1. The boated lyre; half-boat form.
2. The cross-bar lyre; a two-horned form.
3. The lute; paddle form.
The boated lyre preserves always the hollow shape and form of half a boat covered in, and is built up in planks or ribs, and the strings are bow-strung and strained from point to point.
| Upright Lyre (half boat). |
Fig. 48.
The shape is seen in many of the representations of the larger boats used at the time. Two of these harps laid lengthwise together, joined at the thickest part, will give the shape I refer to, showing by comparison how naturally evolved.
| Harp from the Tomb of Rameses III. |
Fig. 49.
Harps are indeed lyres of larger growth, and in the reign of Rameses the Third had attained their full development, as seen in the grand painting in the tomb at Thebes discovered by the famous traveller Bruce; posterity, has given it the name of Bruce’s harp. In Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s wonderful storehouse of knowledge on Egyptian things, large full-page delineations are given of this and its companion harp. Musicians frequently remark upon the absence of a front pole, their impression being that consequently the tension of the strings must have been so weak that the tone would be dull and ineffective; this however is an impression only, a practical acquaintance with woodworking and bending elastic ribs to shape, would reveal a high state of resistance particularly effective for the purposes of resonance, and would fully justify the old Egyptian craftsmen in their choice.
Many of their harps had from ten to seventeen strings and some even twenty-one and twenty-two.