Supposedly under the patronage of the Egyptian ruler, Rameses II., about thirteen hundred years before Christ, many books on religion, law, medicine and other subjects were written, and a great library was accumulated. The Chinese wrote with a stylus or brush upon tablets of bamboo fiber. It is impossible accurately to determine the antiquity of Chinese methods, as the extravagant and often unsubstantiated claims of historians antedate those of modern discovery. Ink, paper, and printing from blocks were all supposedly invented by the Chinese early in the Christian era, and even the first use of separate types is credited to Pi-Shing, a Chinese blacksmith. It may be relevant to suggest that the old-time “blacksmith” joke and the printing-term “pi” are derived from this source. Dressed skins and palm leaves were used by the Hindoos, and writings in Sanscrit were probably done in the temples by the Brahmins, the priests and philosophers of early India. The Vedas, sacred writings as old as 2000 B.C., formed a big portion of the Hindoo literature. The Hebrews wrote upon stones and animal skins. In this manner they preserved the Old Testament portion of the Bible, and gave to posterity one of the most wonderful books ever written. * * * * * The ancient Phœnicians were commercial people, and being such did very little in producing literature; yet it is to them that we owe the present Roman alphabet. The illustration on a following page shows how this transition probably came about. There is a slight resemblance between some of the twenty-one characters in the Phœnician alphabet and certain picture writings of the Egyptians, whose hieroglyphic alphabet consisted of several hundred characters and was as cumbersome as is the Chinese alphabet with its several thousand characters. The Greeks received their alphabet directly from the Phœnicians, there being a tradition that one Cadmus introduced it into Greece. Some writers claim that “Cadmus” merely signifies “the East” and does not refer to an individual. The names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta, are similar to those of many other languages, and the word “alphabet” is derived from these two words. * * * * * In Greece, especially at Athens, before manuscripts became numerous, lectures and public readings were important features of intellectual life. The poems of Homer, supposed to have been composed about 880 B.C., were not put into writing until 560 B.C., and during this period of more than three hundred years they were retained in the memory of bards, by whom they were sung or recited. “Plutarch’s Lives,” one of the best known Greek literary works, was written in the second century, A.D.