In the Land of Egypt.
THE LADY MAKET AND HER FLUTES.
The Lady Maket took possession of her latest residence with the
appropriate ceremonials befitting a lady of her position; and as
she had contemplated frequent excursions from her place of abode,
much attention was given to provide her with suitable travelling
attire, and also with numerous things requisite for her use; and,
in addition, certain personal belongings considered necessary to
her comfort—articles of the toilet and other customary aids to the
anxieties of woman’s mind—all such were collected by her attendants.
Nor did they forget to gather together good supplies of fresh fruit,
for there was no knowing the lady’s ultimate destination, except that
she would undoubtedly be ferried over the great blue river; and indeed
some of the officials, who assumed to have intimate knowledge of their
lady’s engagements, gave assurance that she would visit places at very
great distances, even so far as the under side of the world. Since the
early morning every hour had been filled with the noise of a busy
turmoil, and the eager interest of the people only gradually lulled as
time went by and there were signs that no further labour was needed
on the part of any; every work had been performed, the duties of each
had been fulfilled, and then gradually the officials and attendants
retired from the presence of the mistress of the house. The lady was at
last left in quietness. The long day was suddenly over,—the sun went
down,—and the night had come, and the great silence.
Like all others of her race, the Lady Maket was a fourfold personage.
All her notions of herself were of a tetrachordal state of being. Her
gold seal impressed with her name testified to all men that she was
a being of flesh and blood—really and truly human—and not at all a
mystery, unless to be feminine is so; and that she greatly loved her
burnished metal mirror, and delighted in the dark glory of her hair,
in the coral of her lips, in the flashing light of her eyes, and in
the deftness and musical skill of her almond tipped fingers—all that
is past question. She believed that, besides the bodily state of
her presence, she was possessed of another equally living, although
invisible form, a _double_ called _Ka_, which was as it were a less
solid duplicate of her corporeal being; and after the _double_ came
the _Soul_ (_Bi_ or _Ba_), and after the soul came the _Khoo_ or the
_luminous_, a spark from the fire divine. To keep the fourfold-unity
of being, to preserve it wholly pure and unblemished, and to secure
it against the possibility of separation or dissolution, was to her
the most anxious consideration of her life; and this belief gave the
essential reason for the assumption that the number four was of all
numbers the most sacred, and the idea thereof was ingrained into the
daily life of all her people.
Paying a visit to another mansion, I made enquiries for Lady Maket,
being much interested in her and her doings; but Mr. F. Petrie, who
then in charge, informed me that it is some three thousand years since
she was seen, and although I could not see the lady, yet he had many
of her belongings which told all that was known of her. I saw the
chair—the last, it was believed—upon which she sat, and the wooden
head-rest (the substitute for a pillow) by which her dark luxuriant
ringlets were preserved from becoming crushed or disordered. I saw the
silver scarab rings she wore, the earrings and bead necklaces, the
combs and perfume holders, the paint and pomade jars, and the bronze
mirror in which she last looked, confessing her delight in her own
beauty.
Here also were the flutes, the two slender flutes, that plaintively
wailed their music and accompanied her to her last home. Flutes! The
very word has magic in it. Egyptian double flutes, and thirty centuries
passed them by, and they are here. Adonais,—what a find!
For forty years in this wilderness had I been looking for them.
Pictures of them by the score I had sought out, had seen them on walls
and vases, graven on brass tablets, gems and marbles: yet none seen
in real presence. Now in sober earnest they were laid before my eyes,
given into my hands, perfect as when they were entombed to accompany
that blessed lady to the nether world. Perfect did I say? Yes, but not
complete. How fateful fortune does tantalize us,—clears up for us one
mystery, and leaves another behind. They forgot the reed tongues in
packing up for the journey, or perchance they deliberately withheld
them. Ah! miserable that I am. Mr. Petrie tells me that he could find
none, and he sifted all the dust of that dear lady, and nobody he avers
had been there before him,—not for three thousand years. Think of it! A
rock hewn sepulchre, in eternal night and silence since the days when
Miriam sang her song of youth and triumph.
