From the Egyptian Collection in the Louvre, Paris.
Hieroglyphics on an Egyptian Tablet.
(Telling a story of a Prince.)
The Egyptians built to inspire feelings of awe, mystery and grandeur. You probably remember pictures of obelisks, temples, pyramids, tombs and sphinxes, alongside of which a man looks but a few inches high.
They were very young as the world goes, and built huge structures because they were still filled with wonder at the immensity and power of the things they saw in Nature,—the Nile; the great desert which seemed vaster to them because they had only slow-moving camels, elephants and horses to take them about; they saw very long rainy seasons and the Nile overflowing its banks yearly, long dry seasons and the terrible wind and sand storms; the great heat of the sun, and the glory of their huge flowers, such as the lotus.
Just as primitive people did, they personified Nature in the gods. They had Osiris—god of Light, Health and Agriculture; Isis—goddess of the Arts and Agriculture; Horus (hawk-headed), the Sun god; Phtah, first divine King of Memphis, and many others. Again like primitive people, they had music for their gods, for their temple services, for their state ceremonies, festivals, martial celebrations and amusements.
Primitive music, we saw, had no laws to bind it, but was guided by the savage’s natural feeling and he could make up anything he wished. In Egypt, because of state law which prevented it from changing, music was held down to the same system for three thousand years. New music was forbidden, and much of the old was considered sacred and so closely connected with religious ceremonies that it was allowed to be used only in the temples.
The priests lived in these magnificent temples and were the philosophers, artists and musicians, very like the medicine men of the Indians, but much more advanced in learning.
Like the American Indians, too, the profession of music was handed down from father to son, and only the children of singers, whether they had good voices or not, could sing in the temples.
On the monuments we see these singers followed by players of instruments. The singers were of the highest caste, or Priest caste; the players were usually of the lower classes, or the Slave caste, although as pictured on the tombs of Rameses, one of Egypt’s greatest rulers and builders, we see the priests dressed in splendid robes and playing large harps.
The temples of Egypt were so huge that the music had to be on a large scale. They thought nothing of an orchestra of six hundred players of harps, lyres, lutes, flutes and sistrums (bell rattles), whereas we today advertise in large type the fact of one hundred men in one orchestra! We see no trumpets in the picture writings of the Egyptian orchestra, for these were only used in war, and we find them only in their pictures of war and triumphal marches; nor do we see large drums, because the Egyptians clapped their hands to mark rhythm. However, the military instruments in the hands of players pictured on the monuments, show that they used trumpets and tambourines in the army.
From the names we find in the tombs—“Singers of the King” and “Singers of the Master of the World,” we know that the Kings had musicians of high rank in their courts. The paintings on the walls and columns of the ruins of the temple Karnak, show funeral services with kneeling singers, playing harps of seven strings and other instruments.