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, praising deities of the ancient Greek religions.

In Aleppo, for example, the largest and probably the oldest mosque library, the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book collection of which 10, 000 volumes were reportedly bequeathed by the city's most famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla.

This midrash collection was redacted into its final form around the 3rd or 4th century ; its contents indicate that its sources are some of the oldest midrashim, dating back possibly to the time of Rabbi Akiva.

is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, compiled some time after 759 AD during the Nara period.

The oldest such museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, dating from c. 530 BC and devoted to Mesopotamian antiquities ; it apparently had sufficient traffic as to warrant labels for the ordered collection.

* the Capitoline Museums, the oldest public collection of art in the world, began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome.

* the Vatican Museums, the second oldest museum in the world, traces its origins to the public displayed sculptural collection begun in 1506 by Pope Julius II

* Merton College, Oxford, is first recorded as having a collection of books, making its Library the world's oldest in continuous daily use.

Being one of the oldest cities on the island, it contains a considerable collection of art.

In Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill ( 1906 ), Puck, the last of the People of the Hills and " the oldest thing in England ", charms the children Dan and Una with a collection of tales and visitors out of England's past.

Cyril and Methodius National Library houses the largest national collection of books and documents ( 1, 714, 211 books and some 6 million other documents ) and is Bulgaria's oldest cultural institute.

The Common is home to a remarkable collection of mature elm trees, believed to be the oldest and largest surviving in Hampshire, which have escaped Dutch elm disease owing to their isolation.

For its protection, the oldest section, which holds an impressive collection of Victorian mausoleums and gravestones, plus elaborately carved tombs, allows admission only in tour groups.

Today, owned by the City of Angers, the massive, austere castle has been converted to a museum housing the oldest and largest collection of medieval tapestries in the world, with the 14th century " Apocalypse Tapestry " as one of its priceless treasures.

Some of the oldest items in the collection are medieval vestments, especially Opus Anglicanum.

One of the oldest clocks in the collection is an astronomical clock of 1588 by Francis Nowe.

The collection contains over 500, 000 images dating from the advent of photography, the oldest image dating from 1839.

The tapestry collection includes a fragment of the Cloth of St Gereon, the oldest known surviving European tapestry.

The Varsity Show is an annual musical written by and for students and was established in 1894, making it one of Columbia's oldest traditions.

The oldest confirmed written mention of dominoes in China comes from the Former Events in Wulin ( i. e. the capital Hangzhou ) written by the Yuan Dynasty ( 1271 – 1368 ) author Zhou Mi ( 1232 – 1298 ), who listed " pupai " ( gambling plaques or dominoes ) as well as dice as items sold by peddlers during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song ( r. 1162 – 1189 ).

In 1993, the oldest known version of the text, written on bamboo tablets, was found in a tomb near the town of Guodian () in Jingmen, Hubei, and dated prior to 300 BC.

Encyclopedias have existed for around 2, 000 years ; the oldest still in existence, Naturalis Historia, was written in ca.

* Felpham & Middleton Country Dance Club has written a history from 1933 – 1994, just about one of the oldest extant English Country Dance clubs in England.

The oldest written records of the Finnic languages of Estonia date from the 13th century.

The oldest known Bible copy of this epistle is in a Fulda manuscript written for Victor of Capua in 546.

Written around 1080, one of the oldest written sources on pre-Christian Scandinavian religious practices is Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum.

The earliest written evidence is found in the Linear B clay tablets in the " Room of the Chariot Tablets ", an LMIII A-context ( c. 1400 BC ) region of Knossos, in Crete, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living languages.

It is also one of the oldest known written documents about the history of Estonia and Latvia.

Beit Lehi also contains the oldest known Hebrew writing of the word “ Jerusalem ” It's written as the inscription “ I am YHWH thy Lord.

The oldest known document in Maltese is " Il Cantilena " ( Maltese: Xidew il-Qada ) a poem from the 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro, and the first known Maltese dictionary was written by the French Knight Francois de Vion Thezan Court in 1640.

The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried ( Nag Hammadi library ) or stored in dry caves ( Dead Sea scrolls ).

The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia comes from the Anabasis Alexandri, which was written in the late second century AD but specifically refers to sources from the time of Alexander the Great.

The oldest clear endorsement of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John being the only legitimate gospels was written circa 180 AD.

Thucydides ' history of the Peloponesian War and Herodotus ' history of the Persian War ( both written in the 5th century BC ) survives in about eight early copies, the oldest ones dating from the 10th century AD.

One of the oldest written fragments of the language ever found dates back to the year 960, in an official text that was mixed with Latin:

Linguistically, the text is the oldest document written in a Romance language, and specifically in a form of French.

The oldest surviving epic poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer ( in Mesopotamia, now Iraq ), which was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus.

The oldest written records of the language are those of Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás, who arrived in Peru in 1538 and learned the language from 1540, publishing his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú in 1560.

The oldest extant document written in Romanian is Neacșu's letter ( 1521 ).

Sri Lanka has also been a center of the Buddhist religion and culture from ancient times, being the nation where the Buddhist teachings were first written down as well as the oldest continually Buddhist country.