Moreover, to my questionings, Mr. Petrie says that he does not believe
that these flutes ever had any reeds to play them, but that they were
blown at the end, and so whistled as one whistles a key. Then, to
crown me with confusion, up rises another archæological investigator
with eyes deeply scrutinizing, and he is certain that they were true
lip blown flutes, and that no reed was ever employed. I looked with
other eyes, and one glance told me that these pipes originally had reed
tongues, reeds of the immemorial kind, and in use to the present day
in the arghool. No, by Adonais, surely I cannot be deceived in this.
Surely these are the _Gingroi_, the wailing flutes, associated with
funeral ceremonies, slender pipes scarcely bigger than a ripened corn
stalk. A fragment of such an one exists in the British Museum, which
often excited my curiosity, but was in so delapidated a condition
that nothing certain could be made of it. The discovery of this pair
of flutes however made clear the relation though the British Museum
possesses but a fragment, and treasures it.
Curious is it not? A nation takes into its care a broken straw, because
some human hand in the dim past has fashioned it to use and purpose,
and the subtlety of life has not gone out of it yet.
Very precious are these recovered flutes. They tell us of a people’s
music, definitely fixed and in use, theirs by choice, by tradition, by
religion. They owe their preservation to having been placed within a
larger reed, which was doubtless their ordinary case. They were found
untouched since that last day. Not from mere sentiment were these
flutes placed beside the Egyptian lady in her tomb, but because of a
deeply rooted religious belief that these, together with the other
articles named, were in some way connected with the daily existence
and the comfort and content of the _Ka_, the _double_ or dream body,
which perpetually inhabited the tomb with the embalmed mummy. In point
of fact, it was the _double_ of the flutes that was to prove a source
of musical solace, not the flutes themselves, for they would not be
touched by the dream body. The Egyptians worked out their views with
logical consistency, and believed that all things had their _doubles_,
both animate and inanimate. Even a pictorial representation in default
of the real thing was of almost equal value for the service to be
rendered in the invisible world, and a mere name written had a potency
and could secure the coveted benefits to the _Ka_. For the soul or
_Bi_ was often called upon to follow the gods in the heavens, or to
undergo probationary journeys to the world of darkness below the
earth, and then the _Ka_ was left alone, and occupied itself with the
pursuits common to its earthly life. Thus from this strange belief we
may presume, or may infer that the Lady Maket was not only a lover
of flutes, but might also have held some official position, civil or
religious, connected with the use of them.
There is a similar instance in the case of a mummy in the British
Museum, where you may see, at the feet of the dead musician, the bronze
cymbals he played when alive, with the people dancing around him. Is
the dream body—the _Ka_—still there, I wonder, coming out at night to
talk with his fellows? Dream bodies like himself, all terribly old,
all listening to the clashing of the ghostly cymbals, and joining in
unheard melodies. All terribly old!
These flutes, so slender that a breath might almost blow them away,
are undoubtedly of the type pictured in many lands in many ages, and
known as double flutes—double in the sense of being paired. I have seen
such, though of fuller proportions, represented on Egyptian _papyri_ on
walls of tombs and temples of the land of the Nile; and on the brass
plates of the palaces of Nineveh and Babylon; carved on the frieze of
the Parthenon; painted on Etruscan vases, and on the walls of Pompeii
and Herculanæum; and far away on the banks of the Petwa (a tributary of
the Ganges), sculptured on the gate of Sanchi Tope. And yet through all
these instances never have I found any evidence of the means adapted to
produce their sounds; anything that would enable one to form a distinct
judgment as to the kind of mouthpiece employed in blowing. The number
and the positions of the holes have also been involved in doubt. In
some few instances holes are to be found marked, but these might be
conventionally depicted, and could not be relied upon as guidance to
the scale of notes. Then there are the shams and indications put in by
the audacity of restorers, so that altogether the learned or academic
knowledge concerning the ancient instruments can hardly be said to have
emerged from a state of haziness.
How welcome, then, must be these Egyptian flutes, which at all events
furnish sure evidence of the position of the holes, and of a recognized
musical scale determined at a very early date in the development of
civilisation. The illustration Fig. 5 gives the relative position of
the holes and of the lengths of the flutes, which are shown here one
sixth of the actual lengths.
[Illustration: _Fig. 5._
_The Gingroi, or flutes of wailing._
_Found in
Lady Maket’s
Tomb._]
All pipes that we call _double flutes_ are represented spreading from
the mouth ʌ shaped, held both of them in the mouth, and played
one by the right hand and one by the left. All pipes of the ancients
the writers were accustomed to call flutes, not discriminating the
differences in types, being in fact unaware of the very important
distinctions as in later times perceived by specialists in musical
lore to be necessary between lip-blown instruments and reed-blown.
