Through the Eras

Musicthousands of years preserves an older form of musicalnotation.HAND GESTURES. Scholars conjecture that the handgestures made by singers indicated pitches to the harpistsor wind players that accompanied them. If true, the representationsof singers—called “chironomists,” or “onewho makes signs using the hands” in Greek—especiallyon Old Kingdom tomb walls, preserve evidence that instrumentalistscould be led in particular songs. Scholarshave tried to find a correlation between the hand gesturesthat singers made and the note or pitch that aharpist or clarinet player played in numerous representationsin Old Kingdom tombs without much success.Other scholars have argued that these hand gestures werespontaneous expressions accompanying singing. There issome evidence that gestures were a critical componentof a musical performance; the word for singing in Egyptian,hesi, uses the final hieroglyphic sign for an arm,which might indicate that singing is done as much withhands as it is with the voice. As with many issues relatingto the role of music in Egypt, there is not enoughevidence to draw a firm conclusion.This statue shows the only known musical notation from ancientEgypt. BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART, 58.34, CHARLES EDWINWILBOUR FUND. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.notes at least by 1500 B.C.E., as did the Greeks by thefirst millennium B.C.E. Yet scholars have not identifiedany musical notation in a written form in Egypt untilafter the Greeks had conquered the land about 322B.C.E. Even then, there is only one possible example ofmusical notation, discovered on a statue depicting awoman playing a harp while a man sits before her witha writing board. On the board is a series of horizontallines with longer and shorter vertical lines attached toit. The lack of comparative material hampered musicologists’efforts to interpret the notation. The onlyother possible evidence of ancient notation comes fromninth-century C.E. Coptic manuscripts that may reflectan earlier native Egyptian system of musical notation.The Coptic Church (the Egyptian Christian Church)does preserve some memories of ancient Egyptian customs,but it is impossible to prove that the Coptic systemof notation that post-dates the Old Kingdom bySOURCESHans Hickman, “Ein neuentdecktes Dokument zum Problemder altägyptischen Notation,” Acta Musicologica 33(1961): 15–19.—, “La chironomie dans l’Egypte pharaonique,”Zeitschrift fur ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 83(1958): 96–127.Bo Lawgren, “Music,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of AncientEgypt. Vol. 2. Donald B. Redford et al. (New York:Oxford University Press, 2001): 450–454.Lisa Manniche, Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt (London:British Museum Press, 1991).WORK SONGSEVIDENCE. Tomb and building drawings present uswith evidence that Egyptian laborers integrated musicwith their labor, although such evidence is fraught withbarriers to interpretation. For instance, the pictorial combinationof music and labor is an uncommon theme inEgyptian art so it is difficult to draw conclusions basedon comparison. The songs themselves throw up barriersto a greater application to Egyptian life since the meaningof the words that accompany the image does notclearly relate to the work being depicted. Neither is itpossible to determine whether the songs preserved ontomb walls represent songs that workmen actually sangin the fields or whether the songs represent only the160 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)