=School exercises= were written on small whitewashed boards, slices of white limestone, and papyrus with a reed, and they usually consisted of extracts from ancient texts, religious or poetical, the contents of which were intended to improve the mind and form the morals and manners of the reader and copyist. (See Standard-case C in the Third Egyptian Room.) The education given in the =colleges of the Priests= was of a different character. There the young men studied magical and religious texts, several Books of the Dead, the doctrines of the cosmogony, and the histories and legends of the gods. They read the ancient writings with the priests whose duty it was to instruct them, and learned by heart their expositions of the traditions accepted in the temples. One would expect the colleges to have possessed glossaries, or dictionaries, and grammars, but it is doubtful if they did, for nothing of the kind has hitherto been discovered. =History= in the modern sense of the word was unknown, though some of the great kings caused =Annals= of their reigns to be written; and recent excavations have shown that even the =King Lists= which were drawn up under the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties are incomplete, and that they contain the names of some kings wrongly spelt. =Astronomy= was studied with some success by the priests, and the maps of stars which were compiled by them were undoubtedly used for practical purposes in connexion with the agriculture of the country. [Illustration: Head of a seated figure of a priestess wearing a full-plaited wig, bandlet, etc. XVIIIth dynasty. [Wall-case 103, Third Egyptian Room.]] [Illustration: PLATE IX. Painted relief with scenes representing dancing, the slaughter of cattle, preparations for a feast, etc. From the tomb of Ur-ȧri-en-Ptaḥ. VIth dynasty. [Assyrian Basement, No. 80.]] [Illustration: PLATE X. Painted sepulchral tablet of Kaḥu, a scribe of a storehouse of Ȧmen. XVIIIth dynasty. [Northern Egyptian Gallery, Bay 12, No. 514.]]