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Musical instruments
Egyptian musical instruments were well developed and
varied. They included string instruments such as harps, lyres,
lutes, percussion instruments like drums, rattles, tambourines,
bells (first used during the Late Period) and cymbals (Roman
Period), wind instruments like flutes, clarinets, double pipes,
trumpets, and oboes.
Harps
Drums and Tambourines
Harp and Tambourine Skin
Wind instruments
Flutes were among the first musical
instruments used. Double flutes were at first made of two
parallel pipes, but later the two pipes were separated and set
at an acute angle. They are still used in Egypt today.
Double oboes were known since about 2800 BCE.
They had two pipes of unequal length, the longer was used as a
drone or to play notes that the shorter pipe couldn't hit.
In the second century BCE the Alexandrian
Ctesibios invented the hydraulic organ which used water pressure
to deliver air to the organ-pipes.
String instruments
Harps, developed from the hunting bow and used since the Old
Kingdom, were triangle or arc shaped. They usually had eight to
twelve strings and both men and women played them sitting,
standing or kneeling. They were generally made of wood and
probably did not project very far. Harps were often decorated
and could be expensive works of art
[My majesty made] a splendid harp wrought with silver,
gold, lapis lazuli, malachite, and every splendid costly stone
From the Coronation inscription of Thutmose
III
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part
Two, § 165
During the New Kingdom there were harps of
various shapes and sizes, the number of their strings was
increased, and their sound boxes were improved. Some of the
harps had columns, but these were rare.
 
The large sized instruments were often
covered with flowery or geometrical ornamentations. In one
picture on a tomb, a harp is shown with a jaguar's skin, an
instrument for rich people. Harps were played at parties, social
gatherings, and ceremonial events, often in conjunction with
other instruments, such as double pipes and rattles.
The New Kingdom lute consisted of a small
oblong sounding box, flat on both sides, with six or eight
holes, and a long neck, often decorated with ribbons, from which
four strings were strung.
Another string instrument classified as a
guitar because of its flat back and curving sides, may not have
looked much like a modern guitar.
It was improved if not
invented by the Egyptians.
Lute
Flutes and Nai
Flutes and Rababa
Percussion instruments
Sekhmet and Bes were sometimes
associated with percussion instruments, in particular with frame
drums. The sistrum shown on the left incorporates a likeness of
Bes. It and the menat, two small flat slabs of wood or
ivory similar to a castanet, were generally dedicated to Hathor,
the goddess of banquets and music making. But the sistrum was
also used in the worship of the other gods, the Aton during the
Amarna Period
...... the Great King's Wife, his beloved, abounding in her
beauty; her who sends the Aton to rest with sweet voice, and
with her two beautiful hands, bearing two sistrums, the
mistress of the Two Lands, Nefernefruaton-Nofretete, living
forever and ever.
From the tomb inscriptions of Ay
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part
Two, § 995
or Ptah
......... by command of this thy son, who is upon thy
throne, lord of gods and men, sovereign celebrating the
jubilees like thee [when thou] bearest the two sistrums .....
From the inscription of Ramses II in the
temple of Ptah at Memphis
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part
Three, § 414
Tambourines were either round or square, played by hand, and
were mainly used during popular or religious festivals. They
came into use during the New Kingdom.
Singing
Music was part of religious ceremonies and musicianship was highly valued and mentioned on mortuary
stelae of, among others, Pesheremehit, son of housemistress and
musician of Min Tediusir and of the priest Pehet
... that they may give a mortuary offering of bread, beer,
oxen and geese, incense, clothing and everything good and pure
to the spirit of Osiris the priest, the <ymy> - yz,
the hzk-priest, Pehet, deceased, called Nesihor .....
offspring of the housemistress, the musician of Min,
Tesheremehit, deceased.
From the stela of Pehet. Akhmim. Ptolemaic
Period
(Thomas George Allen:
Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History, 1936)
or the songstress of Amen Inaros, daughter of another songstress
... that he may give a mortuary offering and offerings of
food and beer to Osiris the songstress of the temple of Amon,
Inaros, deceased, the possessor of worthiness [in the presence
of] the great god, the lord of the sky; daughter of Harkheb,
deceased .... Her mother was the songstress of Amon and Horus,
Tesherenetyah, deceased ....
