He has to write many copies, and as he gets he learns to compose business letters to his master; before he is fourteen he is most likely a clerk in a government office, and must continue his studies at the same time.
The letters and copies of a schoolboy who lived three thousand years ago have been discovered. How many bad marks did his teacher give him, do you think, when he had to correct that carelessly written capital?
SCHOOLBOY'S COPY FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. NOTICE THE TEACHER'S CORRECTIONS
So great a respect had the Egyptians for writing that they used to say, 'The great god Thoth invented letters; no human being could have given anything so wonderful and useful to the world.'
Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drawing, an Egyptian lad was supposed to study all these, and as we have seen, those lads who were trained for work in the Foreign Office had to learn other languages as well; they had also to read and write 'cuneiform'—the name given to the strange wedge-shaped letters of Assyria and Babylonia.
All the letters from the people of Canaan to the Egyptian king and his Foreign Office were written in cuneiform.
Chinese is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn in our day; but the ancient cuneiform was certainly quite as complicated as Chinese. The cuneiform had no real alphabet, only 'signs.' There were five hundred simple signs, and nearly as many compound signs, so that the student had to begin with a thousand different signs to memorize. Yes, boys had their troubles even in those days.
Now, as Moses grew older and learned more, he must often have felt very thoughtful and sad. So many books, so many ideas, so many stories of cruel gods and evil spirits—where was the truth to be found? No one seemed to remember the One True God, the God of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.