The ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is not the oldest surviving work of literature
It sounds like the disagreement here is over the definition of literature. I generally regard wiktionary's fourth entry (high fiction) to be its definition, whereas this seems somewhere between that and the second (collected creative writing of a culture). I was shaking my head at most of the examples given. Now I see we are operating from two different foundations.Maybe this is why so many arguments open with the cliche "Webster defines..."