From the stela of Inaros. Roman Period
(Thomas George Allen:
Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History, 1936)
During the New Kingdom the singers' titles of
Smaj.t and Hsj.t became quite common among the
female relatives of high officials. In contrast to the Servant
of the God, Hm.t nTr, of the Old and Middle Kingdoms who had
served female deities only, these songstresses officiated at
ceremonies of male gods too.
Some ceremonial texts used during the worship
of Isis or Nephthys for instance have survived. Their structure
seems to imply that they were sung alternating by two priests
and included solo passages interpreted by priestesses.
 
In Old and Middle Kingdom tombs inscriptions
of songs can be found, hymns sung to the accompaniment of a
harp. These Harpers' songs praised the dead and death, keeping
the name of the deceased alive by repeating it:
The singer Tjeniaa says:
How firm you are in your seat of eternity,
Your monument of everlastingness!
It is filled with offerings of food,
It contains every good thing.
Your
ka
is with you,
It does not leave you,
O Royal Seal-bearer, Great Steward, Nebankh!
Yours is the sweet breath of the north wind!
So says his singer who keeps his name alive,
The honorable singer Tjeniaa, whom he loved,
Who sings to his ka every day.
Stela of Nebankh from Abydos
M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1,
p. 194
The somewhat
hedonistic
Harper of a King Intef who ruled during the First
Intermediate Period or the Middle Kingdom, saw the ephemeralness
of this life and was also much less positive than earlier
harpers about the chances of an afterlife.
Singing, often accompanied by the clapping [6]
of hands, was integral to Egyptian culture, sacred and secular.
Tedious long-drawn-out jobs like
grinding
corn were accompanied by chanting, though whether these were
songs praising the master of the house as suggested by some tomb
inscriptions
May all the gods of this land give strength and health to
my master
After Pierre Montet, La vie quotidienne en
Egypte
is open to doubt.
At banquets singers played an important part.
Zakar-Baal, when he wanted to distract Wenamen
....... sent out his letter-scribe to me (i.e. Wenamen), he
brought me two jars of wine and a ram. He sent to me Tentno,
an Egyptian (female) singer, who was with him, saying:
"Sing for him; let not his heart feel apprehension."
From the Report
of Wenamen
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part
Four, § 589
Herodotus, who was better placed than any
other man of his time to compare between different cultures,
often saw similarities which were probably just happenstance:
Besides other customary things among them which are worthy
of mention, they have one song, that of Linos, the same who is
sung of both in Phenicia and in Cyprus and elsewhere, having
however a name different according to the various nations.
This song agrees exactly with that which the Hellenes sing
calling on the name of Linos, so that besides many other
things about which I wonder among those matters which concern
Egypt, I wonder especially about this, namely whence they got
the song of Linos. It is evident however that they have sung
this song from immemorial time, and in the Egyptian tongue
Linos is called Maneros. The Egyptians told me that he was the
only son of him who first became king of Egypt, and that he
died before his time and was honoured with these lamentations
by the Egyptians, and that this was their first and only song.
Herodotus, Histories II
Project Gutenberg
The sound
Ancient Egyptian music was based on a minor
pentatonic scale of five full tones without halftones. This fact
can be inferred from the positions of the holes on flutes.
During the New Kingdom, when foreign conquest
brought Egyptians into closer contact with Asiatic peoples and
their music and many new instruments and with them new sound
qualities were introduced, they also encountered the scales
prevailing in the Near East. On the whole they seem to have
preferred keeping their traditional tonality, although some
musicologists think that during this period they began to use a
heptatonic scale.
The Greeks who settled first in the Delta,
and since the third century BCE in many places upstream, above
all in the Fayum, must have had an even greater impact on
Egyptian music. These influences were mutual. Pythagoras
(c.580-500 BCE) who created a musical theory based on
mathematics, was brought up in Egypt.
Egyptian music must have changed a great
deal during the last couple of millennia. We have even less
clues to what the music sounded like than we have to how the
Egyptian language was pronounced. One should therefore be very
wary when extrapolating. To get an idea of what the ancient
music may have sounded like, coptic church music, and
Nubian and Egyptian folk music might be helpful. A recording
called "The Music of Upper and Lower Egypt" and
published by Ryko, was done by the Grateful Dead while they were
on tour in Egypt of folk singers and musicians.
