inary occasions tablets of wax and other similar materials were
used, upon which the writer traced the characters with the point of a
steel instrument called a _style_. The head of the style was smooth
and rounded, so that any words which the writer wished to erase might
be obliterated by smoothing over again, with it, the wax on which they
had been written.

Such is a brief history of the rise and progress of the art of writing
in the States of Greece. Whether the phonetic principle which Cadmus
introduced was brought originally from Egypt, or from the countries on
the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea, can not now be
ascertained. It has generally been supposed among mankind, at least
until within a recent period, that the art of phonetic writing did
not originate in Egypt, for the inscriptions on all the ancient
monuments in that country are of such a character that it has always
been supposed that they were symbolical characters altogether, and
that no traces of any phonetic writing existed in that land. Within
the present century, however, the discovery has been made that a large
portion of these hieroglyphics are phonetic in their character; and
that the learned world in attempting for so many centuries, in vain,
to affix symbolical meanings to them, had been altogether upon the
wrong track. The delineations, though they consist almost wholly of
the forms of plants and animals, and of other natural and artificial
objects, are not symbolical representations of ideas, but letters,
representing sounds and words. They are thus precisely similar, in
principle, to the letters of Cadmus, though wholly different from them
in form.

[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS.]

To enable the reader to obtain a clearer idea of the nature of this
discovery, we give on the adjoining page some specimens of Egyptian
inscriptions found in various parts of the country, and which are
interpreted to express the name Cleopatra, a very common name for
princesses of the royal line in Egypt during the dynasty of the
Ptolemy's. We mark the various figures forming the inscription, with
the letters which modern interpreters have assigned to them. It will
be seen that they all spell, rudely indeed, but yet tolerably
distinctly, the name CLEOPATRA.

By a careful examination of these specimens, it will be seen that the
order of placing the letters, if such hieroglyphical characters can be
so called, is not regular, and the le