646 MATERIALS TO WRITE UPON BEFORE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



ROCKS CUT INTO TABLES OK lU'ILDING STONES. 



It requires no great effort to find inscriptions of this kind. As 

 civilization developed, man began to prepare with care the material 

 upon which he wished to write or carve. Throughout the Orient, 

 from Egypt to India, monuments constructed of dressed stones are 

 covered with carvings or pictures, explained and commented upon by 

 inscriptions (fig. 17). The Greeks and the Romans employed stone 

 tables for the purpose of engraving laws, jiublic and commemorative 

 records. The funeral cippi and stela^ of nearly all nations are cov- 

 ered with inscriptions, and likewise the coiRns of stone and wood. 



Are not our modern cemeteries like an immutable obituary, or, 

 better still, like a huge biographical dictionary ? 



Inscriptions upon stones of all kinds — marble, sandstone, granite, 

 slate — are so frequently met with around us that it seems superfluous 

 to cite examples. 



Fio. 1". Brii-k from 

 Er ech . ( Perrot and 

 Chepie, Histoire de 

 rArt. Paris.) 



1)^. Babyloniaa 

 tablet. 



hieroglyphif 



The baked earths deserve special mention on account of their 

 l)rej)aration and their antiquity. In ancient times the Persians, 

 Medes, and Assyrians were about the only nations that customarily 

 made use of clay, either dried or baked, for writing upon (fig. 18)", 

 inscriptions of this kind are known which date back to more than 

 four tliousand vears before Christ. These countries were so poor in 

 rocks that all their structures were built of brick. 



Ceramics were still in their infancy when designs and symbolic 

 signs were employed for decoration. Ev^eryone is familiar with the 

 geometrical designs, the crossed, dotted, or concentric lines which 

 ornament prehi.storic pottery.'' The ceramics discovered at Hissarlik 

 and Mj'cena' present strange decorations; one finds colored and 

 concave designs, swastikas, and inscriptions in archaic characters 



" Schell (V.) O. P. Notes d'epigraphie et d'archeologie assyriennes. Reprint 

 froin : liecueil de tr;ivaiix rolaHfs a la philolosip et A I'arclu'-olnL'ie ('iiypticiino 

 et assyrieiiiie. 4°, t. XXII. 



6 Consult the collection: Materiaux ])(nu- I'histoii-e in-iniitive tie rhonime. 



I 



