ledge, however, is
worse than valueless, for it is misleading. For instance,
it would be a very difficult thing for posterity to form any
idea as to what our music was like if all the actual music in
the world at the present time were destroyed, and only certain
scientific works such as that of Helmholtz on acoustics and a
few theoretical treatises on harmony, form, counterpoint and
fugue were saved.

From Helmholtz's analysis of sounds one would get the idea
that the so-called tempered scale of our pianos caused thirds
and sixths to sound discordantly.

From the books on harmony one would gather that consecutive
fifths and octaves and a number of other things were never
indulged in by composers, and to cap the climax one would
naturally accept the harmony exercises contained in the books
as being the very acme of what we loved best in music. Thus
we see that any investigation into the music of antiquity must
be more or less conjectural.

Let us begin with the music of the Egyptians. The oldest
existing musical instrument of which we have any knowledge is
an Egyptian lyre to be found in the Berlin Royal Museum. It
is about four thousand years old, dating from the period just
before the expulsion of the Hyksos or "Shepherd" kings.

At that time (the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, 1500-2000
B.C.) Egypt was just recovering from her five hundred years of
bondage, and music must already have reached a wonderful state
of development. In wall paintings of the eighteenth dynasty
we see flutes, double flutes, and harps of all sizes, from
the small one carried in the hand, to the great harps, almost
seven feet high, with twenty-one strings; the never-failing
sistrum (a kind of rattle); kitharas, the ancestors of our
modern guitars; lutes and lyres, the very first in the line
of instruments culminating in the modern piano.

One hesitates to class the trumpets of the Egyptians in the
same category, for they were war instruments, the tone of
which was probably always forced, for Herodotus says that
they sounded like the braying of a donkey. The fact that the
cheeks of the trumpeter were reinforced with leather straps
would further indicate that the instruments were used only
for loud signalling.

According to the mural paintings and sculptures in the tombs
of the Egyptians, all these instruments were played together,
and accompanied the voice. It has long been maintained that
harmony was unknown to the ancients bec