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Prof
Mahmoud Effat
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Prof.
Fathi Saleh
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Prof.
Robert Gribbs
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Institute
of Arabic Music
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Faculty
of Engineering
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California
State
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Academy
of Arts - Cairo
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Cairo
University
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Univ.
- Sacremento
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Introduction
There
is a lost link between the ancient
Egyptian music and the music of other
civilizations. This is due to the fact
that there was no attempt to play the
ancient Egyptian instruments and try to
discover their features such as notes,
scales, etc. The instruments that are
preserved at the museums are of two
categories : the string instruments and
the wind instruments. The string
instruments have, in general, an important
difficulty which is, once they are
mistuned, one can not rediscover their
original tuning position. On the contrary,
the wind instruments keep their original
tuning by keeping their dimensions, and
the position of their holes. Investigating
these instruments would reveal a lot about
the nature of the ancient Egyptian music
and its characteristics. An: important
problem in the wind instruments is the
nature of the Egyptian flute which is
normally played vertically. For this type
of instruments the position of the mouth
affects considerably the notes produced by
the instrument. Fortunately, in the modem
times, the Egyptian flute is played the
same way. That is why an Egyptian flute
player would be the most suitable person
to test such instrument.
In
order to carry this project a team was
formed from specialists of oriental music,
history of music, computer systems
specialists and music scientists under the
supervision of the staff of the Egyptian
Antiquities Organization of (EAO). The
team had the following objectives:
- Carrying
precise measurement of all the wind
instruments in the Egyptian Museum with
two purposes:
a. Checking the old measurements
carried by Dr. Hans Hickmann
b. Completing the missing
dimensions
- Building
physical models for the instruments
very similar to the existing ones. This
is because most of the existing
instruments are very fragile or
partially damaged.
- Recording
-the musical sound from the different
instruments (Whether the originals if
they are in good shape and/or from the
models). This recordings is to be
carried on specially designed computer
system capable of storing the music and
perform complicated analysis on
it.
- Trying
to trace the relation between the
ancient Egyptian music and the music of
other civilizations especially the
Greek civilization which was very much
affected by the Egyptian
culture.
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Motivation
of the Project
Over
a period of more than a hundred years,
different scholars had tried to decypher
the notes of the ancient Egyptian flutes,
either through the mathematical
calculation of the dimensions of the
flutes or building models and try to play
it. Because of the nature of " the
Egyptian-flute, it has no reed and it
needs special training to play it. In
general only egyptian modern flute players
has the ability to play with such
instruments. The western scholars, lacking
this ability, failed to play this
instruments and their efforts in the
analysis of ancient instruments came to a
deadlock (see
reference # 1)
Recently,
a team was formed to execute this project
which was mainly centered around a famous
Egyptian flute player Mr. Mahmoud Effat
and got the permission from the
organization of Antiquities to carry the
project with the objective of getting
answers to the following questions
:
- Were
the Greeks the first people to know the
diatonic scale ?
- What
are the different scales played by the
ancient Egyptians ?
- What
are the relation between the ancient
Egyptian scales
and
other scales ?
These
questions bare in mind that Pythagoras the
greek mathematician, to whom the modern
western scale is attributed, had-lived in
Egypt for 21 years and that the Greeks
wrote a lot about the quality and
perfection of the ancient Egyptian
music.
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The
Work Program
Upon
the approval of the head of Egyptian
Antiquities Organization last April to
carry this project, a work plan was set
that had the following steps :
- Investigating
the available wind instruments at Cairo
Museum.
- Selecting
some instruments and building physical
models for them.
- Recording
the notes produced by some of the
original instruments (that could be
played) and all the
replicas.
- The
recording must be done on high quality
tape recorder and also digitally on a
computer system for scientific
analysis.
- Carrying
some scientific analysis for the
acoustical features of the
instruments.
- Deduction
of the results which should reveal
which notes and scales were used by the
ancient Egyptians and what is its
relation to the present scales (Western
and Arabic).
