THE EGYPTIAN PERIOD
the capital and in all public departments but in all local capitals. Schools for scribes were, it would seem, held in the palace, temple, and treasury libraries. Literature of all sorts was very abundant at the time (Breasted Hist. 1908 p. 320 sq.), and, especially to the point, everything of a business or a documentary sort was organized with great clerical detail. There were, therefore, apparently, at this time millions of documents or books, in hundreds of organized collections which could be called public-archives or libraries, and numberless small collections in the hands of scribes or private owners.
The rolls must have been kept in chests or in small boxes, like the box containing the medical papyri of King Neferikere some 1300 years before, or the "many boxes" at Edfu long after, or the wooden boxes in which some allege that the Amarna records were kept. Many pictures of these book-chests or book-cases
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