The Ancient Nations Made Their Music—Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hebrew
Three thousand years before Jesus was born, a corner of southwestern
Asia and northeastern Africa was the home of people who had reached a
very high degree of civilization. They were the first to pass the stage
of primitive man, and to make for themselves beautiful buildings,
beautiful cities, monuments, decorations and music. Among these ancient,
civilized people were the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Hebrews. We
will talk first about the Egyptians because they had the greatest
influence not only on the Assyrian and Hebrew music, but also on the
Greeks who went to Egypt. So, in European music we can trace the
Egyptian influence through the Greeks.
The Egyptians were very fond of building and they decorated what they
built with pictures in vivid colorings called hieroglyphics
(heiro—sacred, glyphics—writings). As they had neither newspapers nor
radio sets, they carved or painted the records of their daily lives,
their festivals, battles, entertainments, and even marketing journeys on
the walls and on the columns of the temples, on the obelisks, and in the
tombs, some of which were the pyramids.
The climate saved these records from destruction, and the archaeologists
re-discovered them for us in the tombs full of Egyptian treasure and the
temples and lost cities, buried for thousands of years.
[Illustration:
_Fig. 1._
_Drums and Sticks._
]
[Illustration:
_Fig. 2._
_Sioux Drum._
]
[Illustration:
_Fig. 3._
_A Pipe and Rattles from Alaska._
]
[Illustration:
_Fig. 4._
_Bone Flutes._
]
(_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York._)
_Some Instruments of the American Indian._
[Illustration:
_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.
Ptolemy Soter II, another famous Egyptian ruler, gave a fête in which
were heard a chorus of twelve hundred voices, accompanied by three
hundred Greek _kitharas_ and many flutes.
It seems like a fairy tale that we can bring back the manners and
customs of three thousand years ago through studying the writings in
stone called hieroglyphics, and by examining the things used every day,
that were found in the excavations. For a long time the hieroglyphics
were unsolved riddles until the discovery in 1799 A.D. of the Rosetta
stone, on which was an inscription in hieroglyphics with its Greek
translation. Although ancient Greek is called a dead language, it still
has enough life in it to bring back the history and records of
antiquity. Through this knowledge of Greek, the Egyptian inscriptions
speak to us and tell us marvelous stories of ancient Egypt.
In one of the tombs at Thebes, was a harp with strings of catgut, which
when plucked, still gave out sounds although the harp had probably not
been played upon in three thousand years!
Going once more to our ancient stone library—or collections of monuments
in our museums or in Egypt—we see many pictures of dancers. The
Egyptians danced in religious ceremonies as well as in private
entertainments. They loved lively dances, and the men did all sorts of
acrobatic steps and even toe-dancing like our Pavlowa, while the women
did the slow, languorous dances.
Egyptian music was greatest as far back as 3000 B.C.! After that it grew
poorer until 525 B.C. when Egypt was conquered by Persia.
THE EGYPTIAN SCALE
The Egyptians must have used a musical scale of whole steps and half
steps, covering several octaves, not unlike ours. Think of the piano
keyboard with its black and its white keys and you will get an idea of
the Egyptian scale. We learned this through the discovery of a flute
that played a scale of half steps from _a_ below middle _c_ to _d_ above
the staff with only a few tones missing.
ASSYRIAN MUSIC
In the British Museum in London and in the Louvre in Paris, you can see
ancient records which archaeologists unearthed from three mounds near
the River Tigris in Asiatic Turkey. These mounds were the remains of the
Assyrian cities of Nimroud (Babylon), Khorsabad, and probably the famous
Nineveh, and date from 3000 to 1300 B.C.
Did Assyria influence Egypt or was it the other way around? The
Egyptians excelled in making mechanical things such as instruments,
utensils, tools, and in building temples and pyramids; while the
Assyrians were sculptors, workers in metals and enamel, and knew the
secret of dyeing and weaving stuffs, and of making beautiful pottery.
But whose music was the better, the Egyptians or the Assyrians, is
impossible to say. We do know, however, that the Assyrians, as well as
the Egyptians and Hebrews, had perfected music far beyond the standard
reached by many nations of our own time.