One of these instruments is 17-5/8in. in length, and the other
17-6/8in.; and the bore may be considered as 3/16ths of an inch; but
one is a trifle larger than the other, and they are not absolutely
cylindrical, being larger at one end than at the other, which is not
without significance. Also, it should be noted that being of the nature
of corn-stalk, each has a knot 6-5/8in. from one end, and this knot has
been bored through to make each a continuous pipe. There are four holes
in one pipe, and three holes in the other; they are very daintily cut,
and are oval. The pipe with four holes is held by the right hand, and
the pipe with three holes by the left hand; for it was the custom in
ancient times, and still is in eastern lands, to play the treble notes
by means of the fingers of the right hand, and the bass notes with
those of the left hand.
When looking at these pipes we should remember that in the day when
they were made the feeling for a musical scale was in its infancy;
natural science, young indeed, then, had not touched the question of
the relation of sounds. In that remote past, the barbaric had its sway,
as in the east for the most part it has now; and no idea of harmony,
other than that of a consensus of instruments, and a congregation of
singers following on traditional methods handed down from generation
to generation. Thirty centuries have passed since the calm day when
the workers let down the great stone portcullis sliding in its grooves
closing the tomb against all of human race, leaving the Lady Maket and
her treasures secure in her burial chamber, closed, as they thought,
for ever.
At that day Homer was not born, and it would be six centuries before
Pythagorus would arrive on this planet, and, destined thereto, turn his
steps to the banks of the Nile.
Mr. Wm. Chappell in his “History of Music” writing in 1874, describes
the fragment of a pipe which I have referred to, then all that the
museum possessed.
“In the Egyptian collection at the British Museum is a small reed pipe
of eight inches and three quarters in length. The pipe corresponds so
precisely to the description of the _Gingras_ given by Greek writers,
as to leave hardly a doubt of its identity. The _Gingras_ has four
holes for the fingers. Athenæus says it was employed by the Carians
in their wailings, and that their pipes were called _Gingroi_ by the
Phœnicians from the lamentations for Adonis, ‘for your Phœnicians call
Adonis, _Gingras_, as Democlides tells us.’ So this Adonis pipe was
admittedly of Asiatic origin, and was most likely common to the various
nations of Asia as well as of Egypt.”
In the previous chapter I laid emphasis on the conclusion that the
fingers were the fates of the musical scale. In these pipes I read the
same lesson, and recognize that the scale was due to digital decision.
The mystery of numbers pervading the thoughts of the people, and ruling
their daily goings, consorted here with convenience of the fingers.
The sacred number “four” took the first place, after that the number
“three,” and—the union of these producing the number “seven”—the
thoughts of numbers moved in an enchanted circle, from which the human
race has not yet escaped. We call it superstition to believe in lucky
threes and sevens; to these old Egyptians, numbers were a sacred power
never to be disregarded. Here, in the four holes of the first pipe we
have the primitive tetrachord, planned before the sounds were heard,
before the issuing notes had names; and it was this tetrachord that was
taken up by the Greeks, and by them moulded into mathematical relations
and blended by art into musical form. A similar primitive tetrachord
was, I conceive, common to all races of men possessing a musical scale.
The second pipe has but three holes; there was room for more,—why
restricted to three? Who can tell?
It is as easy to have faith in one mystic number as in another; and
when we are inclined to believe in the mystical, nature helps us with
the utmost readiness.
In using the word “tetrachord” bear in mind that the meaning is a
series of four notes in an order of succession, and not the union of
notes as a compound sound or “chord.”
Pipes with but two holes are common in pastoral use now, and in early
times doubtless preceded those with three and four holes; and, however
slow the changes, progress could not be absent. In Lady Maket’s pipes
we see evidence of a great change, a tetrachord with an added tone,
and this supplied by another pipe. Who can tell how many centuries of
civilization such progress indicates?
