The textbook is dedicated to the origins of world literature - the most ancient literatures of the Middle East, which began their journey in the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. and developed until the first centuries of the new era. Separate essays are devoted to Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian), Hittite-Hurrian and Canaanite-Phoenician literatures, which are considered in a broad historical and cultural context, in relationships with each other and with the two ancient cultures that most influenced European culture and literature - from ancient Greek and Hebrew. Addressed to students of cultural studies and philology, as well as to everyone interested in the culture of Antiquity - literature, religion, philosophy, history.