The age of Chaldæan writing (engraving) is not far behind that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is said that an inscription of the first Sargon, King of Akkad (in the square or angular character out of which the wedge-shaped or cuneiform letters were evolved), carries the record back to 3800 B.C. Even if we take a large latitude in discounting the chronology, there still remains a certainty that the cuneiform character of Babylonia was used over the greater part of Western Asia from at least 2500 B.C., and in Persia and its tributaries down to 300 B.C. While, of the Egyptian writing, we have remains exhibiting all the stages of development, namely (1) the hieroglyphic, (2) the hieratic, (3) the demotic, (4) the Coptic in Greek letters; of the cuneiform script we have only the two phases which may be roughly said to correspond to the Egyptian hieratic and demotic, or more exactly to two stages of the hieratic. We cannot reconstruct the original Chaldæan hieroglyphics which must have preceded the Chaldæan hieratic and {8}cuneiform; nor do we know (at present) of any truly cursive hand developed from the wedge-letters. Among the relics of the Assyrians is a great number of stone tablets of small size, containing reports to the monarch from provincial governors. One of them, now in the British Museum, is supposed, from a phrase which occurs in it, to show that the stone tablets were simply copies made for preservation in the archives, while the actually transmitted originals were written on papyrus. If that were the practice, and there is inherent probability in the suggestion, there would assuredly have been a great quantity of papyrus used throughout the Assyrian empire; yet not a fragment of that material has been discovered. In the absence of some positive evidence, we can but suppose it likely that the Assyrians used papyrus (or skins) for writing on, as well as the Egyptians, but applied it only to temporary purposes, trusting rather to granite and brick, than to paper or to leather, whatever was intended for enduring record. _Progress of the Art, B.C. 2500-1500_