The Assyrians had the same families of instruments that we have,—the
percussion (or drums), wind, and strings; and they used different
combinations of instruments in concerts, either in instrumental
performances or for accompanying vocal music. Everything that we know
about them shows that the Assyrians were greater noisemakers than the
Egyptians, for they not only had drums and trumpets, but they also
marked rhythm by stamping their feet instead of clapping their hands.
The instruments pictured on the monuments, probably existed many
centuries before the building of these monuments, which would make them
very old indeed. In fact, almost all of them are still in use in the
Orient today and are played in the same way. The monuments also prove
that some of the special ceremonies in which music was used are still in
existence.
Both the Assyrians and the Egyptians had flutes, and double flutes which
were actually two flutes connected by one mouthpiece and looked like the
letter v. The Assyrians also had harps that varied in size from some
that could be carried in the hand, to some that stood seven feet high
and had as many as twenty-two strings. The dulcimer, an instrument
something like a zither, was very popular and was made so that it could
be played standing upright or lying flat. They also had drums,
castanets, cymbals, tambours or tambourines, and lyres, all of which
could be easily carried.
The Assyrians being a warlike nation made their instruments so that they
could be strapped to their bodies. So it seems that people in 3000 B.C.
were practical.
The Assyrians were so fond of music that when their war-prisoners were
musicians they were not put to death.
HEBREW MUSIC
We get our knowledge of the Hebrew music not from stone monuments and
wall pictures, but from Biblical writings and other ancient Hebrew
records. In the Second Commandment, God forbids the Hebrews to make
images:
“Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth.” (Exodus XXI: 4.) With so strict a commandment,
you can understand why there are no pictures of singers and of
instruments, and that we have to go to the greatest literary gift to the
world,—the Old Testament, to find out about their music.
The first musician mentioned in the Bible is Jubal. It says in Genesis
IV: 21, “he was the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe (or
organ).” From an old Spanish book found in the early 18th century in a
Mexican monastery, comes the story that Jubal was listening to
Tubal-Cain’s forge, and noticed the difference in pitch of the sounds
made by the strokes on the anvil. Some tones were high, some low, and
some were medium. He compared this to the human voice, and tried to
imitate the sounds, high, low and medium, of the forge. Thus he became
the first singer of the Hebrews. Jubal invented a flute and a little
three-cornered harp called the _kinnor_. These small instruments were
most convenient to carry about, for at this time the Hebrews were
shepherd tribes wandering from place to place. Their music was simple as
is the music of all primitive peoples.
We know from the Biblical story that the Children of Israel were sold
into captivity and remained many centuries in Egypt; that Moses was
found in the bulrushes by Pharoah’s daughter, and was educated as an
Egyptian boy and “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”
Therefore, he must have learned music from the priests. It is natural
then, that the Hebrews must have borrowed the music and instruments of
their adopted country in the making of their own.
After Moses had been commanded by the Lord to lead the children of
Israel out of the land of captivity, and after the Red Sea had divided
to allow them to pass through, we read the great song of triumph sung by
Moses:
“Then sang Moses and the Children of Israel: ‘I will sing unto Jehovah,
for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown
into the sea, Jehovah is my strength and my song and he is become my
salvation.’” etc.—(Exodus XV: 1–2).
And “Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her
hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with
dances.” (The timbrel is a small tambourine-like instrument.)
This story, like others in the Old Testament, is full of the accounts of
musical instruments, singing and dancing, and shows us that the ancient
Hebrews used music and the dance for nearly every event. If you read
carefully you will get the musical history of this poetic people.
While the Children of Israel were in the wilderness, Moses received from
Jehovah the command: (Numbers X.)
“Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make
them; that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for
the journeyings of the camp.”
Then follow directions as to the meaning of the blowing of the trumpets.
One trumpet alone called the princes; two trumpets called the entire
tribe together; an “alarm” gave the signal for the camps to go forward,
and so on. So, you see the ancient Hebrews used trumpets much as we
today use the army bugle. The trumpets mentioned as one of the earliest
of all instruments called the people to religious ceremonies too; it
announced festivals, the declaration of a war, the crowning of a king,
proclaimed the jubilee year, and gave warning of the anger of God.
