When they passed the Red Sea, Miriam and the maidens danced in chorus with singing and the beating of the timbrel (tambour). (Exodus xv. v. 1.)
| Fig. 7: Female figure smelling a lotus. From a painting in the British Museum. |
King David not only danced before the ark (2 Samuel vi. v. 16), but mentions dancing in the 149th and 150th Psalm. Certain historians also tell us that they had dancing in their ritual of the seasons. Their dancing seems to have been associated with joy, as we read of "a time to mourn and a time to dance"; we find (Eccles. iii. v. 4) they had also the pipes: "We have piped to you and you have not danced" (Matthew xi. v. 17). These dances were evidently executed by the peoples themselves, and not by public performers.
| Fig. 8: Dance of Bacchantes, painted by the ceramic painter, Hieron. (British Museum.) |
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: Egyptian music appears to have been of a complicated character and the double pipe or flutes were probably reeded, as with our clarionet. The left pipe had few stops and served as a sort of hautboy; the right had many stops and was higher. The single pipe, (a) "The recorder" in the British Museum, is a treble of 10-1/2 in. and is pentaphonic, like the Scotch scale; the tenor (b) is 8-3/4 in. long and its present pitch—
[Footnote 2]: Vol. i., p. 503-8.
[Footnote 3]: There is a picture of an Egyptian gauffering machine in Wilkinson, vol. i., p. 185.
