And the eminent Egyptologist, M. Emmanuel De Roget, has shown from sources antedating the Shepherd Kings in Egypt that the letters of the mother alphabet were but modifications of the earliest Hieratic or _priestly_ script as these were modifications of the picture-writing upon the oldest monuments of Egypt. The alphabets of all languages are thus traced back, step by step, to the pictured hieroglyphs from which they have all come. The alphabets of the world are akin, as they all had one common parentage in the picture-writing of the Egyptians. There have been developed in the long course of time--how long can only be approximately determined--three somewhat independent though not unrelated sources of literature whence all written language has been evolved. These three sources emerge in history, whatever the genesis and however the process, respectively, in the hieroglyphic, the cuneiform, and the alphabetic writings. (_1_) _The hieroglyphic writing._ In Egypt, and probably in Accadia, the hieroglyphic or picture-writing was the earliest mode of expressing ideas. The new world, also, presents a similar phenomenon, as some of the tribes of the ancient Toltecs of Mexico developed a system of picture-writing resembling somewhat that of North American Indians and akin to the ancient hieroglyphs. With Egyptians this term means, literally, the "sacred" writings. The late Amelia B. Edwards, an Egyptologist of recent years, defines the hieroglyphic or "ideographic" writing as "pictures of objects arranged for the purpose of conveying sequences of ideas, but without any of the connecting links which language supplies." And of picture-writing--in recognition of the universal limitations of this earliest form of written records--one connected with the British Museum says, further: "Picture-writing, moreover, could only place images and symbols side by side, and leave the connection between them to be guessed at or imagined; it could neither show the distinction between the different parts of speech, nor note the flections and tenses of the verbs and the number and case of the nouns, nor fill up the gaps of thought with adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, etc."[39] The earliest literature of Egypt was recorded in this picture-writing wherein symbols and delineations were cut into or written on stone, as on the obelisks; or in wood, as in the mummy-cases; or were written or painted on papyrus, as in "The Book of the Dead," deposited with the mummies of royal personages in their entombment. Some of these papyri are of very great age. One of these, The Prisse Papyrus, so named from its procurer, is held to be the oldest papyrus in existence. It was found near the middle of the last century in a Theban tomb of the eleventh dynasty and is thus older by centuries than the time of Moses and perhaps antedates the time of Abraham. This Papyrus consists of eighteen pages of beautiful hieratic (priestly) writing and is treasured in the National Library at Paris.