The World's Earliest Music / Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer

by Hermann Smith

Fig. 10.
From the Wall Painting to be seen at the British Museum.

In the Egyptian wall paintings which we have in the British Museum are two domestic scenes; and in both the damsels are seen seated on the ground in oriental fashion, and they are playing on double flutes, whilst other damsels are dancing to their music. The picture belongs to the time of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, about B.C. 1,600, and was taken from a tomb at Thebes. The date is five centuries before Lady Maket was born. This painting is about thirty inches long, and illustrates a musical entertainment. Girls are dancing, other girls are seated and are clapping hands to time; and another is seated, in full face view, playing the double pipes, which are slightly conical, and reach lower than the elbows of the seated figures. The player has rings on two fingers of the left hand, and the little finger closes on the pipe with the second joints of the finger. The pipe appears to be about twenty-four inches in length, possibly more. The proportion may be judged, since the seated figure measures from the crown of the head to floor 8-1/2 in., and the pipes shew 5-1/4 in. long; and the mouthpieces in white (as if of ivory) to each slender tube; and these may carry the reed which is hidden in the mouth, for in a custom of later time we find that ivory reed holders were used. It is curious to note that the right hand of the player taking the highest position, supports the right flute between the hollow of the thumb and the forefinger; but the fingers cross over to play on the left hand flute, whilst the left hand similarly reverses and plays on the flute of the right. The Egyptians called these twin flutes “Mamms.”

In another painting on the same wall a girl is playing the double pipes, and is accompanied by others with stringed instruments. The figures are seated with legs folded under and in this position the pipes reach nearly to the floor. The pipes are but little beyond the cylindrical form, and evidently have some joining mouthpiece, in this instance of a reddish yellow colour, and not white. The crossing of the hands is also found in this picture, and one notices how ingeniously convenient the method was, and how the grasp by the ball of the thumb steadied the instruments when playing in such a sitting posture. On neither of the flutes is there any marking to indicate the finger holes.

The great length of the flutes in these paintings led me to the conclusion that, as I have stated, the Lady Maket’s being considerably shorter and so slim, are properly funereal or wailing flutes. Curiously enough we already possess a pair of these flutes in the Museum; but even to my enquiring eyes the truth was not revealed until the Lady Maket’s flutes taught me what to look for. So true is it that the eye only sees what it is prepared to see? I knew that three straws with holes were stuck in a rack; looked at them after I had handled Lady Maket’s pipes, and saw nothing more than one straw pipe very similar. At last it suddenly dawned upon me that another straw was very likely half a pipe, and a further scrutiny leaves no doubt that it is the complemental pipe, the upper part missing, broken off below the middle knot.

With the usual perversity attending the exhibition of musical instruments, this broken pipe was so placed as to be, in relation to its companion, as the horse with its tail where its head ought to be, and was thus passed by without understanding. The length complete, as near as I could measure is fifteen inches; and if the broken one should be placed end for end parallel to the perfect one, the relation would be apparent; the lowest holes of each being the same distance from the end, three inches, and so corresponding to the Lady Maket measure.

In the national museums at Leyden, Berlin, Paris and at other continental museums, there are straw flutes or portions of them; but how much they are from good condition I do not know. So far as I am aware the pipes found by Mr. Flinders Petrie are the only existing perfect specimens of the Gingroi or wailing flutes.

By the term straw we merely indicate slenderness; the pipes being truly reeds, called by botanists Arundo Donax, and also, Sativa. From this kind of stalk our oboe and other reeds are made, the chief European supply coming from Fréjus on the Mediterranean.

When these pipes first came into my hands for examination and measurement, I at once expressed my belief that they were sounded by Arghool type of reed; when the right reed, I said, is discovered after numberless experiments, then we shall have better surety of an exact scale as heard by Egyptian ears, with perhaps the proviso that somewhat of the skill of the player of the old race is attained.