THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 77 



antique flutes were blown. It seemed at first as if they must have 

 been blown across the tops as you blow into a key, and as is done 

 in modern Egypt with the " nay." But, though they yielded distinct 

 notes, they were not true musical tones, and all efforts to increase 

 their intensity was unavailing. Many experiments were tried, the 

 successful one being the use of a simple reed cut in a straw of wheat. 

 All evidence seems to point to the fact that this was the medium 

 adopted by the Egyptian players. In the cases of some discovered 

 flutes, pieces of barley straw were found beside them, and in one 

 case a piece of straw was sticking in the embouchure of the pipe. 

 The most conclusive evidence, however, is from a painting taken 

 from a tomb in Thebes, and now in the British Museum in London. 

 This painting represents a feast and dance in honor of the god 

 Vulcan ; girls are represented playing on pipes exactly correspond- 

 ing to those under consideration, with this important exception : 

 about an inch before they enter the mouth the brown color ends, 

 and the rest 'Of the tube is white. So experiments were made in 

 various ways of cutting the straw, with the result that at least the 

 silence of 3000 years was broken, and the double flute of the Lady 

 Maket spoke once more. 



And now we come to the importance of the discovery from a 

 historical point of view. Groves' "Dictionary of Music" is the 

 principal authority on all musical subjects that has been published 

 during the last few years. In the article on " Scale " we read that 

 our scale dates from the time of the Greeks, 500 B. C. From the 

 tones elicited from the Lady Maket's flutes we find that in 1500 B. 

 C. they used precisely the same intervals of scale, the same arrange- 

 ment of tones and semitones as we do to-day. We got our scale 

 through the Greeks, not from the Greeks ; and Miriam sang her 

 song — whatever the tune may have been — in a scale built in the same 

 way as the scales in which we sing and play, nearly 1900 years after 

 Christ. 



The notes which have been distinctly elicited from the newly 

 discovered flutes, are sufficient for the purpose of proving that the 

 division of tones and semitones was the same at that early date as it 

 is to-day. It stands to reason, however, that after a burial of 3,000 

 years, these instruments cannot at once find lips and fingers skilful 

 enough to produce their entire possibilities. It is more than likely 

 that by different pressure of blowing, and by use of the harmonic 



