the treaties and the public records. These ancient
scribes employed a cylindrical box for ink, with writing
tablets, which were square sections of wood with
lateral grooves to hold the small reeds for writing.

During the time Joseph was Viceroy of Egypt
under Sethosis I, the first of the Pharaohs, B. C. 1717,
he employed a small army of clerks and storekeepers
throughout Egypt in his extensive grain operations.
The scribes whose duties pertained to making records
respecting this business, used both red and black inks,
contained in different receptacles in a desk, which,
when not in use, was placed in a box or trunk, with
leather handles at the sides, and in this way was
carried from place to place. As the scribe had two
colors of ink, he needed two pens (reeds) and we see
him on the monuments of Thebes, busy with one pen
at work, and the other placed in that most ancient
pen-rack, behind the ear. Such, says Mr. Knight, is
presented in a painting at Beni Hassan.

The Historical Society of New York possesses a
small bundle of these pens, with the stains of the ink
yet upon them, besides a bronze knife used for making
such pens (reeds), and which are alleged to belong to
a period not far removed from Joseph's time.
The other history of ink, long preceding the departure
of Israel from Egypt, and with few exceptions
until after the middle ages, can only be considered, as
it is intimately bound up in the chronology and story