Note 74:2 — Chapter III

It is perhaps the most extraordinary fact in the results of the excavations pointed out to me by Mr. Sayce, that in none of the early Greek tombs or treasures discovered have we a single specimen of early writing, though both Egyptians and Phœnicians, who supplied so much to them, must have been long familiar with that art. The author of the Sixth Book of the Iliad refers once to writing as a strange or mysterious thing, and yet on a folded tablet, which could not have been used at the origin of writing, or indeed till far later times.