Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/46

 22 Outlines of Eziropean History Advantage of phonetic signs The eariiest alphabet Invention of writing materials Ink Pen Paper If the writing of the Egyptian had remained merely a series of pictures, such words as " belief," " hate," " love," " beauty," and the like could never have been written.^ But when a large number of his pictures had become phonetic signs, each repre- senting a syllable, it was possible for the Egyptian to write any word he knew, whether the word meant a thing of which he could draw a picture or not. This possession of phonetic signs is what makes real writing for the first time. It arose among these Nile dwellers earlier than anywhere else in the ancient world. Indeed, the Egyptian went still further, for he finally possessed a series of signs, each representing only one letter, that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt long before 3000 B.C. It was thus the earliest alphabet knoAvn. The inconvenience of scratching this writing on mud walls, pieces of bone, or broken pottery soon led the Egyptian to a more practical equipment for writing. He found out that he could make an excellent paint or ink by thickening water with a litde vegetable gum, and then mixing in a little soot from the blackened pots over his fire. Dipping a pointed reed into this mixture he found he could write very well. He had .also learned that he could split a kind of river reed, called papyrus, into thin strips, and that when these were dried he could write on them much better than on the bits of pottery, bone, and wood which he had thus far used. Desiring a larger sheet on which to write, the Egyptian hit upon the idea of pasting his papyrus strips together with overlapping edges. This gave him a thin sheet. Then by pasting two such sheets together, back to back with the grain crossing at right angles, he produced a smooth, tough, pale yellow paper. The Egyptian had thus made the discovery that a thin vegetable membrane offers the most practical surface on which to write, and the world has since dis- covered nothing better. In this way arose pen, ink, and paper 1 See the word " beauty," the last three signs in the inscription over the ship (Fig. 14).