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THE WORLD’S EARLIEST MUSIC.
[Illustration:
APOLLO WITH HIS LYRE. (described page 323.
_From a marble relief by Praxiteles in the Museum at Athens._]
“The eye is blind when the mind does not see.”—_Arab Proverb._
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 Assyria
and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad
And Sumer.
by
HERMANN SMITH.
Author of “_The Making of Sound in the Organ_,” “_Instruments of the
Orchestra from Old to New_,” “_Modern Organ Tuning_,” _etc._
Sixty-five Illustrations.
London:
William Reeves, 83, Charing Cross Road, W.C.
* * * * * *
_Preparing for Publication._
THE
MAKING OF SOUND IN THE ORGAN.
An Analysis of the work of the Air in the Speaking Organ Pipe of
the various constant types, with an Exposition of the Laws of
Time-distance and of the Tone of the Air, etc., etc.,
THE THEORY OF THE AIR-REED ELUCIDATED.
ALSO
INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA,
THEIR ORIGIN, HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
AND COMPARATIVE ACOUSTICS, ETC.
* * * * * *
FOREWORD.
A music-trail through many lands, over regions where dwelt the peoples
of the earliest civilizations, this I have followed, attracted
oftentimes to rambles by the way, gathering evidence on all sides in
the course of my journey, picking up whatever seemed to be capable of
throwing light upon the early conditions of music; from rock carvings,
wall paintings, tablets and vases, marbles and sculpture, papyri and
parchments, and records, the treasure-trove and finds of explorers
old and new, who seem to have accounted for at least ten thousand
years of human experience;—yet withal very few musical instruments
of the earlier ages have been recovered, and these for the most
part imperfect and unplayable, and we have to depend chiefly upon
the ancient representations, drawings or carvings for what we know.
Archæologists and antiquarians, unhappily for our quest, have not been
very particular in truthfully copying even the drawings and sculptures,
often leaving out important details, or supplying some imaginatively;
in the absence of insight into the constructive principles of
instruments, indifference may be a natural consequence, and that there
was anything at all in a musical instrument worth thinking about, might
probably never occur to their minds.
Music is not an isolated fact, it is bound up with the lives, with
the daily routine of peoples and nations; its courses of development,
cannot rightly be judged apart from geography, ethnography, archæology
and history. In the early migrations man’s music went with him as
his language went, his simple instruments he could fashion by the
wayside, and in later eras as men advanced, a craft would organize
itself, determining the progress of the instruments from a rude to a
refined style of construction; thus a kind of Art would be confirmed
and thereout a system of music would arise, which to the people of the
time, at whatever stage of attainment considered, would be as mature to
them as our present system is to us.
The structure of the instruments defines the possibilities of the
music, and my belief is that a true idea of the character of ancient
musical display can only be arrived at through a practical knowledge of
such structure, its capabilities, its limitations, and the scope of its
technique, since the qualities of tone that are at the command of the
player are always determined by the means of excitation of the sounds,
and by the shape and interior forms of the instruments.
The ancients had no system of harmony, yet there must have been
harmony in the air, a promiscuous harmony arising through the
variations in a multitude of unisonous effects.
A study of the Double Flutes, the Greek _Auloi_, has led me to some
original conclusions which may or may not be corroborated by future
discoveries, and I read with eager hopes of a projected International
scheme for the complete excavation of the buried city of Herculanæum,
just announced, which, if carried out, may reveal many things that we
want to know concerning these mysterious instruments.
Throughout a long life I have been occupied with books and with music,
especially with the instruments that make the music, their construction
and scientific bearings and relations, practically and experimentally,
and thus it has happened that many advantages seldom combined have
favoured the pursuit of the investigations discursively related in the
present volume.
My thanks are due to Messrs. Cassell and Co., who kindly supplied
several blocks, illustrating the Egyptian and Assyrian sections, used
by them in Nauman’s “History of Music,” and Dr. J. Stainer’s “Music of
the Bible.”
To the Secretary of the Hellenic Society, Mr. J. Penoyre Baker, I am
indebted for the photograph of the Apollo of Praxiteles brought by him
from Athens, which I use for the frontispiece.
