| You Can’t Fail Me!!!!
Nick Naroditski
Egyptology
The world of ancient Egypt was replete with rhythm, with notes and timbres, with clapping and voices and harps and lyres. What did this music sound like? What sort of melodies and harmonies were there, and what were the intervals, the scales, the chords, the notes? The contemporary observer doesn’t know, since no information was left behind regarding the actual sounds that came from the instruments. However, the many inscriptions that include musicians on them, as well as several instruments that have miraculously survived thousands of years to fall into our hands, lend an understanding as to the lives of musicians and the life of music itself in this ancient civilization.
Music played a vital role in every aspect of daily life. Music was an integral part of the rituals worshipping the gods, it was a vital proponent to the activities of the upper classes, and it played a part in the toil of the lower classes. Music, more than anything else in ancient Egypt, was the most common cultural force for all classes, in all capacities, from the Akhenaten heresy to sexual relations to the great goddess Ma’at herself.
There are two real branches of ancient Egyptian music, and both must be explored thoroughly for a reader to begin to see how fundamental music was for an Egyptian, both in his life and in his beliefs. The problem with analyzing music in the context of Egyptian culture is that all we have left are inscriptions made by artists who might have been depicting an objective reality or who also might have been reflecting cultural expectations. The fact that all we know about musicians and music in a social context through a scribe or an artist implies already that what we know about ancient Egyptian music is skewed: only wealthier people could afford to commission paintings or texts. This creates a few problems. The first is the fact that since rich people were the only patrons of the arts, most of the inscriptions regarding music will be about the music performed at higher class functions. Not only that, but the inscriptions made regarding commoners’ music will obviously be skewed to support Egyptian values and, more personally, the lord for whom the inscription was made. After all, the reason that wealthy Egyptians carved servants, including musicians, into their inscriptions was for those subordinates to continue serving in the afterlife. In short, the only information that we have about musicians and the role of secular music in the society of ancient Egypt comes from a very slanted source. Although we must not ignore their inherent biases, these inscriptions remain our only sources for analysis.
Because of this slant, commoners’ music can be considered the most complicated to discuss, and will therefore be the first form of ancient Egyptian music discussed here. As one might expect, the music and song of peasantry found in tomb walls were almost all about agriculture, work and the harvest. “Music was part of the daily life of farm workers, and had a role in the seasonal round of agricultural activities.” The songs of agricultural workers were often in the form of a statement or a question and a reply, which were repeated many times in varying order. Indeed, these worker’s songs were quite popular: archaeologists discovered the first half of a song in the tomb of Paheri in el-Kab, only to discover the other half of the song in Thebes, in the tomb of Wensu. “The sheer fact that it was acceptable to give only part of the text suggests that the words do not simply represent ordinary scraps of conversation, however stereotyped, but phrases of a song, or songs, known among farm workers up and down the Nile.”
Likewise, Pulver and Manniche both mention a song from the Old Kingdom sung by a litter-bearing crew:
Happy are they that bear the chair!
Better it is for us when full than when it is empty.
Music, and more specifically rhythmic structures, were used to coordinate the carrying of heavy items, like coffins: “That a heavy load may be lightened by music is proved in other scenes. In one scene carved on a tomb wall, showing a funeral procession, a group of people drag the coffin to the tomb; to keep them moving, an ‘instructor’ beats two short sticks together in an appropriate rhythm.” Peasant music, or at least what we know of the music, in ancient Egypt was specifically geared around the work that peasants were consigned to. After all, if peasants were carved into tombs to serve as peasants in the afterlife, then the music that comes with their labor should also be working music. Along with the purpose of the songs themselves, the words of the songs show the quintessential Egyptian ethical system for the working classes: hard work and devotion to the master. For example, the words to the song that was found both in Wensu’s and Paheri’s tombs are these:
(First worker) Hurry up with the work, friend.
And let us finish in good time.
(Second worker) Now, I shall do more than my work for the nobleman.
(First worker) We are hurrying up.
Fear not for the corn-fields.
They are very good….
In this excerpt one can see not only an exposition of the values of the working class in the words of the second worker (his devotion to his master and his will to do more than the expected amount of work), but also the general Egyptian values of calm and order, and assumed prosperity in the words of the first worker (with his urge to finish work on time and his cry that the corn fields are prosperous and rich). In other words, the words to the songs themselves promoted traditional values and hard work, adding a literal work ethic to music whose purpose, it is widely assumed from its structure and context, was to create a steady and productive working rhythm.
There are a few anomalies, carvings of peasant flautists or reed-pipe players playing in solitude, enjoying times of rest after a day of work. But a majority of the material that the modern world has focuses on songs about work. It is possible that Egyptologists are wrong, that in fact scenes of relaxed pastoral music making were common in Egyptian inscriptions. It is well known that ninety nine percent of the records and documents of ancient Egypt are lost to the modern world. However, from what Egyptology thinks, it would not have been logical for these peasants to be portrayed very commonly without their trades. This was not only because commoners were included in the graves of rich men only to serve in the afterlife, but also because Egyptians identified themselves greatly by their professions.
Obviously, music related to the higher classes was documented more carefully and more extensively. There are obviously several very clear-cut differences between the music of the rich and the music of the poor. Firstly, one begins to see the presence of a wide variety of musical instruments, not just clapping hands and voices but various sorts of harps, oboes and flutes, percussion instruments, various dancers and singers, and the mysterious chironomists. Portrayals of these musical ensembles come early: “A large number of interesting musicals scenes are depicted at the Pyramid at Gizeh (Tomb 90), including two harpists, with large bow-shaped, six-stringed instruments, and three flautists, two playing obliquely and one directly.” Interestingly enough, the basic sections of a musical ensemble, the reed wind instrument, some percussion instrument, and harps remained consistent throughout the existence of the Egyptian civilization: “In some respects there appears to have been a remarkable degree of continuity in these ensembles over the two-thousand-year period, though there are also obvious differences. Throughout, the harp in its various forms was almost indispensable, and few ensembles were complete without one. Among the wind section we will always find a reed instrument…” There were two kinds of harps in ancient Egyptian music, the arched harps and angular harps. In fact, says Carl Engel, while there were certain important differences between most of the actual harps that today’s Egyptologists have been able to find, they miss one thing that all modern harps have: “All these harps, however different they are from each other in form, have one peculiarity in common – the absence of a fore-pillar.” The harps were played with the base on the ground and the player kneeling with the neck on his shoulder. The number of strings on the harp varied, usually five to seven. The reed instrument is, to musicologists, a mystery, since the mouthpiece was never shown in the inscriptions. When the musician played the instrument in pictures, the mouthpiece was completely in the musician’s mouth, and when the instrument was shown alone, there is no reed attached to it at all (this is not that much of a surprise, since reeds are usually not simply left on oboes or clarinets). It is assumed that the instrument was a single-reed, like a clarinet, since the instrument is very similar to a modern Egyptian folk instrument which is a single-reed. However, musical archaeologists are not positive that this is the case. It is possible that these instruments were in fact oboes, double-reed instruments. Other instruments were characteristic of their time periods. For example, the Old Kingdom’s ensembles always had end-blown flutes, while in the New Kingdom, the end-blown flutes disappeared while lutes and lyres appeared. The harps, however constant, changed as time went on, their bodies growing wider, the number of strings getting higher, and the overall volume of the tone increasing. And above it all, the human voices that were in fact the focus of the ensemble sang notes and melodies that the modern Egyptologist will doubtfully ever be able to hear again: “No banquet music was complete without the human voice … they were probably the raison d’etre of the ensemble in the first place.”
One of the most mysterious figures in the banquet ensembles were the chironomists. These squatting individuals with strange hand maneuvers that sit before the instrumentalists had disappeared from tomb carvings by the New Kingdom. But in the Old and Kingdom, they existed in every single banquet scene. Musicologists believe that they played a conducting role, although they are confounded by the fact that there is often more than one chironomist in a banquet scene. There are often up to three chironomists in a single banquet scene, and in one famous inscription, in the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, there are five musicians and six chironomists. For this reason, other theories exist about these mysterious figures. “Hickman analyzed the chironomists’ gestures, and compared them with the positions of the musicians’ hands, especially those of the harpists … This entire scheme presupposes absolute faith in the accuracy of the ancient draughtsman, but there is in fact some consistency in the depictions, and a relation can be presumed between particular chironomic gestures and the fingerings shown.” In other words, it is possible that the chironomists conducted each individual harpist separately, each chironomist a conductor for a single flute. If this is the case, the different hand gestures of each chironomist suggest the existence of a complex sort of polyphony, although no-one in the modern world can know the nature of these harmonies.
Of course, what were these banquets scenes for? What was the context for these detailed reliefs of musical ensembles? Obviously, some of this revelry actually did take place. Musicians did indeed play in banquets with dancers and food and drink: “Thus every happening that could call for music had it supplied; and supplied in a quality that must have been excellent if we are to judge by the instruments that produced it, and by the care expended upon, and the importance attached to, the study of the art in the many music-schools that flourished.” However, quite often as well, the musicians on these tomb walls symbolize the concept of riches, of feasts, of prosperity rather than being specific to a certain banquet or celebration that actually happened: “Although the banquet scenes in which the ensembles are depicted appear to be secular – feast like those which must have taken place in real life – they represent the ‘idea’ of a feast rather than any specific event. Right up to the New Kingdom the basic components change little: men and women in their finest outfits; food and drink; music, song and sometimes dance.”
In fact, when considering these banquets, one cannot forget where these reliefs are. They are carved into the walls of tombs, and therefore their existence must play a part in the rituals of burial. Archaeologists believe that the complex funeral ceremonies that were performed revolved around the idea of rebirth in the afterlife. It is believed that the banquets and music performances depicted on the walls of these tombs were, especially in the New Kingdom, representing rebirth: “It is clear that the underlying intention is to create a climate propitious to the rebirth of the tomb owner. Music played a vital part in this process: in the New Kingdom it accompanied songs which expressed the possibility of renewed life explicitly; in the Old Kingdom we can trace a similar message in the gestures of dancing girls moving to the music.” Music involved even in the most secular of events, like a banquet, was implicitly sacred as well in the world of ancient Egypt.
In a way, everything we know about ancient Egypt related to the gods, and this included music. However, there was quite a lot of music that lived strictly in the sacred
realm, or was directly related to the deities that were worshipped in the Nile river valley.
In fact, the first question one might ask himself is whether the gods themselves were musicians. Since the Egyptians, like all other early civilizations, believed that everything in the world was caused by the gods, then which god created music? This is attributed to several gods, since in ancient Egypt the gods commonly shared attributes. However, it is assumed that music came from the god Thoth, the god often attributed with knowledge: However, the goddess Ma’at became the closest thing to the god of music, although she was treated usually as an abstraction rather than an actual goddess to whom one must worship: “On a rather intellectual level, a goddess called Merit was considered to be the personification of music, although she never became a goddess of the people with cult chapels of her own. It says something about the Egyptians’ desire to express the music visually that she was a ‘chironomist goddess’, whose major task was to establish cosmic order by means of her song and gestures.” Likewise, Hathor, as the goddess of love, was a goddess with whom music was associated. Finally, there was a minor, more personal god named Bes, who was the protector of the home and who played a role in childbirth. He was able to play music, and was even portrayed with harps in relief, in the temple of Hathor. Even Osiris had, it’s supposed, created a wind instrument, and he’d been involved in music.
