accompaniment to the lyre. Unfortunately it is much damaged, and the appearance of several bars or chords can alone be traced, which the performer strikes with a stick.* It is true that, of the five instruments here represented, figs. 1. and 2. are very similar in principle, as are 3. and 4., however different their tones and powers may have been; but still they must be considered distinct from the harp, lyre, and guitar and they may, perhaps, bear some analogy to the nablt, the sambuc, and the tenstringed ashúr of the Jews; though these were generally played with a sort of plectrum, and the former always with the hand. Of the instrument, fig. 2. the most curious and perfect specimen I have seen was brought by Mr. Burton from Thebes, and is now in the British Museum. It only wants the four strings; the exact form, the pegs, the bridge or rod to which the chords were attached, and even the parchment, covering its wooden body, and serving instead of a sounding board, still remain; and from its lightness as well as size, we may judge how portable it was, and how conveniently it might be used in the manner described in the sculptures, upon the shoulder of the performer. ‡ THE LYRE- λυρα. The Egyptian lyre was not less varied in its form *Wood-cut, No. 216. +"That chant to the sound of the (nabl) viol." Amos, vi. 5. The nabl may have been a sort of guitar. Wood-cut, No. 209. and the number of its chords than the harp; and they ornamented it with the numerous fancy devices their taste suggested. Diodorus limits the number of its chords to three; however, as his description does not apply to the Egyptian lyre, but to the guitar, it is unnecessary to introduce it till I mention that instrument. A singular story of its supposed invention is related by Apollodorus. "The Nile," says the Athenian mythologist, "after having overflowed the whole country of Egypt, when it returned within its natural bounds, left on the shore a great number of animals of various kinds, and among the rest a tortoiset, the flesh of which being dried and wasted by the sun, nothing remained within the shell but nerves and cartilages, and these being braced and contracted by the drying heat became sonorous. Mercury, walking along the banks of the river, happened to strike his foot against this shell, and was so pleased with the sound produced, that the idea of a lyre presented itself to his imagination. He therefore constructed the instrument in the form of a tortoise ‡, and strung it with the dried sinews of dead animals." * The invention of the Greek lyre is also attributed to Mercury. Pausanias states that Mercury having found a tortoise-shell on a mountain of Arcadia, called Chelydorea, near Mount Cyllene, formed it into a lyre. Paus. Græc. lib. viii. Arcad. And he mentions a statue of Mercury, in the temple of Apollo at Argos, "holding a tortoise-shell, of which he proposes to make a lyre." lib. ii. Curvæque lyræ parentem." -Hor. Od. lib. i. 10. 6. + Pausanias says the tortoise of Mount Parthenius, in Arcadia, was particularly suited for making lyres, as well as that of the Soron oak forest, which, for this purpose, rivalled the Indian species. Lib. viii. From having been made of a tortoise-shell, the lyre received the name testudo. Hor. Od. lib. iii. 11. 3. Many of the lyres were of considerable power, having five, seven, ten, and eighteen strings. They were usually supported between the elbow and the side, and the mode of playing them was generally with the hand, and not, as in Greece and Rome, with a plectrum. This custom, however, was also adopted by the Egyptians; and as it occurs in sculptures of the earliest periods, it is evident they did not borrow it from Greece; nor No. 216. An instrument played as an accompaniment to the lyre. Alabastron. was it unusual for the Greeks to play the lyre with the hand without a plectrum; and many instances of both methods occur in the paintings of Herculaneum. Sometimes the Egyptians touched the chords with the left hand, while they struck them with the plectrum; and the same appears in the frescos of Herculaneum, where I have observed lyres of three, six, nine, and eleven strings, played with the plectrum: of four, five, six, seven, Some lyres were ornamented with the head of a favourite animal carved in wood, as the horse, ibex, or gazelle; and others were of more simple shape. The strings were fastened at the upper end to a cross bar connecting the two sides, and at the lower end they were attached to a raised ledge or hollow sounding-board, about the centre of the body, which was of wood, like the rest of the instrument. The Berlin and Leyden Museums possess lyres of this kind, which, with the exception of the strings, are perfectly preserved. That in the former collection is ornamented with horses' heads, and in form, principle, and the alternating length of its chords, resembles the one given in the preceding wood-cut; though the board to which the strings are fastened is nearer the bottom of the instrument, and the number of strings is thirteen instead of ten; and thus we have an opportunity of comparing real Egyptian lyres with the representations of them drawn by Theban artists, in the reign of Amunoph I., and other early monarchs, more than 3000 years ago. The body of the Berlin lyre is about ten inches high, and fourteen and a half broad, and the total height of the instrument is two feet. That of Leyden is smaller, and less ornamented, but it is * As in the preceding wood-cut, No. 218. + Vide wood-cut, No. 219. In mentioning these harps, I feel it a pleasing duty to acknowledge the obliging assistance and free access I met with at both those museums, particularly at that of Leyden; and I take this opportunity of expressing my obligations to Baron A. von Humboldt, Signor Passalacqua, Dr. Liemans, and M. Jansen. The two museums where the greatest facilities are given to strangers for copying the monuments they contain, appear to me to be the British Museum and the Museum of Leyden. |