putting down a picture of the thing which was represented by the word
they wanted to use, and, though by-and-by they formed a sort of alphabet
to spell words with, and had, besides, signs that represented the
different syllables of a word, still, these signs were all little
pictures. For instance, one of their signs for _a_ was the figure of an
eagle; their sign for _m_ was a lion, and for _u_ a little chicken; so
that when you look at an Egyptian book written in the hieroglyphic
character, you see column after column of birds and beasts and creeping
things, of men and women and boats, and all sorts of other things,
marching across the page.

When the Egyptians wanted any of their writings to last for a very long
time, they did not trust them to the frail papyrus rolls, but used
another kind of book altogether. You have heard of "sermons in stones"?
Well, a great many of the Egyptian books that tell us of the great deeds
of the Pharaohs were written on stone, carved deep and clear in the hard
granite of a great obelisk, or in the limestone of a temple wall. When
one of the Kings came back from the wars, he generally published the
account of his battles and victories by carving them on the walls of one
of the great temples, or on a pillar set up in the court of a temple,
and there they remain to this day for scholars to read.

When the hieroglyphics were cut in stone, the lines were often filled in
with pastes of different colours, so that the whole writing was a blaze
of beautiful tints, and the walls looked as if they were covered with
finely-coloured hangings. Of course, the colours have mostly faded now;
but there are still some temples and tombs where they can be seen,
almost as fresh as when they were first laid on, and from these we can
gather some idea of how wonderfully beautiful were these stone books of
ancient Egypt. The scribes and carvers knew very well how beautiful
their work was, and were careful to make it look as beautiful as
possible; so much so, that if they found that the grouping of figures to
make up a particular word or sentence was going to be ugly or clumsy,
they would even prefer to spell the word wrong, rather than spoil the
appearance of their picture-writing. Some of you, I dare say, spell
words wrong now and again; but I fancy it isn't because you think they
look prettier that way.

But now let us turn back again to our papyrus roll. Suppose that we have
got it, clean and fresh, and tha