(_b_) The cursive writing known as _Hieratic_ was an abridged and conventionalised form of the hieroglyphic. The use of the latter became mainly restricted to monumental and kindred purposes, while the hieratic was employed by the priests in copying literary compositions, notable among which was the _Book of the Dead_, papyrus being the material most commonly used. This was made from the _byblus hieraticus_ or _Cyperus papyrus_, a plant which flourished in the marshy districts of the Nile. There it has long been extinct, and is now found only in Sicily. It would seem to have served as many useful purposes to the ancient Egyptians as the bamboo serves to-day to the Chinese and other Orientals. "The roots were used for firewood, parts of the plant were eaten, and other and coarser parts were made into paper, boats, ropes, mats, &c." In preparing it for writing material, the outer rind was removed and the pith then cut into strips; which were laid side by side, with another set of strips across them fastened by a thin solution of gum, thus forming a sheet, which was pressed, dried in the sun, and polished to a smooth surface. The sheets were often joined to make a roll, which was sometimes above one hundred feet long and varied in width from six to seventeen inches. The finest papyri of the _Book of the Dead_ are about fifteen inches wide, and, when they contain a tolerably large number of chapters, are from eighty to ninety feet long. Dipping his reed, which was either bruised at the end to make it brush-like, or cut, pen-like, to a point, in the ink-wells of his stone, wooden, or sometimes ivory palette, which was often dedicated to the god Thoth, "lord of divine words," the professional scribe wrote the text in varying colours, chiefly black or red, but also in other tints imitative of the subject dealt with, as blue for sky, yellow for woman, and so forth. The earliest known specimen of hieratic writing is a papyrus containing chronicles of the reign of King Asa, whose date, according to a moderate estimate of Egyptian chronology, is about 3580 B.C. To the same period the most perfect literary work which has come down to us is usually assigned, although the copy preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, whither it was brought by M. Prisse d'Avennes from Thebes, seems to have been written between 2700 and 2500 B.C. This valuable relic, commonly known after its donor as the _Papyrus Prisse_, is entitled the "Precepts of Ptah-Hetep," and its contents justify the judgment of Dr. Wallis Budge, that "if all other monuments of the great civilisation of Egypt were wanting, it alone would show the moral worth of the Egyptians, and the high ideals of man's duties which they had formed nearly five thousand five hundred years ago."