Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/33

 Egyptian Civilization 13 17. Invention of Writing Materials. The Egyptians early found out that they could make an excellent ink by thickening water with a little vegetable gum and then mixing in a little soot from the blackened pots over the fire. By dipping a pointed reed into this mixture one could write very well. They also learned that they could split and flatten out a kind of river reed, called papyrus, into thin strips and make large sheets by pasting the strips together with overlapping edges. They thus produced a smooth, almost white paper. In this way pen, ink, and paper came into use for the first time. Our word " paper" is the ancient name papyr(os), but slightly changed. With the invention of phonetic writing, records could now be made, and with the ap- pearance of such written records the Historic Period begins. 18. Egyptian Origin of our Calendar. The Egyptians early found it necessary to measure time. The time from new moon to new moon seemed to them, as to all other early peoples, a very convenient rough measure. But the moon-month varies in length from twenty-nine to thirty days, and it does not evenly divide the year. Thoughtful Egyptians early discovered this in- convenience and decided to use the moon no longer for dividing the year. They divided the year into twelve months, all of the same length ; that is, thirty days each. Then at the end of the year they established a holiday period five days long. This gave them a year of three hundred and sixty-five days. The Egyptian was not yet enough of an astronomer to know that every four years he ought to have a leap year, of three hundred and sixty- six days, although he discovered this fact later. This calendar is the very one which has descended to us after more than six thousand years. Unfortunately it has meantime suffered awk- ward alterations in the lengths of the months, for which the Egyptians were not responsible. 19. Discovery of Metal (at least 4000 B.C.). Meantime the Egyptians were also making great progress in other matters. It was probably in the peninsula of Sinai (see map, p. 24) that some Egyptian, wandering about, once happened to bank his camp fire with pieces of copper ore lying on the ground near the