What is the earliest reference to a ghost either fact or fictional in literature?
There is an earlier one than Homer. The earliest text of Homer is believed to date from around the sixth century BC (there are indicative textual clues to this), and to have been composed probably around the 8th to 7th centuries BC, although it is suggested that there are survivals in the text that identify it as the result of oral compositions possibly dating back to the Late Bronze Age (after 1100BC). This mention of a ghost comes from the rather earlier Babylonian story ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’, which is believed to have been composed some time in the second millenium BC, although the earliest extant text is a copy from the library of Ashurbanipal of the eighth century BC. The story tells of the the hero Gilgamesh and the ghost of his dead friend, Enkidu. “And Nergal, accustomed to absurd orders, obeyed as soldiers do. He freed Enkidu to speak once to kin and showed Gilgamesh how to descend halfway to Hell through the bowels of earth. Enkidu’s shadow rose slowly toward the living and
