in their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of the

Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the human race.

 

The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were excellent farmers.

 

They knew all about irrigation. They built temples which were afterwards copied

by the Greeks and which served as the earliest models for the churches in which

we worship nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved such a useful

instrument for the purpose of measuring time that it has survived with a few

changes until today. But most important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to

preserve speech for the benefit of future generations. They had invented the art

of writing.

 

We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines that we take it for

granted that the world has always been able to read and write.

 

As a matter of fact, writing, the most important of all inventions, is quite

new. Without written documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only

teach their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who, because they

cannot write, possess no way in which they can make use of the experience of

those generations of cats and dogs that have gone before.

 

In the first century before our era, when the Romans came to Egypt, they found

the valley full of strange little pictures which seemed to have something to do

with the history of the country. But the Romans were not interested in "anything