CREATION OF THE FIRST LIBRARY “When we speak of the literature of a nation, we are not thinking of inscriptions graven on obelisks and triumphal arches. We mean such literatures as may be stored in a library and possessed by individuals. In a word, we mean books — books, whether in the form of clay cylinders, of papyrus rolls, or any other portable material. The Egyptians were the first people of the ancient world who had a literature of this kind; who wrote books, and read books; who possessed books, and loved them. And their literature, which grew, and flourished, and decayed with the language in which it was written, was of the most varied character, scientific, secular, and religious.