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Page 18
Its scale was
[G: (a a+ b c' c+' d') (a' a+' b' c'' c+'' d'') (e'')
f'' f+'' g'' g+'' (a'' a+'' b'' c''' c+''' d''')]
The only thing about which we may be reasonably certain in
regard to Egyptian music is that, like Egyptian architecture,
it must have been very massive, on account of the preponderance
in the orchestra of the low tones of the stringed instruments.
The sistrum was, properly speaking, not considered a musical
instrument at all. It was used only in religious ceremonies, and
may be considered as the ancestor of the bell that is rung at
the elevation of the Host in Roman Catholic churches. Herodotus
(born 485 B.C.) tells us much about Egyptian music, how the
great festival at Bubastis in honour of the Egyptian Diana
(_Bast_ or _Pascht_), to whom the cat was sacred, was attended
yearly by 700,000 people who came by water, the boats resounding
with the clatter of castanets, the clapping of hands, and the
soft tones of thousands of flutes. Again he tells us of music
played during banquets, and speaks of a mournful song called
_Maneros_. This, the oldest song of the Egyptians (dating back
to the first dynasty), was symbolical of the passing away of
life, and was sung in connection with that gruesome custom
of bringing in, towards the end of a banquet, an effigy of a
corpse to remind the guests that death is the birthright of
all mankind, a custom which was adopted later by the Romans.
Herodotus also gives us a vague but very suggestive glimpse
of what may have been the genesis of Greek tragedy, for he was
permitted to see a kind of nocturnal Egyptian passion play, in
which evidently the tragedy of Osiris was enacted with ghastly
realism. Osiris, who represents the light, is hunted by Set or
Typhon, the god of darkness, and finally torn to pieces by the
followers of Set, and buried beneath the waters of the lake;
Horus, the son of Osiris, avenges his death by subduing Set, and
Osiris appears again as the ruler of the shadowland of death.
This strange tragedy took place at night, on the shore of
the lake behind the great temple at Sa�s. Osiris was dressed
royally, in white, and after the horrible pursuit and his
murder by Set and his sinister band, Horus, the rising sun,
dispels the gloom, and a glorious new god of light appears. Set
and his followers are driven back to the gloomy temple where,
perhaps, there was another scene showing the shade of Osiris,
enthroned and ruling the dead. We have no means of knowing the
character of the music which accompanied this mystery play;
but certainly the deep tones of the harps and the flutes,
together with the chanting of men's voices, must have been
appropriate. Add to these the almost silent rattle of the
sistrum, which, for the Egyptians, possessed something of the
supernatural, and we have an orchestral colouring which is
suggestive, to say the least.
With this we will leave Egyptian music, simply calling attention
to the works of Resellini, Lepsius, Wilkinson, and Petri,
which contain copies of mural paintings and temple and tomb
sculptures relating to music. For instance, pages 103, 106, and
111 of Lepsius's third book, "Die Denkm�ler aus Aegypten und
Aethiopen," will be found very interesting, particularly page
106, which shows some of the rooms of the palace of Amenotep
IV, of the eighteenth dynasty (about 1500 or 1600 B.C.),
in which dancing and music is being taught. In the same work,
second book, on pages 52 and 53, are pictures taken from a tomb
near Gizeh, showing harp and flute players and singers. The
position of the hands of the singers--they hold them behind
their ears--is a manner of illustrating the act of hearing,
and arises from the hieroglyphic _double_ way of putting things;
for instance, in writing hieroglyphics the word is often first
spelled out, then comes another sign for the pronunciation,
then sometimes even two other signs to emphasize its meaning.
The music of the Assyrians may be summed up very briefly. All
that can be gathered from the bas-relief sculptures is that
shrill tones and acute pitch must have characterized their
music. As Rowbotham says, alluding to the Sardanapalus wall
sculpture now in the British Museum in London, "What can one
think of the musical delicacy of a nation the King of which,
dining alone with his queen, chooses to be regaled with the
sounds of a lyre and a big drum close at his elbow?" The
instruments represented in these bas-reliefs, aside from the
drum, are high-pitched: flutes, pipes, trumpets, cymbals, and
the smaller stringed instruments. These were all portable,
and some, such as drums and dulcimers, were strapped to the
body, all of which points to the eminently warlike character
of the people. Instead of clapping the hands to mark the time
as did the Egyptians, they stamped their feet. The dulcimer
was somewhat like a modern zither, and may be said to contain
the germ of our piano; for it was in the form of a flat case,
strapped to the body and held horizontally in front of the
player. The strings were struck with a kind of plectrum,
held in the right hand, and were touched with the left hand
immediately afterwards to stop the vibration, just as the
dampers in the pianoforte fall on the string the moment the
key is released. There existed among the Chaldeans a science
of music, which, of course, is a very different thing from
practical music, but it was so imbued with astronomical
symbolism that it seems hardly worth while to consider
it here. The art of Babylonia and Assyria culminated in
architecture and bas-relief sculpture, and it is chiefly
valuable as being the germ from which Greek art was developed.
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