I was agreeably surprised to find that the late Dr. A. S. Murray,
Keeper of the Greek and Roman Departments of the British Museum,
in his last lectures on Sculpture, delivered by him at Burlington
House, but a few weeks before his lamented death, had selected this
Praxitelean Monument for the subject of his discourses. Referring to
the Apollo Harp he said “it is quite beautiful.” The coincidence of
choice attracted me, and calling to mind the learned Keeper’s courteous
manner, and kindly help in former years, I had planned another
interview, with questions which he from his stores of knowledge would
have satisfied—but it was too late—he had passed through The Open
Gateway.
Intimations of a proposed sequel to this work will be found in the last
two pages of the volume, new and valuable materials having been brought
to hand by recent discoveries.
Goethe in his “conversations with Eckermann” said that a book should be
judged, first, by the aim the author proposed to himself—next, by the
degree in which he had succeeded in accomplishing his aim. I may not
have remembered the exact words, “’tis sixty years since” I read them,
but the purport of the saying is there. My aim in writing has been
to give the lover of music a companionable book, full of information
of a kind likely as I think to be of interest to both amateur and
professional. My own enthusiasm on the subject has, I hope, been
tempered by ease in presentation, for I am wishful that the hours given
to the reading of these pages may leave with all readers a pleasant
memory.
HERMANN SMITH.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE.
AT THE GATES OF THE PAST 1
CHAPTER II.
IN THE LAND OF MYTH—THE PURSUIT OF THE GODS 14
CHAPTER III.
IN THE LAND OF EGYPT—THE LADY MAKET AND
HER FLUTES 25
CHAPTER IV.
IN THE LAND OF EGYPT—MORE EGYPTIAN FLUTES—THE
EVIDENCES OF THE SCALE—THE TEACHINGS
OF EXPERIMENTS 42
CHAPTER V.
IN THE LAND OF ETRURIA—THE GRECO-ETRUSCAN
DOUBLE FLUTES—THE BULBED OR SUBULO
FLUTES 63
CHAPTER VI.
IN THE LAND OF GREECE—FROM ETRURIA TO
ATHENS—THE SWEET MONAULOS 82
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE LAND OF GREECE—THE SILKWORM FLUTES,
OR BOMBYX FLUTES 93
CHAPTER VIII.
IN OSCAN LAND—ITALIA—FOUND AT POMPEII—THE
GRECO-ROMAN FLUTES 107
CHAPTER IX.
BACK TO THE LAND OF THE NILE—EGYPT REVEALS
THE SECRET 118
CHAPTER X.
THE ISLES OF GREECE—MIDAS THE GLORIOUS 126
CHAPTER XI.
NEAR THE CITY OF CHARITES—THE MYSTERY OF
THE “SLENDER BRASS” 137
CHAPTER XII.
AT THE DELPHIC TEMPLE—THE MUSIC HEARD BY
THE GREEKS 143
CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE LAND OF CHINA—THE OUTSPREAD PHŒNIX 155
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MONGOLS NEW HOME—THE MYTHICAL FINDING
OF THE LÜS 165
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM—THE BIRD’S NEST 180
CHAPTER XVI.
BY THE YELLOW RIVER—THE EVOLUTION OF THE
SHENG 192
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE LAND OF SIAM—THE SIAMESE “PHAN” 208
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN THE LAND OF JAPAN—JAPANESE PITCH PIPES AND
THE JAPANESE CLARIONET AND THE SHO 212
CHAPTER XIX.
IN ANCIENT CHINA—CEREMONIAL INSTRUMENTS 228
CHAPTER XX.
IN ANCIENT CHINA—THE FLUTES OF THE CHINESE 236
CHAPTER XXI.
IN ANCIENT CHINA—THE FAVOURITE OF CONFUCIUS 250
CHAPTER XXII.
IN ANCIENT CHINA—THE TRUMPETS OF THE
CHINESE 264
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MUSIC HEARD IN FAR CATHAY—THE OLDEST
WRITTEN MUSIC 274
CHAPTER XXIV.
