no other
material could equal. While soft and wet it readily took the shape of any
figure impressed upon it. The deftly-handled tool could engrave characters
upon its yielding surface almost as fast as the reed could trace them upon
papyrus, and much more rapidly than the chisel could cut them in wood.
Again, in its final condition as solid terra-cotta, it offered a chance of
duration far beyond that of either wood or papyrus. Once safely through the
kiln it had nothing to fear short of deliberate destruction. The message
intrusted to a terra-cotta slab or cylinder could only be finally lost by
the reduction of the latter to powder. At _Hillah_, the town which now
occupies a corner of the vast space once covered by the streets of Babylon,
bricks are found built into the walls to this day, upon which the Assyrian
scholar may read as he runs the royal style and titles of
Nebuchadnezzar.[48]

As civilization progressed, the dwellers upon the Persian Gulf felt an
ever-increasing attraction towards the art of writing. It afforded a
medium of communication with distant points, and a bond of connection
between one generation and another; by its means the son could profit by
the accumulated experience of the father. The slab of terra-cotta was the
most obvious material for its reception. It cost almost nothing, while such
an elaborate substance as the papyrus of Egypt can never have been very
cheap. It lent itself kindly to the service demanded of it, and the writer
who had confided his thoughts to its surface had only to fire it for an
hour or two to secure them a kind of eternity. This latter precaution did
not require any very lengthy journey; brick kilns must have blazed day and
night from one end of Chaldaea to another.

If we consider for a moment the properties of the material, and examine the
remains which have come down to us, we shall understand at once what
writing was certain to become under the triple impulse of a desire to write
much, to write fast, and to use clay as we moderns use paper. Suppose
oneself compelled to trace upon clay figures whose lines necessitated
continual changes of direction; at each angle or curve it would be
necessary to turn the hand, and with it the tool, because the clay surface,
however tender it might be, would still afford a certain amount of
resistance. Such resistance would hardly be an obstacle, but it would in
some degree diminish the speed with which the tool could be driven. Now