Through the Eras

MusicFlutist with a singer snapping his fingers. Painted limestone relief from the Tomb of Nenkhefetka, Saqqara. Fifth Dynasty. GI-RAUDON/ART RESOURCE NY.shaped drum, trumpets were military instruments usedfor communication on the battlefield and duringmarching.STRINGED INSTRUMENTS: HARPS. Egyptians playedseveral kinds of stringed instruments, including twotypes of harps, three types of lyres, and the lute. Thereare many different subdivisions of the harp types, butbasically they are either arched—an indigenous Egyptiantype—or angular—an import from Mesopotamia.The arched harp, the most popular in Egypt in all periods,was a curved rod inserted in a sound box. A collarin the shape of a ring attached the strings to the topof the rod, which were stretched to a rib in contact withthe sound box. Each string had its own collar that allowedfor tuning. Egyptian arched harps had six to tenstrings, but since each string on a harp had only onepitch, Egyptian harp music made melodies with a verylimited number of pitches. The shovel-shaped archedharp used during the Old and Middle Kingdoms camein a variety of sizes, which allowed for different tonalranges, the smaller harps making higher pitches than thelarger harps. Scholars conjecture that since harp musicaccompanied singing, the harp sizes may have complementedparticular voices. The angular harp in use inMesopotamia by 1900 B.C.E. did not entirely replacethe arch-shaped harp in Egypt until nearly 900 B.C.E.The major difference between arched- and angularshapedharps was the construction and the number ofstrings. In an angular harp, the rib was inserted into thesound box rather than being parallel to it as with thearched harp. Moreover, the angular harp has between21 and 29 strings. Thus, the angular harp can producebetween double and triple the number of pitches of anarched harp. The Egyptians clearly were reluctant to expandthe pitch range of their music since they resisted158 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)