Palæography, or the decipherment of documents, and Epigraphy, or the decipherment of inscriptions, have been indispensable keys to the history of the alphabet. But the materials with which each has to deal would demand a volume, and, moreover, reference to them here has warrant only in their immediate bearings on the development and diffusion of alphabets. But, as with the _Papyrus Prisse_ and the _Book of the Dead_, there is a deep interest attaching to some of the venerable records. They are, in the modern phrase, and in the best sense of it, "human documents." Such are the Greek papyri, the oldest-known specimens of which are found in Egypt, and have a range of a thousand years, _i.e._ from the third century B.C. to the seventh century A.D., so that, as Mr. Kenyon remarks in his monograph on the subject, "we may fairly say that we know how men wrote in the days of Aristotle and Menander, but we have not yet got back to Pindar and Æschylus, much less to Homer or (if a less contentious name be preferred) Hesiod." The use of papyrus as a writing material stretches back in Egypt to a remote antiquity; but we cannot be certain that it was used by the Greeks before the early part of the fifth century B.C., while "with the Arab conquest of Egypt (640 A.D.) the practice of Greek writing on papyrus received its death-blow." By far the larger number of documents thus far discovered are non-literary, dealing with official and commercial matters, as tax-collectors' receipts (although many of these are scratched on potsherds, or _ostraca_, literally "oyster shells," whence _ostracize_, the inscribing of the name of a person obnoxious to the state on a shell), acknowledgments of repayment of dowry after divorce, wills, reports of public physicians on autopsy, house-keeping bills, surety deeds, registration of title to inheritance, wedding and dinner invitations, of which last here is an example eighteen hundred years old: "Chæron requests your company at dinner at the table of Lord Serapis in the Serapæum to-morrow, the 15th, at 9 o'clock" (_i.e._ about 3 P.M.). Then there are domestic letters, one, touching human hearts across the centuries, from a father to his son: "Tell me anything I can do for you. Good-bye, my boy;" and another crudely written, and with faulty spelling and grammar, from a boy to his father. "Theon to his father Theon, greeting: It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to Alexandria. I won't write a letter or speak to you, or say good-bye to you, and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand, nor ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me.... Send me a lyre, I implore you; if you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink. There, now!"