EVOLUTION OF THE LYRE, HARP, AND LUTE—THE
BOW WITH THE BOAT 285
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CHOICE OF THE GREEKS—THE DELPHIC LYRE 306
CHAPTER XXVI.
HOW THE MUSIC GREW—IN THE DAYS OF A
THOUSAND YEARS 326
CHAPTER XXVII.
AT ALEXANDRIA—THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE
SCALE 342
INDEX 343
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES.
Apollo with his Lyre, by Praxiteles _Frontispiece._
Cane Harp from Borneo, with Tambourine Bells _Facing page 304._
FIGURE. PAGE.
1 Queen Hatasu’s Three Stringed Egyptian Lyre 13
2 Ancient Greek Players on Flute, and Pan’s Pipes 16
3 Ancient Peruvian Stone Syrinx 17
4 Peruvian Pan’s Pipes, Double Set from a Tomb in Arica 18
5 Pair of Gingroi Flutes found in Lady Maket’s Tomb 31
6 The Egyptian Arghool Reed, Full Size 35
7 The Hautboy Reed, Full Size 35
8 Egyptian Player on the Double Pipes 44
9 Egyptian Player upon Unequal Pipes 45
10 Egyptian Musical Entertainment, from a Tomb-painting
in the British Museum 46
11 The Arghool Reed Pipe with its Drone 56
12 The Egyptian Zummarah 57
13 Player on the Egyptian Seba or Sabi 58
14 Arab Player on the Nay Flute 59
15 Etruscan Player on the Pipes, with Phorbia 70
16 The Satyr Handling the Auloi or Greek Reed Flutes 74
17 The Muse Euterpe Preparing her Flutes 77
18 The Muse Meledosa with her Flutes Complete 79
19 The Greek Mon-Aulos, set in Two Modes 89
20 The Greek Silkworm Flutes 96
21 The Flageolet Proper 98
22 The Pompeian Flutes in the Naples Museum 111
23 The Bulb-head found by M. Maspero 125
24 Midas, the Flute Player, Statue in the British Museum 134
25 The Bronze-ringed Flutes in the British Museum 135
26 The Chinese P’ai-hsiao or Pan’s Pipes 157
27 The Chinese Te-ching or Stone Chime 161
28 The Chinese Sheng or Bird’s Nest 182
29 A Pipe of the Sheng, Full Size 184
30 Diagram of the Plan of the Sheng 202
31 The Siamese Phan with Free Reeds 210
32 Japanese Pitch Pipes, Full Size 213
33 Clarionet of the Japanese, the Hichi-riki 222
34 The Chinese Large Bell, the Po-chung 234
35 The Chinese Gong Chimes or Yung-lo 235
36 The Chinese Dragon Flute 239
37 The Chinese Flute, the Hwang-chong-tche 241
38 Native Chinese Flute Player 243
39 The Krena, a Flute of the Indian Quechas 245
40 The Chinese Violin 251
41 The Ch’in or Scholars Lute, the Favourite of Confucius 255
42 Assyrian Harp with Plectrum 262
43 The Chinese Hwangteih or Trumpet 268
44 The Chinese Haot’ung or Trumpet 268
45 The Chinese La-pa or Trumpet 271
46 The Chinese Yu or Rattling Tiger 272
47 Egyptian Five-stringed Lyre, from Beni-Hassan 288
48 Egyptian Player on the Upright Lyre 289
49 Grand Harp from the Tomb of Rameses III. 290
50 Triangular Egyptian Harp, in the Louvre, Paris 292
51 Lyre Carried by the Stranger in Egypt 293
52 The Kissar or Harp of the Nile 294
53 Harp Players at Nimroud, from the British Museum 290
54 Egyptian Magadis Player with Plectrum 297
55 Small Upright Egyptian Lyre 297
56 Egyptian Lyre, in the Berlin Museum 298
57 Player on the Egyptian Lute or Nefer 300
58 Dancer with the Nefer 301
59 The Cane Harp from Borneo, with Tamburine Bells 304
60 The Chelys or Greek Tortoiseshell Lyre 309
61 The Muse Terpsichore with a Lyre 315
62 Greek Players Tuning the Lyre and Dancing 316
63 The Muse Erato Playing the Psaltery 317
64 The Muse Erato Playing on a Trigon, from a Vase in the
Munich Collection 321
“The true nature of a thing is whatsoever it becomes when the process
of its development is complete.”
