PRIMITIVE BOOKS 



toward which the figures face, and that no uniformity 

 existed in practice as to which direction that should be. 

 It appears to have been a matter of indifference to the 

 Egyptian scribes and readers whether they wrote and 

 read from right to left, or from left to right. It would 

 seem as if convenience would have established the cus- 

 tom in favor of one direction or the other, but such seems 

 not to have been the case. 



With the Babylonians, however, such a custom of 

 writing always in one direction had been early inau- 

 gurated. The character of the Egyptian writing, which 

 consisted essentially of drawing pictures, made it per- 

 haps equally convenient for the scribe to write in either 

 direction. But this was not the case with the Babylonian 

 and Assyrian writing, which, being made rapidly with the 

 aid of a small stylus, could be much more conveniently 

 carried forward from left to right assuming the scribe 

 to be right-handed than in the opposite direction. 

 Hence the method of writing from left to right gained 

 universal prevalence. This method, as everyone knows, 

 has the sanction of all European nations to-day. It is 

 also used by the Ethiopians, but, curiously enough, it 

 is not employed by such nations as the Arabians and 

 Turks, who are of the racial stock of the Babylonians, 

 nor by the Persians. Nor did the earliest Europeans 

 adopt this difection of writing without cavil. Some of 

 the oldest Greek and Roman inscriptions show a de- 

 parture from any oriental model in that the writing 

 runs in opposite directions in alternate lines, leading 

 thus backward and forward across the page, in a way 

 which suggested to the Greek mind the alternate fur- 



VOL. vm. 8 [ 



