ANCIENT MUSICAL SCIENCE. 73 



the top, and it could not possibly have been sounded with those two 

 holes left open. This is copied from a pipe in the British Museum, and 

 it was necessary to cover the apertures with thin gutta percha to 

 elicit the sound. It proves to us that the ancient Egyptians knew the 

 principle of the famous pipe mentioned by Shakespeare, called the 

 Recorder, which differed only from the soft English flute, played at 

 the end, in having a little piece of bladder or something of that kind 

 fastened over openings of this sort, the object being to give 

 tremulousness to the tone and to make it more like the human voice. 

 The tone of the pipe would otherwise be perfectly pure and steady, as 

 in an organ. In the case of a second Egyptian pipe we find it neces- 

 sary to sink the reed down three inches within the tube to elicit any 

 sound, and that is the principle of the drone of the bag-pipe. It 

 serves to protect the fragile reed from injury. There is no perfect 

 octave scale upon any of the four which have been tried. They are 

 very limited in compass, but we find that the Egyptians often played 

 in concert. There is a representation of three Egyptian pipers play- 

 ing in concert with pipes of about one, two, and four feet in length, 

 in the tomb of an Egyptian, named Tebhen in the hieroglyphics, and 

 this tomb is of the fourth dynasty, or about the time of building the 

 great pyramid. Three such pipes must necessarily be playing in 

 three different octaves treble, tenor, and bass. One of these pipes 

 has six notes in the major scale, another has a diatesseron with the 

 semitone at the top, but no tetrachord which is very curious. The 

 scale of two tetrachords which was borrowed by the Greeks must there- 

 fore be of later date. The tetrachord was the best possible arrange- 

 ment for recitations limited to four notes. Suppose the tetrachord to 

 be B C D E, C would be the reciting or key note, having B, the 

 semitone below as the true seventh for drawing to a close. The 

 chief part of the recitation would be upon the key note, and there 

 was the power of rising to a major third above it, which was quite 

 enough for eastern recitation. By joining two such tetrachords 

 together they reduced the eight to seven, thus B, C, D, E, and begin- 

 ning with E again, E, F, G, A, and then putting the octave A at the 

 bottom they made our minor scale A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A. We had 

 that minor scale earlier in England than in France, having received it 

 through the Greek organ. We had a Greek as archbishop about 



