Seikilos epitaph
The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been variously dated, but seems to be either from the 1st or the 2nd century AD. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone (a stele) from the Hellenistic town Tralles near present-day Aydın, Turkey, not far from Ephesus. It is a Hellenistic Ionic song in either the Phrygian octave species or Iastian tonos. While older music with notation exists (for example the Hurrian songs), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition.
Antwerp songbook
The "Antwerp songbook" is the first printed large collection of Dutch songs known, to have survived the centuries. Many songs had been transmitted through oral tradition since the end of the Middle Ages: in those cases, the tune was referred to as an "oudt liedeken", an old song. Many songs, printed for the first time in the Antwerp songbook, were already known for centuries by that time and were included in several songbooks and anthologies.