ng their harps in the same order of
tones and half tones as is used for our modern pianos. That
this is even probable may be assumed from the scale of a flute
dating back to the eighteenth or nineteenth century B.C. (1700
or 1600 B.C.), which was found in the royal tombs at Thebes,
and which is now in the Florence Museum.

Its scale was

[G: (a a+ b c' c+' d') (a' a+' b' c'' c+'' d'') (e'')
f'' f+'' g'' g+'' (a'' a+'' b'' c''' c+''' d''')]

The only thing about which we may be reasonably certain in
regard to Egyptian music is that, like Egyptian architecture,
it must have been very massive, on account of the preponderance
in the orchestra of the low tones of the stringed instruments.

The sistrum was, properly speaking, not considered a musical
instrument at all. It was used only in religious ceremonies, and
may be considered as the ancestor of the bell that is rung at
the elevation of the Host in Roman Catholic churches. Herodotus
(born 485 B.C.) tells us much about Egyptian music, how the
great festival at Bubastis in honour of the Egyptian Diana
(_Bast_ or _Pascht_), to whom the cat was sacred, was attended
yearly by 700,000 people who came by water, the boats resounding
with the clatter of castanets, the clapping of hands, and the
soft tones of thousands of flutes. Again he tells us of music
played during banquets, and speaks of a mournful song called
_Maneros_. This, the oldest song of the Egyptians (dating back
to the first dynasty), was symbolical of the passing away of
life, and was sung in connection with that gruesome custom
of bringing in, towards the end of a banquet, an effigy of a
corpse to remind the guests that death is the birthright of
all mankind, a custom which was adopted later by the Romans.

Herodotus also gives us a vague but very suggestive glimpse
of what may have been the genesis of Greek tragedy, for he was
permitted to see a kind of nocturnal Egyptian passion play, in
which evidently the tragedy of Osiris was enacted with ghastly
realism. Osiris, who represents the light, is hunted by Set or
Typhon, the god of darkness, and finally torn to pieces by the
followers of Set, and buried beneath the waters of the lake;
Horus, the son of Osiris, avenges his death by subduing Set, and
Osiris appears again as the ruler of the shadowland of death.

This strange tragedy took place at night, on the shore of
the lake behind the great temple at Sais. Osiris was dressed
royally, in wh