The cuneiform literature has one preëminent distinction--its comparative incorruptibility. Manuscripts of parchment or papyrus can be easily tampered with; their contents altered or erased; additions inserted, and parts cut out bodily. They are destructible by fire and water; by time and men. Of the exposure of the papyrus literature, in particular, Mr. George H. Putnam says: "Papyrus was an extremely perishable substance. Damp, worms, moth, mice, were all deadly enemies to the papyrus rolls, but even if, through persistent watchfulness, these were guarded against, the mere handling of the rolls, even by the most careful readers, brought them rapidly to destruction."[48] This statement would apply as well though not to the same extent to the literature embodied on parchment and vellum. The writing on tablets, to the contrary, was measurably proof against the obliterations of time and use and accident. The immense number of the tablets which remain after millenniums of years is proof positive that the cuneiform literature is almost unaffected by the "hand of slowly destroying Time." The British Museum contains the largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the world,--Sir Henry Layard, over half a century ago, contributed thereto more than twenty thousand tablets, part results of his explorations on the site of ancient Nineveh. (_3_) _The alphabetic writing._ The alphabet, together with the printing-press, is to be regarded as among the most important associated inventions of all time. With due respect for tradition and oral teaching, no great permanent progress in civilization could have come about without some mode of writing. It has been said that "till one generation of men could transmit to the next the knowledge which they had acquired, and leave behind them a record of their experiments and observations, the arts and sciences must have remained forever in a very rudimentary state, and civilization, after reaching a certain early stage of development, would have remained almost stationary." Canon Taylor affirms that "every system of non-alphabetic (_i. e._, hieroglyphic or syllabic) writing would have been either so limited in its power of expression as to be of small practical value, or, on the other hand, so difficult and complicated, as to be unsuited to general use." A concensus of present opinion among scholars ascribes the parentage of the alphabetic literature--at least as related to the development of civilization--to the ancient Phœnicians. The alphabetic writing may have descended from Crete to the Phœnicians, who, in turn, mediated it to all the after ages. (The Chinese literature, while it is conceded to have had a remote origin and a prolific development, cannot be regarded as an alphabetic literature. It has more of kinship with the cuneiform than either the hieroglyphic or the alphabetic writing.)