The harps were frequently the heighth of a man; they were painted tastefully with lotus and other flowers, and richly ornamented and inlaid. The tuning was by means of pegs, sometimes two rows of pegs are shewn. There were long slit holes at the back for giving freedom to the air, exactly as found in modern harps.
No instance has been found of harp with supporting pole or pillar. The strings were always of gut. One harp has been discovered with strings which though they had been buried more than 3000 years still sounded on being touched. A curiously formed harp is shewn in the Paris collection having twenty-one strings, or places for strings, enough left to exhibit a manner of tying the strings (see enlarged design of this mode given on next page).
That the style had a vogue is evident since another example exists in the Leyden collection, though less complete in condition; the framework still retains the fine green colour as originally painted. Sometimes the woodwork was covered with leather, green or red. This instrument is built five sided in section, and at the back has three sound holes. The resonance should be very strong. The string-bar is well supported by its double bearings and for the kind of music demanded, I should not consider that the tuning would be of the difficulty some writers suppose.
| The Paris Lyre. |
Fig. 50.
As the boated lyre betokens a river influence, so the lyres of Class II. indicate a pastoral origin, and this is well portrayed in the Egyptian painting discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in a tomb at Beni-Hassan. It is a painting representing the arrival of strangers in Egypt, and one portion of it introduces a lyre having six strings, the man holding it in the primitive fashion, and playing it with the plectrum, he is preceded by an ass bearing a burden.
The true origin is undoubtedly Asiatic, it came, perhaps, by way of Arabia into the central Nile region, and the parent form is best shown in the illustration next following (Fig. [52]). In this shape it has existed from time immemorial, and down to the present it is found in use by native tribes, in Nubia, Ugandi, Abysinnia, and other regions. Sir Harry Johnston, in his splendid work on Uganda, gives a picture of a native, a Kavibondo, playing this same kind of lyre, eight-stringed.
Fig. 51.