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.
Cædmon
The only known survivor from Cædmon's oeuvre is his "Hymn" (audio version). The poem is known from 21 manuscript copies, making it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede's "Death Song" (with 35 witnesses) and the best attested in the poetic corpus in manuscripts copied or owned in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period. The "Hymn" also has by far the most complicated known textual history of any surviving Anglo-Saxon poem. It is found in two dialects and five distinct recensions (Northumbrian "aelda", Northumbrian "eordu", West-Saxon "eorðan", West-Saxon "ylda", and West-Saxon "eorðe"), all but one of which are known from three or more witnesses. It is one of the earliest attested examples of written Old English and one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Together with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, "Cædmon's Hymn" is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry.