72 SECTION PHYSICS. 



ANCIENT MUSICAL SCIENCE. 



Mr. W. CHAPPELL : The limit of time imposed upon me makes 

 it necessary that I should say very few words indeed. In this 

 exhibition there are some models of ancient Egyptian pipes, and of a 

 Greek, or rather of an Egyptian, hydraulic organ. It was the custom 

 of the Egyptians, in the early dynasties of the empire to leave a pipe 

 in the tomb of a deceased person, and to lay by it a straw of barley, 

 by which the player might, as we assume, make fresh reeds when he 

 awoke. This was upon the assumption that, having been a very good 

 man, his soul would resume the human form. Here is an example of 

 the sort of pipe which was deposited. This pipe could only be played 

 with a double reed, such as that of the hautboy, the bassoon, or the 

 ancient shepherds' pipe, because there is no notch in it, as in the 

 flageolet or the diapason pipe of an organ, to excite the tone. 

 Through the kind assistance of my friend Dr. Stone these pipes are 

 fitted with reeds. The diameter of the pipe may not be exactly 

 copied, but that is of minor importance because increase of diameter 

 does but increase the volume of sound. It is the length of the pipe 

 and the distance between the holes which are essential. There is no 

 example of a bass pipe, thus deposited, but we have here two tenor 

 pipes and two treble pipes, and from these we ascertain at least some 

 of the scales of the ancient Egyptians. The Greeks constructed 

 their minor scale by joining together two tetrachords, which we call 

 fourths, but they are fourths with the semitone at the bottom, as in B, 

 C, D, E not as in C, D, E, F, where the semitone comes at the top. 

 It was desirable to know how ancient that scale was in Egypt, and it 

 is evident that these pipes were anterior to it, for they are all on the 

 major scale. Greek writers upon music inform us that they joined 

 together two tetrachords of four notes each, by commencing the 

 upper tetrachord upon the highest note of the lower one, thus reducing 

 the eight notes to seven, because there were seven planets. There are 

 other associations connected with the number seven which might 

 have influenced them to do so. In these pipes we discover two 

 musical principles which we are not aware to have been known to 

 the Egyptians. One pipe has a hole bored through it within an inch of 



