Books › The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864 › scan 38
Scan 38
The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 18. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER II.
3HE Egyptians were musical from the earliest times, but their usual stringed instruments appear to have been the harp and lyre, or of that class. They are repeatedly found in their sculptures, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his "Ancient Egyptians," mentions a harp as old as Osirtasen I. who was the Pharaoh of Joseph, and therefore lived about 1700 years before our Saviour. The harps were generally of a portable shape, the strings varying in number from four to twenty-two, and made of what is commonly called catgut. They were occasionally made of costly materials and richly ornamented, and sometimes were played on with a plectrum; but there is no appearance of any bowed instrument. Burney gives a figure of an instrument of the guitar class, with a long neck and two strings, sculptured on a broken obelisk supposed to have been brought from Heliopolis by Sesostris, but this does not appear to have been played on with a bow. Rousseau, however, in his enthusiasm for the viol, says the Egyptians had one with one or two horsehair strings, played on with a bow strung with similar materials; it had a long neck, and was supported on the ground by an iron rest. As before mentioned, he thought Adam might have played on the viol, and he might therefore have deduced its descent through Noah to the Egyptians. He does, however, give its travels
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