It seems probable that throughout the Greek period manuscripts on paper or vellum were usually, if not always, in the shape of a long roll; and that it was not till about the beginning of the Roman Empire that leaves of parchment or paper were sometimes cut up into pages and bound together in the form of the older tablets. During the first two or three centuries of the Empire, manuscripts were produced in both of these forms--the _codex_ and the _volumen_; but the _roll_ form was by far the commoner, almost till the transference of the seat of government to Byzantium. The roll form of book is the one shown in many of the wall paintings of Pompeii; but on some sarcophagi reliefs of the second century A.D. books both of the _roll_ and the _codex_ shape are represented[9]. _Writing with a pen._ Having given some account of the various classical forms of manuscript in which the writing is incised with a sharp _stilus_, we will now pass on to the other chief forms of manuscript which were written with a pen and with ink or other pigment. _Books of the dead._ _Manuscripts on papyrus_; the oldest existing examples of this class are the so-called _Rituals of the Dead_ found in the tombs of Egypt, especially in those of the Theban dynasties; the oldest of these date as far back as the sixteenth or fifteenth century B.C.[10] They are executed with a reed pen in hieroglyphic writing on long rolls of papyrus, and are copiously illuminated with painted miniatures illustrating the subject of the text, drawn with much spirit and coloured in a very finely decorative way. Immense numbers of these Egyptian illuminated manuscripts still exist in a more or less fragmentary condition. One of the most perfect of these is the _Book of the Dead of Ani_, a royal scribe, dating from the fourteenth century B.C., now in the British Museum. An excellent facsimile of the whole of this fine illuminated manuscript has been edited by Dr Budge and published by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1890. _Egyptian psalter._ Manuscripts of this important class are not very accurately described as _Rituals of the Dead_; as Dr Budge points out they really consist of collections of _psalms_ or _sacred hymns_ which vary considerably in different manuscripts. They appear to have been written in large numbers and kept in stock by the Egyptian undertakers ready for purchasers. Blank spaces were left for the name and titles of the dead person for whom they were bought. Thus we find that the names are often filled in carelessly by another hand than that of the writer of the manuscript, and some examples exist in which the spaces for the name are still left blank. Another of the finest and most complete of the funereal _papyri_ is preserved in the Museum in Turin; see Pierret, _Le livre des Morts des anciens Egyptiens_, Paris, 1882. _Use of papyrus._ _Existing Greek MSS._