An interesting speculation centres upon the means by which the sounds
were produced. Were the pipes lip blown at one end, or reed blown; and,
if the latter, by what reed? One of the hautboy kind, or one of the
clarionet type such as the arghool? The first is called a double, and
the other a single reed. Fig. 6 is an illustration of the arghool reed,
full size, as used at this day in the arghool; it is called a beating
reed; the reed tongue is made by cutting a slip at the side and lifting
it a little, and, as it is bound by string at one end, the tip tilts,
allowing passage for the wind through the aperture that the cutting has
left beneath, upon the edges of which it beats in vibrating.
[Illustration: _Fig. 6._
_The Arghool Reed. Full Size._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 7._
_The Hautboy Reed. Full Size._]
Fig. 7 shews a full size reed of the hautboy type, and above it,
as looking down upon the tip of the reed, is seen the oval form it
assumes after it has been moistened for playing. The two parallel lines
indicate its appearance when dry. The make up of the reed is modern,
but the size is of the old pattern as used by Italian peasants to the
present day, spoken of as the pastoral hautboy.
Some readers not familiar with the instrument will be glad of this
illustration showing the difference between double and single reeds. In
the double reed, which consists of two slips of reed bound together,
the vibrations take place only at the tips, and are caused by rapid
changes from oval to parallel due to suction by the current of air
driven down between them. It should be understood that in both the
single reed and the double reed the action is the same in kind, and the
vibrations or sounds result from the stream of air being checked in its
progress by closure of the aperture by force of suction alternating
with opening of the same by the resilient power or spring in the form
and material of the reed—in other words vibration is due to shocks of
arrested motion in extremely rapid recurrence—the number of repetitions
of arrest per second constituting what we call the pitch of the notes
or sounds.
Using either the hautboy reed, or the arghool reed, with these flutes,
a scale of notes of some sort may be elicited. The narrowness of the
bore causes so much difficulty in the obtaining consecutive notes by
lip blowing, that I the least favour the supposition that the pipes
were designed for such a method. The hautboy reed is almost always
associated with a conical pipe; but there are instances, in which it
is used in connection with a cylinder of diameter quite as small as
that of these pipes. We have no intimations that the Egyptians of that
period (1100 B.C.) were familiar with the hautboy reed.
In any experiments with the hautboy reed the management of the reed
by the muscles of the lips should be prohibited, as being a practice
unknown to the ancients. My definite conclusions are that these pipes
are true specimens of the _di-aulos_ at its earliest stage; that the
slimness betokens a particular ceremonial purpose; that the pipes were
designed for use with reeds of the arghool type; and that the distances
between the holes indicate that the tones proper to the instrument are
those of the four foot octave.
For the better command in the holding of the pipes the natural lay of
the fingers is with the second joints covering the holes, the tips of
the fingers not being used for the purpose until later times. Peasants
in the wilder parts of Europe and Asia retain the ancient custom.
All the holes are oval in shape. The divisions of the four holed pipe
are from top hole to fourth 10-5/8 in., to the second 1-3/8 in.,
to the third 1-3/8 in., to the fourth 1-1/4 in., to the end 3 in.;
these together making 17-5/8 in. The division of the three holed pipe
are from the top to the first hole 13-1/2 in., to the second hole
1-3/8 in., to the third hole 1-3/8 in., to the end 1-1/2 in.; making
17-6/8 in. The stalk knots of the reed are in each pipe at 6-5/8 in.
distant from the upper end, and a knot is again found at the the
extreme lower end of the four holed pipe, causing the opening to be
partially occluded. This contraction would have a flattening effect and
consequently the three holed (which is free from such a knot) is the
longer of the two, evidently cut with the view to coincide in pitch
with the other. Obviously also each hole from the top is larger than
the one previous; this arises from the fact that, as stated, the pipes
are not truly cylindrical, but narrow toward the bottom, and so they
may require the holes to be enlarged to sharpen the notes; equivalent
this to cutting the holes higher.
To the musician investigating these matters it is of interest to
observe that the two upper holes of the three-holed pipe coincide in
their position with the two lowest holes of the four-holed pipe and
consequently do not extend the compass of the notes, they merely pair
the other pipe, yet if the reed of either differs, then, in flatness or
sharpness the interval would show variation, and such an effect might
be a designed one, giving a choice to the player. The lowest hole of
the three-holed pipe extends the sounds that limit the tetrachord by
one tone, and this method by extension reappears in aftertime in the
Greek systems as an added tone also.
