This strange tragedy took place at night, on the shore of the lake behind the great temple at Sais.  Osiris was dressed royally, in white, and after the horrible pursuit and his murder by Set and his sinister band, Horus, the rising sun, dispels the gloom, and a glorious new god of light appears.  Set and his followers are driven back to the gloomy temple where, perhaps, there was another scene showing the shade of Osiris, enthroned and ruling the dead.  We have no means of knowing the character of the music which accompanied this mystery play; but certainly the deep tones of the harps and the flutes, together with the chanting of men’s voices, must have been appropriate.  Add to these the almost silent rattle of the sistrum, which, for the Egyptians, possessed something of the supernatural, and we have an orchestral colouring which is suggestive, to say the least.

With this we will leave Egyptian music, simply calling attention to the works of Resellini, Lepsius, Wilkinson, and Petri, which contain copies of mural paintings and temple and tomb sculptures relating to music.  For instance, pages 103, 106, and 111 of Lepsius’s third book, “Die Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopen,” will be found very interesting, particularly page 106, which shows some of the rooms of the palace of Amenotep IV, of the eighteenth dynasty (about 1500 or 1600 B.C.), in which dancing and music is being taught.  In the same work, second book, on pages 52 and 53, are pictures taken from a tomb near Gizeh, showing harp and flute players and singers.  The position of the hands of the singers—­they hold them behind their ears—­is a manner of illustrating the act of hearing, and arises from the hieroglyphic double way of putting things; for instance, in writing hieroglyphics the word is often first spelled out, then comes another sign for the pronunciation, then sometimes even two other signs to emphasize its meaning.

The music of the Assyrians may be summed up very briefly.  All that can be gathered from the bas-relief sculptures is that shrill tones and acute pitch must have characterized their music.  As Rowbotham says, alluding to the Sardanapalus wall sculpture now in the British Museum in London, “What can one think of the musical delicacy of a nation the King of which, dining alone with his queen, chooses to be regaled with the sounds of a lyre and a big drum close at his elbow?” The instruments represented in these bas-reliefs, aside from the drum, are high-pitched:  flutes, pipes, trumpets, cymbals, and the smaller stringed instruments.  These were all portable, and some, such as drums and dulcimers, were strapped to the body, all of which points to the eminently warlike character of the people.  Instead of clapping the hands to mark the time as did the Egyptians, they stamped their feet.  The dulcimer was somewhat like a modern zither, and may be said to contain the germ of our piano; for it was in the form of a flat case, strapped to the body and held horizontally in