However, while there are in fact a few depictions of gods playing musical instruments, the number pales in comparison to the reliefs in which musicians, both solitary and in ensemble, perform to please the gods. Indeed, there was even a host of instruments that could not be found elsewhere but in religious ritual. The most famous of these instruments was the sistrum, a noisemaker in the shape of a large Y, the handle being the vertical pole and the two diagonal legs possibly imitating the horns of Hathor. Between the two diagonal legs there were loosely attached metal rods with metal rings on them. The sistrum was shaken like a tambourine to make a jangling noise in rituals: “The temple songstresses would often perform in groups of three or more, singing a hymn in praise of the god; they probably shook the sistra to divide the phrases of recitation.” Remembering of course, that the king himself was a god, music ensembles existed to worship him as well. Depictions of the sed jubilee of Amenophis III are the most telling of music in these celebrations. Dance was a vital part of the ceremony of the dd-pillar ceremony, with dancers and singers accompanying the raising of this symbol of stability. Other musicians, mostly rhythmic in nature, revolve around the other elements of Amenophis III jubilee, clapping their hands or drumming. Music played a great role in festivals to the gods as well, even using military instruments like the trumpets to make music heard over the shouting and celebrations of the jubilees dedicated to Amun. We know this from inscriptions representing massive festivals such as the Feast of the Valley.
Another very poignant depiction that Egyptologists come upon often is the single musician prostrating himself before a god … often these instrumentalists were harpists, and in Egyptian literature, lone harpists were often called “blind harpists”. The ability to see however, was not always absent from harp players before Akhenaten’s time: “The majority of the representations of known solo harpists come from the tombs at Thebes … However, out of some twenty cases where harpists’ eyes were visible, only four or five were found to be abnormal” Blind musicians were respected, however. There were many examples of musicians, singers most often, being led about by someone else as if they had no sight despite the portrayal of undamaged eyes.
The issue of vision in connection to music changed dramatically during the Amarna period under Akhenaten, as did a lot of other aspects of musical performance. In Amarna, blind musicians were respected the most, and many many musicians (since this is Amarna, one knows that everything, especially music, was dedicated to the Aten) were portrayed with damaged eyes. However, those musicians that were NOT blind were usually portrayed wearing white blindfolds around their eyes while performing. Why is this? “While playing the musicians were in direct communication with the deity. Proximity to a divine being was believed in other early civilizations to cause
blindness …” Yet, what we know of Amarna suggests that only the king and his family were actually ever in the full presence of the god Aten … this is seen in the fact that the hand emerging from the Aten sun disk are only ever directed at Akhenaten. Music, it appears, is powerful enough that those lucky enough to perform it are brought into “direct communication” with the Aten itself! Speaking theologically, this means that the musicians were almost at an equal rank to the king himself, being brought so close the un-mediated presence of the god, such that blindfolds were needed for the musicians not to turn blind. Music’s vital importance to the Aten is presented in a different way as well. The fragments of rituals we still have from Amarna show that musicians played in rituals to the Aten along with jars of food. This connection, between food and music, is made constant, and is mentioned time and again in the “Great Hymn to the Aten”. In other words, both music and food were offered to the sun-disk in ritual: “Life was a cycle of presentations: the god created the world and all that is in it for the king, who returned it to the god as an offering. The only other person involved in this process, apart from a few servants, were the musicians who are positioned immediately in front of the offering.” Musicians were definitely a vital element to sun-worship in Akhenaten’s court. Indeed, there exist records on tomb walls of musicians in the temple, playing directly to Aten outside of Akhenaten’s presence, although Akhenaten visiting the temple is implicit.
Akhenaten’s reign brought about some substantial differences in musicianship, dramatically changing the sort of instruments being played, the costumes of the musicians, even who the particular musicians were. For example, although all the musicians in the Amarna period remained anonymous, the clothing, wigs, and demeanor of some of the female musicians indicated that they were most certainly of royal blood. While it is logical that the royal family engaged in musical pursuits, especially since music was not, by far, a low-class pursuit, the Amarna period is the first in which artwork actually reflects the pursuits of the royal family. Likewise, for the first time, ensembles were divided for certain events by gender. Male musicians alone were permitted to play in the palace at Akhetaten, and this ensemble had no melodic instruments whatsoever, since the entire ensemble sang to the accompaniment of drums and hand-clapping. In terms of instruments, foreign musicians, common in Karnak and Amarna depictions and unique by their strange dress, brought their own insruments, including a giant lyre with a rectangular sound box and five to sixteen strings, which was played by more than one person at a time. Likewise, one will find male musicians playing boat-shaped harps, which up until Amarna were considered women’s instruments. The double oboe players developed a new technique, in which, rather than holding the two oboes at separate angles by individual hands, both oboes were pressed together and one hand pressed together the holes on both oboes at the same time.
