THE WRITTEN WORD 277 



All uncivilized peoples use picture writing, for 

 they have never learned any other way. Even those 

 early cave men made pictures. Some have been 

 found in the caves they used to inhabit, and the 

 drawing is done so well that we can easily understand 

 what animals those rough and savage men were 

 trying to represent. They drew, too, with a sharply 

 pointed rock upon bone or ivory, which was a much 

 harder way to draw than your way, with a pencil 

 and paper. 



As men began to live in tribes and afterward in 

 nations, they wished to record their deeds; but the 

 only way they had was by this ancient way of pic- 

 tures. Even such a great and civilized nation as the 

 Egyptians recorded their deeds by picture writing. 

 You must have seen their hieroglyphics in the 

 museums. But you could never imagine what they 

 meant, because their hieroglyphics are not simple 

 pictures telling about simple objects, but long 

 records of many deeds told by mixing pictures with 

 symbols much in the way we make up a rebus. As 

 time went on the Egyptians used fewer pictures 

 and more symbols, and many of the symbols repre- 

 sented sounds; but further than that they never 

 went. 



Now, when the Phoenician traders came sailing 

 along in the Mediterranean they found that the 

 Egyptians were far more advanced than any of the 

 other peoples with whom they traded. Being quick 

 to learn new and better ways of doing things, and 

 observing how the Egyptians made their records, 

 the Phoenicians learned to use the Egyptian writ- 