One instrument has come down to our times and is still used in the
Hebrew temple services. This is called the _shofar_ and is usually a
ram’s horn on which two tones may be blown. Probably, as the ram was one
of the animals of sacrifice, they used its horn as a sacred instrument.
This shofar is 5,000 years old, at least. It is sounded in all the
synagogues of the world on the Jewish New Year and on the Day of
Atonement in memory of the wanderings of the Children of Israel.
When the twelve tribes, after their wanderings in the wilderness, had
settled down in Palestine, they gave music a most important place in
their daily life. Samuel, the last and most respected of the judges,
built a school of prophecy and music. Here it was that young David hid
himself to escape the persecutions of Saul. You remember that David is
called the Great Musician and he gave us many of the Psalms, the most
beautiful religious verse in the world. How much it would mean to us if
we knew the music David sang to these songs! In spite of the fact that
the music in which they were originally sung has been lost, the Psalms
have been an inspiration to all composers of religious music throughout
the ages. David learned so much at Samuel’s school that he created a
most beautiful musical service for the temple, which is the basis of the
one used today in Jewish synagogues (temples).
The number that were instructed in the songs of the Lord was two
hundred, four score and eight (288). There were in all four thousand,
including assistants, students, players of instruments and the two
hundred and eighty-eight professional singers.
All of these people did not perform at one time; for the ordinary
services they used twelve male singers, twelve players on
instruments,—nine harps, and two players of the psaltery and one of
cymbals. Women were not allowed to sing in the temples but they were a
part of the court and sang at funerals and at public festivities and
banquets.
The great Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us that Solomon had two
hundred thousand singers, forty thousand harpists, forty thousand
sistrum players and two hundred thousand trumpeters. This is hard to
believe, but as everything belonged to the kings in bygone days,
probably this was only Solomon’s musical directory.
The psaltery was an instrument something like our zither, with thirteen
strings on a flat wooden sounding board, rectangular in shape. The
sistrum was a metal rattle which made a very sweet sound.
It isn’t easy to describe the instruments used thousands of years ago,
for the names have become changed through the ages, and we find the same
type of instruments called by different names in different countries and
periods. For example, the psaltery is much the same instrument as the
_dulcimer_, the Arab’s _kanoun_ and the Persian _santir_. We find the
same psaltery in Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” as _sautrie_. By the addition
of a keyboard this Biblical instrument became the _spinet_, which you
will meet again in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 13th century, in
Italy, we find a kind of psaltery hung around the neck and called
“Istroménto di porco” because it looked like the head of a pig.
Not all the songs of the Bible are religious. The Song of Solomon, a
most beautiful poem of marriage, gives us a vivid picture of luxury and
magnificence, as well as showing us that music was used for other than
religious ceremonies.
After the death of Solomon, the music in the temple lost its splendor
and again the Children of Israel were made captive. When one hundred
years later Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.) the King of Babylon, destroyed
their temple, the song of the Hebrews became sad and mournful, as you
can read in the Book of Lamentations and in this beautiful song of
grief, the 137th Psalm:
SORROWS OF THE EXILES IN BABYLON
By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down, yea, we wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps.
For there they that led us captive required of us songs,
And our tormentors required of us mirth, saying:
“Sing for us one of the songs of Zion.”
How shall we sing Jehovah’s song
In a foreign land?
If I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
If I remember thee not;
If I prefer not Jerusalem,
Above my chief joy.
During the next few centuries the Hebrews became scattered over the
world, carrying with them their reverence for God, their love of poetry
and song, and their religious customs. These qualities have persisted
throughout the centuries, and some of the greatest musicians in the
world have been of Hebrew origin.
Although most of the old music has passed away, there is still enough of
its spirit left in their temple services to give some idea of the
ancient Hebrew music.
[Illustration:
_From a panel in a Museum (delle Terme) in Rome._
_Greek Girl Playing a Double Flute (auloi)._
]
[Illustration:
_From a frieze in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts._
_Greek Boy Playing the Lyre._
]