ARISTOTLE.
THE WORLD’S EARLIEST MUSIC.
CHAPTER I.
At the Gates of the Past.
The human interest in the past never dies, its hold upon us increases
with the growing years, and every gain that is made to the store of
knowledge does but add to the zest with which we search for more;
nation vies with nation for the glory of recovering relics of life that
are strewn along the path of death.
From the sands and from the tombs, from the paintings and the graven
tablets, and from the faces of the rocks we rehabilitate the vision of
the mighty dead; a recovered name is a page of a people’s history, and
we seek with renewal of eagerness for the pages that should follow or
precede.
The long buried spoils of temples and palaces excite the imagination,
the grandeur of gold and silver, the wealth of art and ornament, and
the resplendent jewels, appeal to the love of power and of possession,
active or dormant in every heart; yet not less do we treasure the
fragile mementoes, the simplest things, rendered up from the past
that were the surroundings of domestic life, that speak to us of the
household ways, and of the personal pursuits of the men, and of the
adornment of the women who for untold ages have ever sought
“their pleasure in their power to charm.”
The instruments of music that in the remoter ages of the past were in
daily use are seldom found, for the nature of the materials of which
they were constructed was adverse to their preservation; those that
have been found are rarely in their original condition, perfect in all
their parts, or suitable for being put to the test of playing, and the
resource left to us is to obtain some approximate condition by means of
models, and then adapt some modern method for eliciting sound, which
method as near as we can judge shall be the counterpart of the original
device.
My conviction is that to understand the old music the first necessity
is to question the old instruments, that they will best indicate and
tell most clearly what the music must have been.
Those “findings” then, the treasure trove of explorers, have great
attraction for me, as they have for many other musically-minded people.
The archæologist, it is true, is in no degree concerned with their
musical import, he is content with their presence as antiquities;
paintings and sculpture interest him in many ways as examples of
art, and consequently the musical investigator gains by researches
which yield him pictures of musical instruments in the using, and
representations often in marble and bronze; yet withal I do not imagine
that the enlightenment of the musician has been one of the motives
influencing the archæologist in his care for the preservation of the
treasures recovered from the past. Thus it happens that in published
illustrations the details, upon which so much of the teachable value
depends, are too often inaccurately carried out, or perhaps it may be
are fancifully perfected to accord with some preconceived idea, and
thus the student is misled. In museums likewise, there is no little
difficulty in obtaining accurate information respecting objects
exhibited, and details which are of the first importance, are obscured
by some awkwardness in the placing of the objects. The reason for these
unintentional hindrances is simple enough: we have but to remember
that the antiquarian is not bound to understand the nature of musical
instruments, and as a matter of fact he does not understand them.
The two chief lands that hold the music of the past are Egypt and
China; yet in how different a manner is the holding of each. Which
nation is the ancientist none can tell. East is East, and West is
West. From some early birthplace the two people diverged. The people
of Egypt have vanished; the people of China remain; they are one fifth
of the existing human race. Both people intellectual; yet the brain
development of the Chinese has had from its original birth-strain a
distinct causation, making its course parallel to that of no other
brain. A sport of nature? ask Darwin or the Dragon!
In Egypt we dig and delve and year by year recover the treasures that
she holds. In China there is nothing to recover, nothing to dig for,
all her past is huddled on the surface. Her music and her musical
instruments of the past are here to-day, the same as they ever were,
there are no stages of development and no steps of ascent.
Thus the treatment of the question of the earliest music of China is
distinct from that of others, and the knowledge of the method of its
foundation is to be gathered from the musical instruments still in use.
Chaldæan history extends back to a very remote antiquity. Mr. St.
Chad Boscawen, a high authority, states that the working of metal
had been practised as early as 3,000 B.C. in Chaldæa, that there are
inscriptions certainly as ancient as 4,000 to 5,000 years B.C., and
that one of the earliest Chaldæan sculptures contained a representation
of the harp and the pipes which were attributed to Jubal. So that we
have to go back very far indeed up the stream of time to find the
beginnings of music.
