rteen he is most likely
a clerk in a government office, and must continue his studies at the
same time.

The letters and copies of a schoolboy who lived three thousand years
ago have been discovered. How many bad marks did his teacher give him,
do you think, when he had to correct that carelessly written capital?

[Illustration: Schoolboy's copy from ancient Egypt. Notice the
teacher's corrections]

So great a respect had the Egyptians for writing that they used to say,
'The great god Thoth invented letters; no human being could have given
anything so wonderful and useful to the world.'

Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drawing, an Egyptian lad was supposed
to study all these, and as we have seen, those lads who were trained
for work in the Foreign Office had to learn other languages as well;
they had also to read and write 'cuneiform'--the name given to the
strange wedge-shaped letters of Assyria and Babylonia.

All the letters from the people of Canaan to the Egyptian king and his
Foreign Office were written in cuneiform.

Chinese is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn in our
day; but the ancient cuneiform was certainly quite as complicated as
Chinese. The cuneiform had no real alphabet, only 'signs.' There were
five hundred simple signs, and nearly as many compound signs, so that
the student had to begin with a thousand different signs to memorize.
Yes, boys had their troubles even in those days.

Now, as Moses grew older and learned more, he must often have felt very
thoughtful and sad. So many books, so many ideas, so many stories of
cruel gods and evil spirits--where was the truth to be found? No one
seemed to remember the One True God, the God of his fathers, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.

Very likely a Babylonian book written in cuneiform, and pretending to
describe the Creation of the world, and the story of the Ark and the
great Flood found its way into Egypt. Many copies of this book existed
in Moses' day; part of a later copy was found a short time ago in the
ruins of the library of a great Assyrian king, and is now to be seen in
the British Museum. A strange book it is. The words were not written,
remember, but pricked down on a large flat tablet of clay.

If Moses read such a book as this, it must have troubled and puzzled
him very much. For it is a heathen book, in which the beautiful clear
story of the Creation of the world is all darkened and spoilt. The
Babylonian who