According to Andreas Johns, Carl von Sydow estimated that the tale type 302 dated back thousand years BCE. Although the earliest printed version appears in a 1702 Swedish manuscript, Johns admitted that the oral tale may be, in fact, quite old.Johns, Andreas. 2000. “The Image of Koshchei Bessmertnyi in East Slavic Folklore”. In: FOLKLORICA - Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 5 (1): 9. https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v5i1.3647.
