The oldest surviving dated printed book was made in 868 CE. It is a Chinese copy of the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture—not a bound volume, but a paper scroll roughly five meters long. A note printed at its end gives the date as May 11, 868, making this copy an extraordinary marker in the history of books.
The scroll is striking even before you reach its words. Its opening illustration shows the Buddha teaching his followers. Seven sheets of yellow-dyed paper were joined together, and the text was printed from carved wooden blocks. Each section required careful preparation, suggesting a practiced craft rather than a first experiment. The International Dunhuang Programme’s account of the scroll explains how it was made.
The date appears in a colophon: a note at the end of the work. It names Wang Jie as the person who sponsored the printing on behalf of his parents. Producing and sharing Buddhist texts was understood as a way to gain religious merit, so the scroll was both a technical achievement and an act of devotion.
For centuries, this copy lay among thousands of manuscripts in a hidden chamber at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, in northwestern China. Its survival gives us something unusually precise: not just evidence that people printed books long ago, but a complete printed work bearing its own date. The British Library’s collection record identifies the surviving scroll.
That distinction matters. The Diamond Sutra was not the first thing ever printed; earlier prints survive. It is the earliest surviving complete printed book with a date. More than a millennium later, its pages still reveal how craftsmanship and the wish to share ideas came together. For more discoveries about human creativity, explore these arts and culture facts.