I think the discussion of the story of the invention of the arts in Egypt has these significant functions. First, it stated the fact that the invention of words helped people pass their knowledge and experience to future generations. Second, it critically presented that the words might be misunderstood by others and was the fake of wisdom. Being more dependent on words, people gradually became more forgetful. This discussion dialectically revealed the right and wrong of the words. Last but not least, it was also the self-questioning of Plato that words were dead and something deeper should be engraved on the soul of people. The rhetoric is vivid and makes the dead words more closed to the soul.