and in writing these it is obvious that some means of distinction
is desirable. The same thing occurs even more frequently in the
Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese adopt a more
clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol for each of the
meanings of a syllable; so that while the actual word-sounds of
their speech are only a few hundreds in number, the characters of
their written language mount high into the thousands.


BABYLONIAN WRITING

While the civilization of the Nile Valley was developing this
extraordinary system of hieroglyphics, the inhabitants of
Babylonia were practising the art of writing along somewhat
different lines. It is certain that they began with
picture-making, and that in due course they advanced to the
development of the syllabary; but, unlike their Egyptian cousins,
the men of Babylonia saw fit to discard the old system when they
had perfected a better one.[5] So at a very early day their
writing--as revealed to us now through the recent
excavations--had ceased to have that pictorial aspect which
distinguishes the Egyptian script. What had originally been
pictures of objects--fish, houses, and the like--had come to be
represented by mere aggregations of wedge-shaped marks. As the
writing of the Babvlonians was chiefly inscribed on soft clay,
the adaptation of this wedge-shaped mark in lieu of an ordinary
line was probably a mere matter of convenience, since the
sharp-cornered implement used in making the inscription naturally
made a wedge-shaped impression in the clay. That, however, is a
detail. The essential thing is that the Babylonian had so fully