That it should have been undertaken implies the existence of libraries and schools. One of the distinguishing features of Babylonian culture were the libraries which existed in the great towns, and wherever Babylonian culture was carried this feature of it must have gone too. Hence in the libraries of Western Asia clay books inscribed with cuneiform characters must have been stored up, while beside them must have been the schools, where the pupils bent over their exercises and the teachers instructed them in the language and script of the foreigner. The world into which Moses was born was a world as literary as our own. If Western Asia were the home of a long-established literary culture, Egypt was even more so. From time immemorial the land of the Pharaohs had been a land of writers and readers. At a very early period the hieroglyphic system of writing had been modified into a cursive hand, the so-called hieratic; and as far back as the days of the third and fifth dynasties famous books had been written, and the author of one of them, Ptah-hotep, already deplores the degeneracy and literary decay of his own time. The traveller up the Nile, who examines the cliffs that line the river, cannot but be struck by the multitudinous names that are scratched upon them. He is at times inclined to believe that every Egyptian in ancient times knew how to write, and had little else to do than to scribble a record of himself on the rocks. The impression is the same that we derive from the small objects which are disinterred in such thousands from the sites of the old cities. Wherever it is possible, an inscription has been put upon them, which, it seems taken for granted, could be read by all. Even the walls of the temples and tombs were covered with written texts; wherever the Egyptian turned, or whatever might be the object he used, it was difficult for him to avoid the sight of the written word. Whoever was born in the land of Egypt was perforce familiarised with the art of writing from the very days of his infancy.