Now that its origin has been explained, the story of the alphabet may be rapidly told. Indeed, its whole history can be learned from Figure 5. In column (a) are the three Egyptian picture-signs referred to above. Column (b) shows how the rapid writing of the priests reduced the old hieroglyphics to script; [symbol: door] became [symbol: 3 c's]; [symbol: eagle] became [symbol: odd a] and [symbol: hand] became [symbol: squiggle]. The Phoenicians, who were great travelers, visited Egypt at a very early date and borrowed not only the idea of the alphabet, but also the forms of the Egyptian letters, as column _c_ shows. Column _d_ confirms the words of Herodotus, who tells us that the Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenicians. Column _e_ shows that the Greeks handed the alphabet on to the Romans, who handed it on to us. Thus the three letters p, a, d come straight from the Egyptians and were originally a _door_, an _eagle_, and a _hand_, respectively. As it is with these three letters, so it is with nearly all the letters of our alphabet. If the letters on the page before you could be suddenly changed to their original form, you would behold a motley collection of birds, serpents, animals, tools, and articles of household use. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--SHOWING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THREE LETTERS, P, A, AND D.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--AN ANCIENT VOLUME.] We must look to Egypt for the origin of the material form of our book as well as for the origin of our alphabetical characters. Before history had dawned the Egyptians had covered over with their writing nearly all the available surface on their pyramids and in their temples. At a time too far back for a date necessity seems to have compelled them to seek a substitute for stone. This they found in the _papyrus_ plant, which grew in great luxuriance in the valley of the Nile. They placed side by side strips of the pith of the papyrus, and across these at right angles they placed another layer of strips. The two layers were then glued together and pressed until a smooth surface was formed. This made one sheet. To make a book a number of sheets were fastened together end to end. When in book form the papyrus was wound around a stick and kept in the form of a roll, a _volume_ (Fig. 6). The roll was usually eight or ten inches wide, but its length might be upward of a hundred feet. This papyrus roll was the parent of our modern paper book, as the word papyrus is the original of our word paper. The pen used in writing upon papyrus was a split reed (_calamus_), and the ink a mixture of soot and gum. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD. WRITTEN NEARLY 5,000 YEARS AGO.] The most ancient volume in the world is an Egyptian papyrus (Fig. 7) now in the National Library of France. It was written nearly 5,000 years ago by an aged sage and contains precepts of right living. In this oldest of volumes we find this priceless gem: