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 texts, medical texts, annals and the like had been common for nearly a thousand years and had possibly existed for about one thousand years before that.

The earliest body of Egyptian literature is the collection of religious literature called the pyramid texts, engraved in the pyramids of the early dynasties, say about 2700 B.C. This is itself inscriptional but it bears abundant witness to the prevalence of writing on papyrus and to collections of religious literature before this time. In a way these texts themselves form a library in stone, they are cumulative collections of long-gathering works and in the compilation of the inscribed texts, it is alleged, the compiler must have had before him an actual collection of texts. Even one who does not read this writing readily can yet recognize the hieroglyphs with pallet ink and roll which imply either leather or papyrus. The Palermo stone, of about the same