s which were in
such constant use for literary purposes in Africa;* yet the same clay
which furnished the architect with such an abundant building material
appears to have been the only medium for transmitting the language which
the scribes possessed. They were always provided with slabs of a fine
plastic clay, carefully mixed and kept sufficiently moist to take easily
the impression of an object, but at the same time sufficiently firm to
prevent the marks once made from becoming either blurred or effaced.
When a scribe had a text to copy or a document to draw up, he chose out
one of his slabs, which he placed flat upon his left palm, and taking in
the right hand a triangular stylus of flint, copper, bronze, or bone,**
he at once set to work. The instrument, in early times, terminated in a
fine point, and the marks made by it when it was gently pressed upon
the clay were slender and of uniform thickness; in later times, the
extremity of the stylus was cut with a bevel, and the impression then
took the shape of a metal nail or a wedge.

* On the Assyrian monuments we frequently see scribes taking
a list of the spoil, or writing letters on tablets and some
other soft material, either papyrus or prepared skin. Sayce
has given good reasons for believing that the Chaldaeanns of
the early dynasties knew of the papyrus, and either made it
themselves, or had it brought from Egypt.

** See the triangular stylus of copper or bronze reproduced
by the side of the measuring-rule, and the plan on the
tablet of Gudea, p. 248 of this volume. The Assyrian Museum
in the Louvre possesses several large, flat styli of bone,
cut to a point at one end, which appear to have belonged to
the Assyrian scribes. Taylor discovered in a tomb at Eridu a
flint tool, which may have served for the same purpose as
the metal or bone styli.

[Illustration: 268.jpg MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS IN HEIROGLYPHICS]

They wrote from left to right along the upper part of the tablet, and
covered both sides of it with closely written lines, which sometimes ran
over on to the edges. When the writing was finished, the scribe sent his
work to the potter, who put it in the kiln and baked it, or the writer
may have had a small oven at his own disposition, as a clerk with us
would have his table or desk. The shape of these documents varied, and
sometimes strikes us as being peculiar: besides the tablets an