That system of music which is the heritage of all the European races
comes from the people called the Greeks, but the art as practically
pursued by them was lost, or was hidden by an impenetrable cloud.
Lacroix, in his history of “The Arts of the Middle Ages,” describes
the condition of the early centuries of our era—one brief passage
tells the tale. He says, “Ancient Rome, which had no natural music,
readily adapted Greek music, in the time of the emperors, to all the
usages of public and private, as of civil and religious, life. Art
remained Grecian, and most of the singers and players came from Greece
to take service under the wealthy patricians. The various forms of
Latin prosody were but thinly disguised beneath a veil of Ionic, Doric,
and Lydian melodies, even when the Christians waged a relentless war
upon profane music, not only as an accompaniment to the rites of the
pagan religion, but as played in the circus and other popular resorts
to excite the brutal passions of the multitude, or at the nocturnal
orgies of the aristocracy. The decadence and the disappearance of Greek
music in Italy and the West date from the reign of Theodosius; and when
the games of the Capitol were put down, about the year 384, the Greek
musicians either returned to the East or abandoned their art.”
The light of Greece suddenly went out, and darkness surrounds all that
relates to the actual characteristics of their musical instruments and
their music, notwithstanding the preservation of learned treatises and
the citation of numerous historical references. Musicians grope in the
dark still, and are unable to realize the musical art of the Greeks.
The lyre and the lute and the flute are before us in numberless
painted designs, are sculptured in enduring marble,—yet they fail to
raise in our minds any adequate idea of the influence of their music
upon the national life. The past has closed the gates of the past, and
the land beyond awaits the explorer.
Pursuing this line of thought, and taking Greece as the grand junction
whence radiate all the lines of musical art up to the present day
throughout Europe, we find the pathways that have converged to Greece
may be arranged this wise in diagram:
WESTERN PERSIA.
CHALDÆA. INDIA.
ASSYRIA. CHINA.
ARABIA. LYDIA.
EGYPT. ETRURIA.
GREECE.
These are the pathways of music, through which Greece derived her
knowledge by direct or indirect transmission. On the one hand we can
distinctly trace the line back to Chaldæa by way of Egypt; and on
the other hand back to Persia, where indeed the origin of the race
itself can be looked for. Not in any formal method do I wish this
diagram to be understood, for there may have been—and I should infer
were—crossings of influence, as between Chaldæa and Arabia, Egypt and
India, China and Persia, and so forth. Perhaps another plan of diagram
would be by placing Persia central as the source of early tribal
dispersion, with sign post pointing in the different directions to
Arabia, Chaldæa, India, China. Lydia includes the Asiatic coasts of the
Mediterranean. It appears to me that the Chinese influence upon the
Greeks was direct by commerce overland; and that in reference to time
there was a primitive branching off of the two races from some Persian
region.
The ethnological question is too deep for us to judge of, and we can
only take the guidance of those who are at this day the recognized
authorities. Mr. St. Chad Boscawen traces the Babylonian, the Egyptian,
and the Chinese civilizations to the mountainous regions of Western
Persia. It will be shown in the chapters on Etruscan lore how Greece
derived from Egypt through Etruria before she was in direct constant
intercourse with that land, and then subsequently developed her most
enduring records of musical art in the hands of the Etruscans. As
to China, there may seem at first some difficulty in recognition of
influence; but at all events silk from China had penetrated to the
Mediterranean before the Greeks knew how it was produced in “far
Cathay”; and in the motley gatherings of all peoples and tongues on the
coasts of the blue sea, doubtless the representative of the yellow race
one day found his way. The Greeks were great travellers; and who can
tell where the barrier was fixed that ordered them to turn back.
Persia has left no musical relics, and Mr. A. J. Ellis states: “Of the
ancient Persian scale we know nothing, but it was most probably the
progenitor of the older Greek.”
The Greeks undoubtedly had an elaborate system of music; but there
was no evidence of its practical application to the extent that would
have been supposed. Indeed, Pythagoras states that “the intervals
in music are rather to be judged intellectually, through numbers,
than sensibly through the ear.” The view taken of music by the
scholars was demonstrative, and purely on the ground of mathematics.
