This is what had happened to the word during the course of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it had become the past participle of a verb. After several hundred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and the picture [Illustration] came to stand for a single letter, the letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in hieroglyphics. [Illustration] The [Illustration] either means one of these two round objects in your head, which allow you to see or it means “I,” the person who is talking. A [Illustration] is either an insect which gathers honey, or it represents the verb “to be” which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part of a verb like “be-come” or “be-have.” In this particular instance it is followed by [Illustration] which means a “leaf” or “leave” or “lieve” (the sound of all three words is the same). The “eye” you know all about. Finally you get the picture of a [Illustration]. It is a giraffe. It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyphics developed. You can now read that sentence without much difficulty. “I believe I saw a giraffe.” Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it during thousands of years until they could write anything they wanted, and they used these “canned words” to send messages to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the history of their country, that future generations might benefit by the mistakes of the past. THE NILE VALLEY THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE The history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make his home. The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at an early date. From the interior of Africa and from the desert of Arabia and from the western part of Asia people had flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms. Together these invaders had formed a new race which called itself “Remi” or “the Men” just as we sometimes call America “God’s own country.” They had good reason to be grateful to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land. In the summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a shallow lake and when the waters receded all the grainfields and the pastures were covered with several inches of the most fertile clay. In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and made it possible to feed the teeming population of the first large cities of which we have any record. It is true that all the arable land was not in the valley. But a complicated system of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from the river-level to the top of the highest banks and an even more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it throughout the land. [Illustration: THE VALLEY OF EGYPT]