- Setting
future plans for further continuation
of the research.
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The
Available Wind Instruments at Cairo
Museum
The
available wind instruments at Cairo Museum
(apart from the trumpets of king Tut) are
all located in one show case.
Figure
1
shows a photograph of this show case with
all the-instruments inside.-
The
following
table
summarizes the basic information available
on these instruments whereby C.G. stands
for the "Catalogue Général"
number, J.E. stands for "Journal
d'entrée" number and the J.E. Prov.
stands for "Journal d'entrée
provisoire" number.
The
table indicates that there are 24 wind
instruments in the show case and that most
of them are missing the dating and the
provenance information. In fact, the wind
instruments in this show case are of two
categories. The first category is the
"NAY", or "Egyptian flute", type of
musical instruments which does not have
any reed in it.
There
are six Nays (from C.G. 69814 to 69819).
Four of these Nays are made out of nile
bamboo (which is the subject of this
study) These four Nays are similar in
nature to those used by the Egyptians
today. The remaining two are short Nays.
One of them is made out of wood and the
other is metal.
The
second category of wind instruments in the
show case is a Clarinet or oboe type of
instrument which should originaly has reed
to below in. Unfortunately this reed is
missing for all the 18 flutes displayed
and it will be difficult to estimate how
these reeds did look like and what was
their dimensions.
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Characteristics
of the Egyptian Flute "NAY"
The
Egyptian flute as mentioned before is made
out of nile bamboo. The bamboo is
characterisied by the presence of nodes
which tends to narrow the diameter of the
air column at each node. These nodes are
normally blocked in the case of raw bamboo
rod. In the ancient Egyptian flutes, the
nodes are fully cleared. In the modern
Egyptian flute all nodes are cleared
except the one near the blowing end. (This
would allow the flutes to be blown to
higher octaves than normal). The ancient
Egyptians used to cut their flutes at the
position of the nodes while the modern
Egyptians cut their flutes in between the
nodes. Finally the ancient Egyptians used
very long flutes (about 90 cms) while the
modern Egyptians use relatively shorter
flutes (30-60 cms).
Some
notes on the flute acoustics
The
basic theory of the flute is that it
produce a tone which is dependent on the
length of the air column. The theory of
resonance states that given a tube opened
from both sides, it will resonate at a
frequency corresponding to a wave length
that is equals to twice the length of ;the
tube. Which means that (tube length) =
(wave length)/2. Figure
2
shows graphical representation of such a
relation.
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Parameters
affecting air column length in a
tube
The
previous equation ignores several effects
that modify and add corrections to it.
Some of these effects were discussed in
several references
(2,3,4)
and some were not treated by the any
reference due to the special nature of the
Egyptian flute.
These effects can be summarized in the
following :
- End
of tube effect (open-end
-correction)
- Mouth
piece effect (mouth
correction)
- Material
effect
- Hole
effect (hole correction)
- The
bamboo nodes effect
- The
internal smoothness effect.
The
first three effects were treated in the
conferences mentioned above while the last
three effects were discussed in a special
paper (reference
5)
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The
Experiment
As
it was mentioned before, six wind
instrument are belonging to the nay group,
four of which are made out of bamboo (C.G.
69814 through 69817), one made out of wood
(CG 69818) and one made of Bronze (CG.
69818). The first step was to investigate
these flutes, make accurate measures and
compare the results with those of
reference
No. 6.
Table
1
shows the results of these
measurements.
The
results of these measurments indicated the
following :
- There
are three nays of one family of length
around 90 cm (they look like the
dominant flute length at the time of
the ancient Egyptians as indicated by
different references)
- There
is one nay of length around 75
cms
- There
are two flutes of shorter length and
not made out of nile bamboo
- The
measured dimension differs slightly
from those of reference
6
- Reference
6
has ignored the diameter of flute CG.
69817 and indicated that the flute is
in a bad shape. The team found that
this flute is in a better shape than
the three others.