It was altogether apart from popular practice of the art, vocal and
instrumental. The philosophers regarded music from the side of morals.
In the same way, the Chinese had attained a high degree of knowledge of
music in its demonstrable relations, upon which they in their learned
treatises eloquently discourse. In demonstrations of the laws of pipes,
and in theoretical development of the system of equal temperament,
they have displayed their mental grasp; but beyond that the acquired
knowledge seems to have made little practical impression. Their
philosophers likewise talked of the beneficial influences of music in
controlling the passions, and doing other “et cetera” work.
My long tarrying with the musical instruments of Celestials has tended
to bring very forcibly before me the great resemblance between the
Chinese and the Greek systems of music. Wide asunder as these people
are racially, yet in their development of the musical art they seem to
have some close kinship, some common source of idea; and little traits
of primitive lore constantly give suggestions of some early centre
whence the two have diverged, or of some point where in the crossing
of the pathways they have supplied themselves from the same fountain,
although each traversed in a different direction its appointed course.
The possibilities, however, that I have in mind are of some far
earlier impressions from intercourse, how and when constituting the
problem; for the Greeks in their prime were but the infants of a day
in comparison with the peoples under the great monarchies of Chaldæa,
Assyria, Egypt, and China, whose rulers could be traced back two,
three, four—aye five—thousand years before the first block was hewn for
the foundation of the Parthenon, or ever a Venus stept in marble.
Van Aalst states that “the first invaders of China were a band of
immigrants fighting their way among the aborigines, and supposed to
have come from the south of the Caspian Sea” and the question remains,
where was the earlier track of their wanderings? Is it not also
curious that one of the early mythical Kings of ancient Persia had
the name Houscheng? It was in his reign that the Persians became Fire
Worshippers, adoring flame as the symbol of God.
Yet it is by way of Chaldæa and Egypt that our chief interests will be
found, where relics of the musical arts had permanence not granted to
them elsewhere. Persia and India yield us less as matter for enquiry,
since it is the class of stringed instruments of light kind that
their peoples have mostly favoured. Some problems are still left in
India which we should like to have solved. The transverse flute is
constantly found in ancient carvings in the hands of Krishna, who is
popularly believed to have been its inventor; but how it came about
that the double flutes should be found on the carvings both of wood
and stone awakens curiosity. What historical significance had they?
Not a survival of any kind is there in the usage of the present time.
Only as it were yesterday, at the British Museum, I was looking over
the series of very old carvings in wood,—friezes which have formed
the risers of the steps to the Tope at Jumal-Garlic in Afghanistan,
crowded with figures of men and women and animals in the uncouth style
so characteristic of the land that was the home of Buddha. In these
scenes, depicting the history of the great Renunciator, I found amongst
the groups of players on instruments several instances of players upon
these double pipes, the counterpart of those graven in the historical
records of Babylon and Nineveh, and painted on vases by Etruscans, and
carved in marble by the Greeks. What does it all mean? How have the
races of mankind been affiliated? We find the double flutes in India;
we do not find them in China. In that intermediate land of Thibet, has
the Grand Lama any evidence or record of them? It is curious that the
Chinese, although they have the earlier Pan’s pipes, have neither the
double pipes nor the lyre—instruments of Greece—yet they have a system
of music essentially the same as the Greeks, and (as will be shown you
in the _Sheng_) a scale consisting of the two conjunct tetrachords,
forming with an added tetrachord an octave and a fourth; the key-note
being the fourth of the scale, equal to the _Mese_ of the Greeks.
The Chinese style of music though lacking the refined ideal of art is
on precisely the same lines, vocal with recitative and instrumental
interposed phrases; and if the hymns of the old Confucian temple be
transcribed side by side with the fragments we have of the worship of
Apollo only exacting criticism could determine the different origin.
They are equally capable of being harmonized with effective dignity.
Further, I would remark also that the Chinese notation, like the Greek,
consists solely of added signs written beside the words of the hymn.
