What made me start thinking bout it is that sometimes when things go wrong and don't have an immediate obvious explanation, I jokingly say things like "probably a demon" or "probably a ghost"--stuff I don't believe in or ascribe to at all. I've also used those statements in text and it made me realize that someone who doesn't know me could believe I was an occultist or hugely spiritual or some other such person. In turn that made me think about the place of such notions in history and that what if some of the people in history that talked about such things were just making a joke ir being sarcastic. this is all only tangentially related as Im not particularly interested in historical sincere beliefs on demons, ghost, or the supernatural. I'm just interested in how such a linguistic tool as sarcasm is known to ave been used through time.
This question has been asked here before, but there are never many responses. Here's what I found looking through them, though:
In one thread, /u/ape-unit suggests that sarcasm exists in all languages, so the earliest example is probably older than written history.
For the earliest example, there is The Instructions of Dua-Khety, also known as The Satire of The Trades. It dates back to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2025-1700 BCE). It might be satirical, or it might just be one writing instructor's particularly cynical views on certain professions (neither satire nor Egyptology are my areas of expertise). The text was used by scribes for writing practice.
Then there's this thread, which links to a linguistics blog post and give examples from the Iliad and the Book of Exodus.
Hope that helps!