d instrument which reached its culmination in the piano. The
latter has been aptly called "the household orchestra," and in tracing
its origin one must go far back into the annals of the past. If we
accept the Bible as history, and it is the greatest of all histories,
the stringed instrument is of very ancient date. It is recorded that the
ambassadors who came to the court of Saul played upon their _nebels_,
and that David, the sweet singer of Israel, wooed the king from his
sadness by singing to his harp. We must go back to the civilization of
ancient Egypt, more than five hundred years before that morning nearly
two thousand years ago when, it is written, the angelic choir chanted
above the historic manger the glorious message, "Peace on earth, good
will to men," and the morning stars sang together.

In the olden times the Greeks laid claim to everything which bespoke
culture and progress. The pages of ancient history record no other one
thing so persistently as "the glory that was Greece." And so they tell
of the time when--

"Music, heavenly maid, was young,
And yet in ancient Greece she sung!"

It is now generally conceded, however, that it was not in Greece but in
ancient Egypt that art, music, and the sciences in general were born.
That the Egyptians had stringed instruments is unquestionable. Away back
in the year 525 B.C. Cambyses subdued the land. He overthrew the temples
in the ruins of which have been found the records of musical instruments
dating from the very earliest times. But the priests who guarded the
temples were slain, and every vestige of what might have helped to
determine the origin of the stringed instrument, out of which, later,
the piano was evolved, as well as the names of those who wrought and
endeavored to construct instruments which would give forth music, was
forever lost.

[Illustration: Clavicytherium or Upright Spinet]

[Illustration: Clavichord]

For lack of written authority, then, one must turn back to tradition for
light upon the origin of the piano. Tradition says that Ham, or one of
his sons, led the first colony into Egypt. In fact there is a legend
that Noah himself once dwelt there and some historians have identified
him with the great deity of the Egyptians, Osiris. To Hermes, or
Mercury, the secretary of Osiris, is ascribed the invention of the first
stringed instrument. The story is that Hermes was walking one day along
the banks of the Nile. It was just aft