Letter-writing in the East goes back to a remote antiquity. In the book of Chronicles it is stated that the messages that passed between Hiram and Solomon were in writing, but the age of Solomon was modern when compared with that to which some of the letters we now possess actually belong. Centuries earlier the words “message” and “letter” had become synonymous terms, and in Hebrew the word which had originally signified a “message” had come to mean a “book.” Not only is a message conceived of as always written, but even the idea of a book is taken from that of a letter. Nothing can show more plainly the important place occupied by literary correspondence in the ancient Oriental world or the antiquity to which the art of the letter-writer reaches back. While in Egypt the letter was usually written upon papyrus, in Western Asia the ordinary writing material was clay. Babylonia had been the nurse and mother of its culture, and the writing material of Babylonia was clay. Originally pictorial hieroglyphics had been drawn upon the clay, but just as in Egypt the hieratic or running-hand of the scribe developed out of the primitive pictographs, so too in Babylonia the pictures degenerated into cuneiform characters which corresponded with the hieratic characters of the Egyptian script. What we call cuneiform is essentially a cursive hand. As for books, so also for letters the clay tablet was employed. It may seem to us indeed a somewhat cumbrous mode of sending a letter; but it had the advantage of being solid and less likely to be injured or destroyed than other writing materials. The characters upon it could not be obliterated by a shower of rain, and there was no danger of its being torn. Moreover, it must be remembered that the tablet was usually of small size. The cuneiform system of writing allows a large number of words to be compressed into a small space, and the writing is generally so minute as to try the eyes of the modern decipherer. Some of the letters which have been discovered during the last few years go back to the early days of the Babylonian monarchy. Many of them are dated in the reign of Khammurabi, or Amraphel, among them being several that were written by the King himself. That we should possess the autograph letters of a contemporary of Abraham is one of the romances of historical science, for it must be remembered that the letters are not copies, but the original documents themselves. What would not classical scholars give for the autograph originals of the letters of Cicero, or theologians for the actual manuscripts that were written by the Evangelists? And yet here we have the private correspondence of a prince who took part in the campaign against Sodom and Gomorrah!