Clay and brick were also used as writing material, a fact which Strack has omitted to mention in his article on Writing in the _Realencyklopädie_ (see Ezek. iv. 1). So far, however, no traces of N.T. writing have been discovered in the Ostraca literature of which we have now a considerable quantity. We have tiles of this sort dating from a period of over a thousand years from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus onwards, inscribed with ink and a reed pen. Several of these contain portions of literary works such as those of Euripides.[40] [Sidenote: Linen.] Linen was also written on.[41] It was used, _e.g._, for the Sibylline Oracles (lintea texta, carbasus: _Orac. Sib._ ed. Alexandre, ii., 159, 178, 189). But up to the present no N.T. writing has been found on linen. Paul’s “books.” On Paul’s “books and parchments,” see Zahn, _Kanon_ ii., 938 ff. I am not aware if J. Joseph takes up this point or not in his La Bibliothèque de l’Apôtre Paul (Chrétien Évang., 1897, v. 224-227). In the _Theol. Tijdschrift_, 1898, p. 217, the view that the μεμβράναι Paul sent for were blank sheets of parchment is called in question. The most natural explanation, certainly, is that they were. Pen. The N.T. makes no mention of the metal, wood, or bone stilus. By “the wild beast of the reeds” (Ps. lxviii. 31) the Rabbis understood the reed pen, which in Syriac also is commonly denoted by קנה, and they took it as referring to Rome and the Emperor, who decided the fate of nations with a single stroke of his pen.[42] Luther, moreover, was not without precedent in speaking of “governors with the pen” in Jud. v. 14, as the Syriac version renders it in the same way. In Ps. xlv. 2, the Hebrew עֵט is rendered κάλαμος (LXX), σχοῖνος (Aquila), and γραφεῖον (Symmachus). It is also rendered σχοῖνος by the translator of Jeremiah viii. 8, where Aquila has γραφεῖον. Σχοῖνος must therefore be added to the Bible names for pen. Γραφίς for γραφεῖον, mentioned alongside of ὄνυξ ἀδαμάντινος in Jer. xvii. 1, seems to belong to the Spanish-Greek of the Complutensian, but is really classic, as also its diminutive γραφίδιον. According to the Rabbis, pens were among the things God made in the evening of the last day of the creation. They were also venerated by the Egyptians and the Greeks as an invention of the Deity.[43] According to Antisthenes[44] or Democritus,[45] a young man, in order to enter the school of wisdom, requires to have a βιβλιαρίου καινου (= καὶ νοῦ) καὶ γραφείου καινου καὶ πινακιδίου καινου. In Cyprus, the stilus is called ἀλειπτήριον, and the γραμματοδιδάσκαλος in like manner διφθεράλοιφος.[46] In the recently discovered fragments of Diocletian’s _List of Wares_, the section περὶ πλούμου (goose, swan, and peacock feathers) is followed by that περὶ καλάμων καὶ μελανίου, and then by that περὶ ἐσθῆτος. Ink costs 12 drachmae the quart; Paphian and Alexandrian κάλαμοι[47] cost 4