- All
references did not take into
consideration the measurement of the
bamboo nodes.
After
finishing. the measurement and
investigation task, the team decided the
following :
- Making
exact model for all the four bamboo
flutes out of similar
material
- Making
models for the wood and bronze flutes
out of plastic tubes.
- From
investigations of the different
references, the team decided that only
the bamboo flutes belong to the
pharaonic dynasties while the other
flutes belong most probably to the
ptolemaic period. The team decided not
to stress on the results of these two
flutes.
- The
team found that only two original
flutes can be played. The bronze flute
and the flute number CG. 69817 (from
the middle kingdom), if restored. All
other flutes were in bad conditions and
very fragile to handle.
- The
team solicited the organization of
Antiquities to restore the mentioned
flute and decided to carry the
experiment by playing the two original
flutes and the six
replicas.
In
the third step the team entered the museum
with two types of equipment
-
Sound recording equipment
- Digital recording equipment on computer
based system.
The
first piece of equipment was used to
record the sound in a standard audio
recording way for subjective (non
engineers) analysis especially by
musicians.
The
second piece of equipment was used to
record the sound digitally on a computer
media and then treat it with special
computer prepared for scientific analysis.
The equipment records *the signal
digitally, loads it into the memory of the
computer, apply fourier transform to
generate the frequency spectrum, from
which the fundamental frequency of the
note and all its harmonics are measured to
the nearest one thousand of a
Hertz.
Each
flute, was played once as a sequence of
possible notes of its scale and then
played secondly as improvisation music on
that scale.
Figure
3
shows Mr.
Effat playing the flute number 69817
(RealAudio)
and figure
4
shows
Mr.
Effat playing the flute number 69819
(RealAudio).
Figure
5
shows the computer display of the notes
while playing. Figure
6
shows the working team.
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Subjective
Results
Playing
the different (bamboo) flutes has produced
the following notes that were identified
by different music experts in a subjective
test as follows on this
table.
*These
two notes are somewhere in between the
flat and the 1/2 flat)
Note:
1/2 flat means a note that falls half way
between the natural note and the flat
(sometimes noted in case of arabic music
as quarter tone). It is noted in
this
table
as bb.
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Measured
Results
The
Measurement was carried for each flute as
follows :
- A
sequence of notes is recorded within a
total period of 15 seconds (which
corresponds to about 2 Megabytes of
memory)
Figure
7
shows the computer printout of such
signal for the flute No. CG
69817.
- The
display of the notes one by one is
isolated and expanded for the analysis
of that note'
Figure
8
shows the computer printout of an
expansion of the note number of the
figure 7
- A
fourier transform is applied to the
isolated note signal in order to obtain
the spectrum of the signal and its
harmonic content.
Figure
9
shows the computer printout of the
spectrum of the signal of figure
8
- The
values of the maxima of the spectrum is
normalised (such that the highest peak
would equal to 50) and printed
Figure
10
shows the print out of the spectral
values.
It
should be noted that the selection of
range of the isolated note is very
important. If this range is very wide, '
it will includes some of the noise
inbetween the notes and also the rise and
fall of the notes. This would cause the
appearance of many unwanted maxima in the
spectrum. On the other hand, if the range
is very narrow, it might fall in a range
that is not really representing the
average played frequency of the
note.
Table
2
gives the computer frequency measurement
in a comparative tabular form.
Table
3
gives the calculated frequency ratios of
frequencies calculated with reference to
the basic note.The table also shows these
ratios for the natural scale.
Table
4
gives the calculated logarithmic (cents)
values of the different notes
Figure
11
and figure
12
shows graphic representation of these
results.
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Interpretation
of Results
The
results of this tables indicates the
following :
- It
emphasises the subjective results with
the following comments :
a. The uncertain notes of the flute
number C.G. 68916 is closer to the
arabic scale notes
b. The values of the frequences of the
flute number CG 68917 has frequencies
flatter than the standard
ratios.