As it was, music took on a whole new importance under Akhenaten, with many indicators that musicians were almost as sacred as the king. It is possible that for this reason, music was dramatically downsized by reactionary pharaohs that followed Akhenaten and who tried to erase as much of Akhenaten’s heresies as possible.
Music and its innate sexuality cannot be ignored in ancient Egypt. In an instance as entertaining as it is enlightening, a student scribe in ancient Egypt that copied a moral text would be exhorted to “never touch wine, for it leads to drunkenness and the company of women of dubious reputation, who would even teach him to sing to the oboe and chant to the lyre.” Likewise, some of the instruments found in Deir el-Medina, a place whose documentation of daily (and often promiscuous) life is very well-preserved, have erotic connotations on them. For example, lutes have been discovered with a duck’s head, which Egyptologists believe is an erotic symbol. In fact, there are much more explicit inscriptions regarding music, pornographic, in fact. A man and a woman copulate, with a lute lying nearby (obviously the woman’s). There are even reliefs of a woman performing while having sex, as well as depictions of women playing musical instruments while men with erect phalli dance in some sort of ritual. Indeed, music was a sexual item in ancient Egypt.
But who were the musicians themselves? How did they live, how where they treated generally? What sort of hierarchy existed, if it did exist at all? These questions, due to the general anonymity of most musicians, are the hardest of all to answer. We know that secular musicians working for royal or rich families were well provided for, and, by the number of mentions archaeologists have found regarding “instructors” and “directors” of music, they were well trained as well. Engel wrote that there was a substantial amount of music schools, and that during the Amarna period especially, the city Akhetaten developed a major music program. But even higher than secular musicians were those musicians that played in cult rituals to the gods, as it was believed that they had the most intimate relations with the gods: “They [cult musicians] were in the unique position of being able to communicate with the deity and, through the singing of hymns, to keep his image alive.” Strangely enough, instruments themselves had a hierarchy as well. The harp and the flute were considered more sophisticated, and of a higher class than the oboe and the lyre, not only because of the associations of the instruments (the flute and harp were attributed most often to religious ceremonies, the oboe and lyre, as one can see above, were attributed to erotica) but also because the lyre and the oboe, many believe, were brought in by foreigners. That which was pure, Egyptian, did not reek of foreign influence on what Egyptians believed was the perfect society, and of ungodliness, were the best instruments, and by connection, harpists and flutists were held in higher regard than oboists and lyre players (although, paradoxically, one will find all of these instruments somewhere among the depictions of royal banquets).
It is distressing that almost everything that was ancient Egypt is in fact, lost to us. The depictions, reliefs, and papyri that we have are the remnants of a host of records, ninety nine percent of which are gone forever. For this reason, no presumption on the fascinating world of ancient Egypt is on strong ground, ever, since a single find on a single dig can throw everything Egyptology has assumed about this ancient culture into the wrong. This great axiom of uncertainty applies just as strongly to what we know about music in this civilization on the banks of the Nile. But by the sheer amount of information, and the fact that this information supports itself time and again, from such a variety of sources, from tomb walls to temples to pornographic inscriptions and the copies of texts, we can presume that music was a vast part of the culture of ancient Egypt, that, like Ma’at, it was mainly an abstraction, but that it guided the rudder of the solar boat of this civilization from its glorious rise to its setting.
Bibliography
Engel, Carl, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations, New Temples Press, London, 1929
Manniche, Lise, Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, London, 1991
Pulver, Jeffrey, The Music of Ancient Egypt, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 48th Sess.. (1921 - 1922)
Pulver, Jeffrey, The Secular Music of Ancient Egypt, The Musical Times, Vol. 61, No. 928. (Jun. 1, 1920)
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