Men learned the art of writing, or began to express their ideas to each other by (at first) drawing little pictures of objects, about six thousand years ago, but none of the works which we call “classics” goes back to more than three thousand years ago. We should not expect to find many writings surviving from a date earlier than that, and as a matter of fact, except for business purposes writing was chiefly left to the priests. From ancient Egypt alone we have a few specimens of small books written by laymen; especially the _Maxims of Ptah-Hotep_, a very interesting series of counsels and reflections on conduct by a middle-class Egyptian of four thousand or more years ago. This, however, is not great literature. For the older civilizations we have to consider only their religious literature, as certain collections of ritual and other sacred writings which, on the analogy of the Hebrew collection, we may call their “bibles.” The oldest is what we call _The Book of the Dead_ of the Egyptians, parts of which go back thousands of years before Christ. It is not what we should describe as fine literature, and, as it is mainly concerned with the passage of the dead to another world, which to the Egyptians meant a tiresome story of devils and spells and magic, only scholars or special students read it today. There is nothing corresponding to this in Babylonia, where men did not take an acute religious interest in death, but amongst the mass of writings (or inscribed clay tablets) that we have found we have fragments of a remarkable semi-sacred romance, now called _The Story_ (or _Epic_) _of Gilgamesch_, into which are woven the early religious traditions of a creation, deluge, garden of bliss, etc. In substance the story goes back five or six thousand years. The remaining “bibles” were all written after 1000 B. C., and at least in some of their pages they are really fine literature. The _Old Testament_, which is certainly a literary classic in its English translation, and has some notable poetry in the Hebrew, was written, as we have it, in the fifth century before Christ, but the pieces of which it was then composed spread over several centuries before that date. The Persian sacred book, _The Avesta_, is a similar compilation of religious traditions and writings, covering much the same period. But it had not, like the _Old Testament_, the advantage of being translated in an age when men still wrote poetical English, and it is only of historical and religious interest, as an account of the high ideals and remarkable beliefs of the ancient Persians. The oldest Hindu writings, _The Vedas_, mainly a collection of hymns, belong to the same period; the oldest parts (especially of the _Rig Veda_) may go back to 1000 B. C. There is some fine poetic writing in the earlier parts, but in the later this is succeeded by very abstract and subtle speculation which few would care to read.