Long, long ago in a country called Egypt, which is far across the sea (you may find it on your map, and that will make it more interesting for you) they had a very curious way of writing. They had no letters like our A, B, C's, but did what we call picture writing; that is, they drew pictures instead of writing letters and words as we do today. Their writing looked like this-- [Illustration] That does not look much like writing, does it? You do not know what it means, either, do you? Yet the people at that time could read their picture writing just as easily as we can the Alphabet writing. This is the way they sent messages to each other and wrote down the things they wanted to remember. Do you know that they did not have any paper in those days long ago, either? What do you think they used? They cut their pictures on stone, on walls of buildings, and sometimes on wood and the bark of trees. They also had a material called papyrus, which was made from reeds growing in the swamps of Egypt. Think what a long time it must have taken them to write in this way, and how much easier and quicker it is for you and me today! To the north of Egypt there is a small country called Phoenicia. If you will look on your map you will find that the sea comes to the very shores of this country. In Phoenicia there were many beautiful things that people in other countries wanted to buy. So the Phoenicians built big ships and filled them full of the beautiful things and sailed away. Across the water they came to a land by the name of Greece, the country you know about where Hercules and Ulysses lived, and here they unloaded their ships. Of course the Phoenicians brought the picture writing they had learned from the Egyptians with them. By this time they were beginning to think pictures took too long to draw, and they gradually changed the pictures into signs so that they could write easier and quicker. So the writing they brought to Greece was quite different from the picture writing they had learned from the Egyptians. It looked like this-- [Illustration] We cannot understand this either, can we? But you can see it is much better than the way they wrote before. The Greek people were very happy that the Phoenicians brought such a wonderful way of writing with them and soon began to copy it, and use it in their country, too. When the Phoenicians went back to their own country the Greeks continued to use the sign writing, but changed it and made it more beautiful. They gave it a name, too, and called it by the names of the first two signs, _Alpha_ which means "ox," and _Beta_ which means "house." If you put these two words, _Alpha_ and _Beta_, together, what do you have? ALPHA-BET--the word we use today.