At first it was only for accounts and matters of fact. In Egypt it was used for medical recipes and magic formulas. Accounts, letters, name lists and itineraries followed; but for the preservation of humorous thought writing was not used. That was left to the bards, and of course, to the caricaturists. Therefore, Egyptian art usually presents itself in solemn and dignified effects with no lightness or gayety implied. Yet we are told by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own sensations.” Sir Gardner observes that “many instances of a talent for caricature, are observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings of the tombs at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred mysteries of their religion.” A class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period, shows comparisons between men and the particular animals whose qualities they possess. As brave as a lion, as faithful as a dog, as sly as a fox or as swinish as a pig,--these things are all represented in these ancient caricatures. More than a thousand years B.C. there was drawn on an Egyptian papyrus a cat carrying a shepherd’s crook and driving a flock of geese. This is but one section of a long picture, in which the animals are often shown treating their human tyrants in the manner they are usually treated by them. All sorts of animals are shown, in odd contortions and grotesque attitudes, and not infrequently the scene or episode depicted refers to the state or condition of the human soul after death. It is deduced that from these animal pictures arose the class of stories called fables, in which animals are endued with human attributes. And also connected with them is the belief in metempsychosis or the transmission of the human soul into the body of an animal after death, which is a strong factor in the primitive religions.