Ancient commerce* was the instrument which spread the art of writing from Babylon first into Egypt, and later into China. Writing was at first pictorial, but the needs of commerce and government taxation placed numerical symbols and cycles in the forefront of the new mode of representing ideas by writing. Alphabetic writing was the natural result of phonetic signs. Those signs were first syllabic and later they became alphabetic. The Pheenicians were both the traditional inventors of alphabetic writing and the first nation which made commerce by sea its chief care and occupation, and we seem forced to the conclusion. that since Phenictan commerce can be traced in old records as fat back as about t wor thousand yests before Christ, the most probable date for the origination of the alphabet is not likely to be Inter that about eight cen centuries before Christ. If this snpposition be correct then the Pentateuch would be written in the first instance on bricks or on some more perishable material contemporaneously with the events recorded.
For several con'uries writing and reading were professed only by scribes, who wrote not for literary purposes but to aid commercial men to keep th cir accounts, to record judicial decisions, tw) state what the Jaws ware, to register birt lis, deaths, and family descent, and to observe the stars and the phenomena of the sky. The scribes were the educabod men of each nition in South-western Asia. The common people could not real. The chiefs of clans selected their course lors from among the scribes. Some became influential statesmen, Others becom e physicians and astrologers. Others acted as assistant judges or collectors of taxes. It was among the scribes that ¥ originated and it was through their fare-reaching travels that writing was spread to distant countries. The Jews, Arameans, and' haldeans scattered themselves "li over the Roman and Persian Empires. They were arithmetictans, predicted future events by the stars, and were inter reters of languages. They were also used as tex collectors, keefrers of registers, -genealrgists, and to copy manuscripts. They were also lawyers anil schoolmasters. 1't was the art of writing that originated these various pro-fe-sions and the povror to write is at the oasis of them all. Th ¢ artisans and farmers grew up without education: the clever member of a family would go to school. The rest would begin. to work for a living when quite young. The literati were distinct class in Pers'ia, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, and a simile r system spread into Greece and Rome. The literati became a class by themselves precisely as in China the literati are the JO chat or shoterim of Western Asia, and the Brahmins took over the same duti es in India as soon as they had with Semir ie aid constructed the Devanagari writing.
"The records of ec wrly alphabetic writing ate few because perishable materials were Lecture before the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society February, 1897.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.