Dancing Men
Source: Tulane University website, which has
unfortunately been discontinued
Dance
Unfortunately, apart from a number of depictions, little is
known about ancient Egyptian dancing. It seems to have been uni-sex.
Acrobatic dancers, Karnak;
Excerpt from a photo by M.Audrain
Modern pair dancing was unknown. It was probably influenced by
the Nubian dancing tradition, which became very popular in Rome
during the days of the empire, and is still alive in parts of
the Sudan today. Dancers from the south were brought to Egypt
and seemingly much admired.
Egyptian choreography appears to have been
complex. Dances could be mimetic, expressive - similar to modern
ballet with pirouettes and the like, or gymnastic, including
splits, cartwheels, and backbends.
A few pictures of acrobatic dancers have been
found, generally depicting a number of dancers performing the
same movement in unison.
For sociable banquets the dancing
girls were often selected from among the servants or the women
living in the harem of the nobleman in whose house the party was
held; possibly professional dancers were also hired for these
occasions. Pictures of such gatherings show girls performing
slow elegant dance steps, which may have alternated with wild
acrobatic movements.
Public celebrations were accompanied by
dancing, be it spontaneous or orchestrated
All the people of all the dwellings of the court heard (of
the coronation of Hatshepsut); they came, their mouths
rejoicing, they proclaimed (it) beyond everything, dwelling on
dwelling therein was announcing (it) in his name; soldiers on
soldiers [...], they leaped and they danced for the double joy
in their hearts.
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of
Egypt, Part Two, § 238
 
Dancing was also part of religious functions.
According to tomb depictions staid ritual dances seem to have
been performed by the muu, men wearing crowns of reeds.
The dancing women at the festivities of
Hathor were less restrained, if depictions are anything to go
by. One of the highpoints of these celebrations were energetic
dances similar to those depicted in the tomb of Nenkhetifkai at
Sakkara (see picture in the left margin).
Herodotus, at times not the most reliable of
witnesses in his eagerness to make foreign cultures as
comprehensible to his Greek audience as possible, was struck by
the absence of organised dancing at the feast of Osiris, equated
by the Greeks with Dionysos, and reported that
... the rest of the feast of Dionysos is celebrated by the
Egyptians in the same way as by the Hellenes in almost all
things except choral dances....
Herodotus, Histories II
while pilgrims to Bubastis
... sail, men and women together, and a great multitude of
each sex in every boat; and some of the women have rattles and
rattle with them, while some of the men play the flute during
the whole time of the voyage, and the rest, both women and
men, sing and clap their hands; and when as they sail they
come opposite to any city on the way they bring the boat to
land, and some of the women continue to do as I have said,
others cry aloud and jeer at the women in that city, some
dance, and some stand up and pull up their garments.
Herodotus, Histories II
[1] It seems it's not as
straightforward. Thomas Hare (Stanford), knowledgeable in
Japanese music, suggests that by tilting the flute, altering the
position of one's lips and half-holing one can achieve a number
of different scales and that the ancient Egyptians might have
done just that. At least in the case of Japan the most easily
played scale, used in folk music, doesn't seem to have been the
oldest according to historical evidence.
[5] Yam: tribe and region in Nubia
[6] Clapping:
Songs to the harp are made for you,
One sings to you with clapping hands;
Hymn to the Nile
M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1,
p.208
Clapping and stomping also had magical qualities. They were
often used to keep daemons at bay.
[7] During part of the Osiris worship, prior
to the god's mummification, music was seemingly deemed to be
inappropriate but was taken up again with the
Opening
of the Mouth ceremony, the joyful event of revivification.
This ritual silence may have been the inspiration for a handful
of Late Period writings prohibiting music.
 
Harpist
and Belly Dancers
Exotic dancers exercised a special
attraction. When Harkhuf was on his way back from Yam with a dwarf, he received instructions from Pepi II to return as
fast as possible.
....... Come northward to the court immediately; [...] thou
shalt bring this dwarf with thee, which thou bringest living,
prosperous and healthy from the land of spirits, for the
dances of the god, to rejoice and gladden the heart of the
king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkere, who lives forever.
Pepi, who was still a child at the time, may have been more
impressed with the diminutive size of the dancer than with the
spiritual powers the dwarf from the land of spirits
attempted to express through his movements.
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