It is a curious fact worth thinking about that the Lute crossed over the ranges of the Hindoo Cush to the Valley of the Indus and to the Ganges and became the parent of the Ravanastron, or Indian Violin, and other tribes of bowed string instruments. The Lyre and the Harp never passed, nor the double flutes (except as left by Alexander the Great after his conquest) and the same with China. The feeling of the Hindoos has settled upon instruments with many frets and moveable bridges, and unfortunately the relics of the real old days of that land have not been preserved.
On the Western side of this mountainous range I have shewn the type of stringed instruments that prevailed, from Chaldea and Babylonia to Egypt, from Assyria and Asia Minor to Greece, the chief feature of the lyre and the harp being an open frame with a body that is founded on a boat-shape. These open-frame instruments are not found on the Eastern side. Why? it remains an open question. Yet the long-necked Lute or Nefer became acclimatised there in India. Was the instrument the cause of the character developed in their music? It is easy to see how it would lend itself to minute division, originating twenty intervals within an octave. Race, climate, and geography, are the great factors in the developments of the art of music.
Here, with reluctance I bring this volume to a close, for its pages have already extended in number much beyond the limit of the original intent. During the progress of the work new materials have come to hand giving an additional interest to the subject, information and illustrations acquired too late for incorporation in their relevant places, and too important in their bearing upon the investigation to be lightly sketched in, with but scant recognition of value. There is much yet to be added to the search for the origin of the Apollo Lyre; both the three-stringed and the four-stringed I have found depicted on a vase, of a date at least 900 B.C., and Dr. A. J. Evans has favoured me with a drawing of a pictograph seal, representing an eight-stringed lyre, found in his explorations at Knossos in Crete, and he writes me that he now places the date 2,000 B.C. From Egypt there comes a picture of large cross-string harps, a construction undreamt of as an ancient idea, but veritably so, discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie at Abydos, in the Tombs of the Kings. The illustration which he has given me is of great interest.
Then the American explorers in Babylonia have unearthed a tablet sculptured in relief showing musicians, and one sitting, playing a harp of eleven strings; Mr. St. Chad Boscawen gives the date of this slab circa B.C. 3,000, it was found at Tel-lo, the ancient Sirpurra. Another valuable find, much earlier in date, was a terra-cotta relief depicting a shepherd seated playing his lute, and his dog with a curly tail standing beside him (probably this lute-lover was an earlier Anacreon), the lute so like the Egyptian Nefer, and the attitude in holding the instrument exactly the same; for so remote a time the drawing of the figures is little less than marvellous. This relic was found in the schoolroom attached to the temple library at Nippur, it confirms the conjecture I put forth that the Nefer form was derived from Babylonia—I called it the paddle form.
Each year fresh treasures may be unearthed, so energetic are the new explorers, sons of nations, all rivals in archæological work, each emulating the other in adding new riches to the Museums to hold in trust for the world’s coming ages, adding to the known past other more distant millenniums.
With so much material accumulating throwing new light upon the subject, I contemplate a sequel to this volume, to be ready, if health aids the fulfilment of my wish, by the coming Christmas, and to be entitled “Our Musical Inheritance.”