When the Egyptians wanted any of their writings to last for a very long time, they did not trust them to the frail papyrus rolls, but used another kind of book altogether. You have heard of "sermons in stones"? Well, a great many of the Egyptian books that tell us of the great deeds of the Pharaohs were written on stone, carved deep and clear in the hard granite of a great obelisk, or in the limestone of a temple wall. When one of the Kings came back from the wars, he generally published the account of his battles and victories by carving them on the walls of one of the great temples, or on a pillar set up in the court of a temple, and there they remain to this day for scholars to read. When the hieroglyphics were cut in stone, the lines were often filled in with pastes of different colours, so that the whole writing was a blaze of beautiful tints, and the walls looked as if they were covered with finely-coloured hangings. Of course, the colours have mostly faded now; but there are still some temples and tombs where they can be seen, almost as fresh as when they were first laid on, and from these we can gather some idea of how wonderfully beautiful were these stone books of ancient Egypt. The scribes and carvers knew very well how beautiful their work was, and were careful to make it look as beautiful as possible; so much so, that if they found that the grouping of figures to make up a particular word or sentence was going to be ugly or clumsy, they would even prefer to spell the word wrong, rather than spoil the appearance of their picture-writing. Some of you, I dare say, spell words wrong now and again; but I fancy it isn't because you think they look prettier that way. But now let us turn back again to our papyrus roll. Suppose that we have got it, clean and fresh, and that our friend the scribe is going to write upon it. How does he go about it? To begin with, he draws from his belt a long, narrow wooden case, and lays it down beside him. This is his palette; rather a different kind of palette from the one which artists use. It is a piece of wood, with one long hollow in it, and two or three shallow round ones. The long hollow holds a few pens, which are made out of thin reeds, bruised at the ends, so that their points are almost like little brushes. The shallow round hollows are for holding ink--black for most of the writing, red for special words, and perhaps one or two other colours, if the scribe is going to do a very fine piece of work. So he squats down, cross-legged, dips a reed-pen in the ink, and begins. As he writes he makes his little figures of men and beasts and birds face all in the one direction, and his readers will know that they must always read from the point towards which the characters face. Now and then, when he comes to some specially important part, he draws, in gay colours, a little picture of the scene which the words describe.