Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/26

Story of the Flute

defeated. Apollo, irritated at this presumption on the part of a mortal, with his own hand flayed poor Marsyas alive. This is said by Pausanias to have been a condition of the contest. Plato and other early authorities allege that Marsyas was a real person, a native of Celænæ in Phrygia, and son of King Hyagnis, to whom Apuleius attributes the invention of the double-flute.

Several ancient writers attribute the origin of the instrument to Osiris, the Egyptian Water-god. There Egyptian
Origin of
Fluteseems to be no doubt that Egypt, as Kircher asserted, was the land of its birth. Primitive flutes have been found in Egyptian tombs dating centuries before the Christian era.

Early Egyptian wall paintings depict the flute more frequently than any other instrument; a long, thin,

Fig. 1.
Egyptian oblique flute-player

straight pipe (called Saib, or Sebi) held obliquely and blown across the open end, which was held at an angle. (Fig. 1.) In addition to the fingerholes (closed with the second joint of the fingers, as is still done in Japan and parts of Spain and Italy), the left hand was often used to vary the notes by closing or partly closing the lower end of the tube—just as horn-players until quite recent times used to thrust the hand up the bell. In one of the tombs in the Gizeh Pyramid (c. 2000 B.C.) a band of seven players is depicted, performing on slanting flutes of various

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