s used
the rotta at a very remote period (1700 B.C.), as we know from a fresco
at Beni-Hasan, dating from the reign of Senwosri II., which depicts a
procession of strangers bringing tribute; among them is a bearded
musician of Semitic type bearing a rotta which he holds horizontally in
front of him in the Assyrian manner, and quite unlike the Greeks, who
always played the lyre and cithara in an upright position. A unique
specimen of this rectangular rotta was found in an Alamannic tomb of the
5th or 6th century at Oberflacht in the Black Forest. The instrument was
clasped in the arms of an armed knight; it is now preserved in the
Voelker Museum in Berlin. This old German rotta is an exact counterpart
of instruments pictured in illuminated MSS. of the 8th century, and is
derived from the cithara with rectangular body, while from the cithara
with a body having the curve of the lower half of the violin was
produced a rotta with the outline of the body of the guitar. Both types
were common in Europe until the 14th century, some played with a bow,
others twanged by the fingers, and bearing indifferently both names,
cithara and rotta. The addition of a finger-board, stretching like a
short neck from body to transverse bar, leaving on each side of the
finger-board space for the hand to pass through in order to stop the
strings, produced the crwth or crowd (q.v.), and brought about the
reduction in the number of the strings to three or four. The conversion
of the rotta into the guitar (q.v.) was an easy transition effected by
the addition of a long neck to a body derived from the oval rotta. When
the bow was applied the result was the guitar or troubadour fiddle. At
first the instrument called _cithara_ in the Latin versions of the
Psalms was glossed _citran, citre_ in Anglo-Saxon, but in the 11th
century the same instrument was rendered _hearpan_, and in French and
English _harpe_ or _harp_, and our modern versions have retained this
translation. The _cittern_ (q.v.), a later descendant of the cithara,
although preserving the characteristic features of the cithara, the
shallow sound-chest with ribs, adopted the pear-shaped outline of the
Eastern instruments of the lute tribe. (K.S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A drawing of an Egyptian cithara, similar to the Leiden
specimen, may be seen in Champollion, _Monuments de l'Egypte et de
la Nubie_, ii. pl. 175.

[2] See Plutarch, _Apophthegm. Lacon._

[3] Philostratus the E