- The
presence of a diatonic (seven notes)
scale in three of these
flutes.
- The
flute No. C.G 69814 is from the middle
kingdom and found at Beni Hassan gives
an almost perfect pentatonic scale
having the F-note as a base note and
missing the third and seventh notes of
the diatonic scale.
- The
flute No. 69817 is from the new kingdom
(XVIII dynasty) was found at Deir El
Medina plays a clear diatonic scale
that is based on the A-note. It gives
in A-minor scale with the fourth note
flatter than usual.
- The
flute number CG 69815 is of unknown
dating and was found in Sakkara. It
gives an almost perfect arabic seven
note scale (which has the third note
half way between the A and Ab). which
is also based on the F-note. This
suggests that the arabic scale was
originated at the time of ancient
Egyptians and was used afterwards by
the Persians who transfered it to the
arabic civilization.
- The
flute number CG 69816 is of unknown
dating and was found also in Sakkara.
It gives scale which is very similar to
that of the CG 69815 flute except that
the fourth note is a little bit
ambigous in subjective
test.
- Although
the flutes No. 69815 and 69816 are of
unknown dates, yet from the shape and
length of the flutes one can deduct
that they are pure ancient egyptian
flutes. One of the extensions of this
project is to carry Carbon-14 dating
test for these two flutes.
- There
are three out of the four flutes of
almost the same length and consequently
base note (F-note). This base note
corresponds to the lowest human natural
singing sound.
- Investigating
the frequency table shows very
interesting result.
The
frequency values of the notes of the flute
No. 69814 (pentatonic) and No. 69816 are
very close to one another with one
Hertz.
Remembering
that these two flutes are hundreds of
years apart and hundreds of kilometers
apart, this would suggest that there was a
kind of a source of standard musical
notes. (may be there was a sacred flute in
a principal temple that was used as a
yard-stick). Also note the similarity of
frequencies of the first two notes of the
flute number 69817 and the third and
fourth notes of the flute number 69816
(although one of them is F-based and the
other is A-based).
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Conclusion
:
The
main objective of the project was to find
out whether the ancient Egyptians knew the
diatonic scale.
The
answer is more fascinating than the
objective in the following sense:
The
ancient Egyptians had a pentatonic scale
in the old time that developed at the
beginning of the new kingdom to seven note
scale of A-minor.
The
ancient Egyptian has in addition to the
diatonic scale an arabic seven note scale
that was thought to have originated in
Persia.
There
is a fascinating correlation between the
frequencies produced from different flutes
which suggests the presence of a means for
calibration of these instruments.
All
these conclusions are sterned from
experimentation with only four flutes. The
team thinks that extending the research
work to a wider number of flutes (from
different museums) would reveal more and
more information.
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Acknowledgement
The
authors would like to express their deep
gratitude to Dr. M. Bakr head of the
Egyptian Antiquities Organization for
giving the permission to carry this
project and to Mr. M. Mohsen the general
manager of Cairo Museum and Mrs. S.
Abdelaal the assistant general manager for
their encouragement and technical support
to carry this work.
Thanks
also goes to Dr. Bahaa Madkour for the
photographic coverage of the project and
the team of Cairo University Dr. A.
Darwish, H. El Kadi, H. Hussein and M.
Elhady without whom this experiment could
not have been realized efficiently.
References
- Christiane
Ziegler "Catalogue des Instruments de
Musique Egyptiens" Musée du
Louvre, 1979 [Back]
- Jean
Claude Risset "Musical Acoustics"
Université d'Aix Marseille -1977
[Back]
- Sir
James Jeans "Science and Music"
Cambridge - England 1938
[Back]
- Charles
Culver "Musical Acoustics" Mc Graw Hill
1956 [Back]
- M.
Effat and F. Saleh "Theory of the Modem
Egyptian flute" (under preparation)
[Back]
- Hans
Hickmann "Catalogue
Général: Instruments de
Musique" Cairo Museum. [Back]
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