My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in AEgean script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the "Phoenician letters," which I think she did not later than the ninth to eighth centuries; "at the beginning of the ninth century," says Professor Bury. [Footnote: _History of Greece_, vol. i. p. 78. 1902.] This may seem an audaciously early date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh centuries bearing inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of reading and writing was reasonably common. When such a humble class of hirelings or slaves as the pot-painters can sign their work, expecting their signatures to be read, reading and writing must be very common accomplishments among the more fortunate classes. If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions on early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh century, we reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these inscriptions be of a century earlier than the Abu Simbel inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we reach 690 B.C. Wherefore, as writing does not become common in a moment, it must have existed in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here with a special learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write. [Footnote: _The Early Ionic Alphabet: Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. vii. pp. 220-239. Roberts, _Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, pp. 31, 151, 159, 164, 165-167] Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon vase, found at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug shape, with a neck, a handle, a spout, and a round belly. On the neck, within a zigzag "geometrical" pattern, is a doe, feeding, and a tall water-fowl. On the shoulder is scratched with a point, in very antique Attic characters running from right to left, [Greek: os nun orchaeston panton hatalotata pais ei, tou tode]. "This is the jug of him who is the most delicately sportive of all dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the eighth century. [Footnote: Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p, 243; Kretschmer, _Griechischen Vasen inschriften_, p. 110, 1894, of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, _Denkmaler_, iii. pp. 1945, 1946: "Probably dating from the seventh century." Roberts, op. cit., vol. i. p. 74, "at least as far back as the seventh century," p. 75.]