All the details seem to point to a time in a far distant past when
both races were in contact with one source; then came a day of sudden
disruption—one race eastward, one race westward: each pursuing its own
way. So the years rolled on, bearing their records on two distinct
rolls of separate destiny.
The twofold destruction of the vast library of Alexandria by fire,
the first time by accident the second time by fanaticism, has been an
irreparable loss to music, for there, if anywhere, would have been
treasured those records of the learned men of old, which would have
told us so much that we want to know.
Now, beyond the paintings and the sculptures, all the knowledge that
remains comes to us through the literature of the Greeks, the sole
inheritors.
The descent of Music is in direct line from Egypt; and Egypt would
in like manner have derived from some earlier civilisation the first
elements of her own. There are words in an inscription in the Temple
of Dayr-el-Bahari which I think may be taken as shewing Queen Hatasu’s
traditional associations of thought in reference to the origin of her
race. This famous Queen built that magnificent Temple, and dedicated it
in part to Amen the God of Thebes, and in part to Hathor the Beautiful,
the Lady of the Western Mountain, the Goddess-Regent of the Land of
Punt. Hatasu is represented as suckled by the goddess, who is also
the nurse of Horus. In this temple there is a wonderful series of
bas-reliefs sculptured and painted on the walls, a panorama in stone of
“The five large ships she built in obedience to the will
of Amen, King of the Gods, that they should traverse the
Great Sea on the Good Way to the Land of the Gods.”
The stone pictures shew these vessels at their departure and return,
with variety of details of loading and cargo, etc. On the mast of
one of the ships a three string lyre or bow-harp is slung. In the
description of one of these vivid pictures, are these words, written as
the Queen Hatasu ordered, and probably taken from her own lips as what
she wished to be set forth
“We sailed on the Sea, and began a fair voyage towards
the Divine Land, that is to the coast of Arabia, and the
journey to the Land of Punt was happily resumed.”
The vessels went from the Nile by an ancient water-way, partly canal,
into the Red Sea, and it would seem that we are to understand (for
much of the whole inscription has broken away) that for some special
cause they were diverted and went first across the sea to the coast of
Arabia, a proceeding doubtless of some temerity, but that _happily_
they escaped danger, and went on to their original destination, and
brought thence the myrrh and the actual trees of _Ana_-sycamore, the
coveted odoriferous trees, the chief object of the voyage being to
secure the costly incense for the service of the white Temple built by
the Queen. It seems to me that Queen Hatasu’s words “the Divine Land”
point to her belief that there in Arabia, and beyond, to that far
eastern horizon where the white mountains meet the blue heavens, there,
was the true home of the Gods, the earlier home whence came her race.
Maybe she cherished the names of Anu and Ishtar, and knew that these
old deities of Chaldæa were those she worshipped under Egyptian names.
The common course of newer nations is thus, to take and to rename the
old gods. Herodotus considers that the names of nearly all the gods of
Greece are derived from Egypt. To each of the ancient nations it would
seem that the old solar myth was newly told in parable, the esoteric
meaning of it known only to their priests.
That wonderful piece of wall sculpture may be seen to-day; time and
the tourist have destroyed some portions, yet enough endures to tell
the story which the great Queen left there three thousand four hundred
years ago. Just as it was in the old Chaldæan temples, the sanctuary,
“the Holy of Holies,” is cut in the rock itself, far within, there
light was not needed, “for the gods see everywhere.” This beautiful
white temple rises in three terraces cut out of the limestone cliff,
and once had an avenue of sphinxes three miles long, leading down to
the blue river.
Looking at the plan of the Temple one sees that the thought of it
was Chaldæan, it is so like the terrace temple of the God Bel by the
Euphrates, and I cannot but think that the three-string lyre hung on
the mast of the ship she sent to “the coast of Arabia” had a meaning
to her own heart, was a simple token that would be understood by all of
her royal race, to show by this symbol that the lyre originally came
from that “divine land” whither her thoughts went, as a child turns to
its mother.
[Illustration: _The Early three-stringed Lyre of the Egyptians._
_Fig. 1. The same Lyre as pictured slung on the mast of Queen Hatasu’s
ship._]