All of this got to be too much for priests just to keep in their heads. Besides, if the one who knew about the seed grain died, there might not be enough saved to plant the fields the following year. Something had to be done.
The priests needed a way to store up information so they could get it when they wanted it. To solve their problem, someone invented the idea of making marks on thin bricks made of damp clay. Each mark would have a meaning that all the priests agreed to. There would be marks for numbers and marks for things. When the damp bricks or tablets were dried, the marks would remain. Any priest could then look at the tablets, and he would know how many measures of grain, for example, another priest had entered in his records.
This was the way writing began.
The oldest writing in the world was picture-writing. The word for man was a drawing of a man. But after a while people drew the words more simply. Finally the words were nothing more than squiggles. Alphabets and the idea of spelling out words were invented long after picture-writing. Before the invention of printing machines and typewriters, everything had to be written by hand. Monks often spent their whole time making beautiful copies of books.