It is doubtful whether we are to consider that the open extreme end of
a pipe is intended to produce a sound which is to be taken into the
musical scale, even the least civilised people seeming to regard the
note given as outside the designed series and not to be used; but it is
easy to conceive how a pentatonic scale might have been developed by
bringing it into use.
Another point to be noticed as affecting the pitch is that the
distance between the fourth and the third holes is an eighth less than
exists between other holes, and it may be that it was so intended to
compensate for flatness, or to make a slight difference of interval.
The oval holes are not singular; I have several beautiful Japanese
pipes with this feature in their construction. The coinciding holes
of the two pipes may not have been intended to be identical in pitch
or may have been used together to produce a quivering or voix céleste
effect, through the partial shading of one by the fingers, and thus
intended to give new resources to the skilful player. This is probable,
because we find that at the present day the people of eastern climes
are partial to this effect. The Egyptian _zummarah_, consisting of two
unison pipes tied together is played to produce it. It is quite easy to
obtain the waving of pitch to a large extent, by using two reeds that
differ in stiffness.
That the sounds given by the flute holes originally located by the
spread of the fingers should prove to be distant from each other
approximately by the interval we call a tone, is a mere coincidence
as of numerical relation, the more or less extent being ultimately
adjusted by experience.
Another consideration I must tell you of because in my studies of old
customs in instruments it has been impressed upon me too strongly to
be neglected, and that is the old world tendency that prevails to make
flat fourths. In the section on Chinese instruments this feature will
be noticed though I do not think any other writer has mentioned it, and
I believe the duplicates of certain fourths are only apparently such
and are intended for the making of fourths of slightly different pitch,
and that there is a practice of using one of these for the ascent and
the other for the descent in the scale. I believe it to be a natural
racial tendency to make flat fourths and that by provision of another
note with a difference, they do a tuning based upon fourths accommodate
the obtaining of the true octave.
One of those pipes gives a complete tetrachord, a perfect fourth,
the other extends it by a minor third, interveningly the flat fourth
and the augmented fourth may be found within the scale of the two
pipes combined. Not the Greek tetrachord but one of more primitive
arrangement, before laws had been formulated for the relative degrees
of tone and hemitones. There is also a leap interval of a tone and a
half, which characterises the earliest of lyre scales, and may be the
link connecting the evolution of the Greek scale from the Egyptian.
Indeed in Asia and Arabia similar usages still persist, and to the
peoples’ ears give content, they want no other.
The subject is so interesting to the musician that the further analysis
and investigation to which these valuable relics of a past age have
been submitted, cannot fail of helping to a true understanding of the
significance of the Lady Maket’s flutes, the oldest evidence of the
world’s earliest music.
And indeed how tenderly human is their appeal across the centuries, for
they bear even now evidences of the touch of the fingers of the dear
lady who played her chosen flute music upon them so long and lovingly,
and cherished them as companions in her life, and destined them also to
befriend her in her dark tomb. Yes, you can plainly see, her fingers
have worn away the rich orange stain from the beautifully shaped oval
holes. For these flutes were finely finished and designed for true
musical service and durability. Originally they had been orange-stained
and wax polished, and when first found held that appearance, but
exposure to the air darkened the wax to a deep brown colour, yet the
holes reveal in lighter tint how they have been worn by the fingers.
Perhaps the lady musician had several other pairs of flutes, apt for
the expression of joy and mirthfulness, and left them to her friends,
taking with her only the one pair with which her _Ka_ would mourn the
loss of friends and the light of the sun.
A remembrance comes fittingly in this place, of another lady of this
long vanished race. In a royal tomb they found her, at El Amrah,
wrapped round with the mystic robes of a ceremonial, that were to be
her passport to the underworld during an unknown eternity; she was the
daughter of Mena the founder of Memphis, and on her breast was written
in the old hieroglyph letters, this simple message to the unseen power,
who would judge her,—
“_She was Sweet of Heart._”
—it was the last testimony of those who loved her. Sweet of heart, how
near it brings her to our own loves. A touching epitaph to endure over
six thousand years,—no woman could desire a more beautiful farewell.
The flutes that my thoughts so long lingered over are gone. They are
deposited, after their strange travel, in the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford—a long way indeed from that land where the Lady Maket played
them under a cloudless sky.
[Illustration]