764 music and musical instruments: Egypt For much of the history of the people of Africa, vocal music has been a universal experience Such beliefs in the power of music are found throughout the world Sound is used to reach outward toward the deities In turn, it is through the vibratory matrix that sound provides that the deities themselves, it was thought, descend from the spiritual abode to participate in the human world Vocal music is the vortex of religious ritual The main purpose of vocalization was to appease the supernatural powers, solicit divine protection, and give thanks to the guardian spirits of the community For millennia Africans have tended to approach their cultural activities, such as healing, through vocal music In addition to these roles, Africans also relay these songs as entertainment When the community likes the songs, they all join in and develop other tones to create naturally blended harmonies African musical instruments have a complex sociocultural significance In keeping with their intricate musical system, Africans have used every known type of portable instrument; thus, it is important to examine African society in the cultural contexts in which instruments are played While they may be used to produce a human experience, they are also used to teach societal norms, including respect for the aged and a continuing relationship between dead ancestors and the living Instruments were used as media for communication and for imitating animals and birds to create the symbiotic relationship between animals and people This coexistence is an ancient African tradition The belief that the highest gods were part animal and part human led Africans to look upon animals with great reverence and love; accordingly, instruments were sometimes played to imitate the sounds of the animals Since ancient times African instruments have been used in the cycle of human life, including daily, social, political, and religious life African musical instruments also serve as artistic works and as cultural symbols They may represent specific social hierarchies, such as the atsimevu drum of the Ewe people of Ghana that symbolizes the commander The sabar master drummer of the Wolof tribe of Senegal is conferred status through the performance of his drum and is, therefore, a leader in the community His repetitive drum patterns symbolize stability in the community EGYPT BY EMILY JANE O’DELL While we have many depictions of musical instruments and musicians from the tombs of ancient Egypt, we know very little about the actual nature of the music itself The frequent portrayal of musicians and musical events suggest that music was an integral part of both religious and secular gatherings, but without any notation it is virtually impossible for Egyptologists at this point to know what the music sounded like and how it was composed, written, and disseminated Musicians in tomb representations usually are shown playing in an ensemble and frequently are accompanied by singers, hand clappers, and dancers in palaces and temples and at funerary events Musicians in ancient Egypt were both male and female, though female musicians did not appear until after the end of the Old Kingdom (ca 2575–ca 2134 b.c.e.) Men and women played together in ensembles, especially in the Middle Kingdom (ca 2040–ca 1640 b.c.e.), but in the New Kingdom (ca 1550–ca 1070 b.c.e.) women played in groups without men These ensembles ranged in size, but some were composed of as many as 10 sistrum players and 10 hand clappers Women wore light dresses and braided their hair with small balls hanging from the ends of their tresses, whereas men wore kilts Both men and women could be overseers of these ensembles There were titles for musicians (most meaning “temple singer”), and the abundance of designations suggests that musicians could function in many different capacities Women singers were usually referred to as songstresses or chantresses Music was used to accompany ancient Egyptian religious rituals, such as the recitation of religious and funerary texts Some gods and goddesses were associated with music One of Hathor’s incarnations was as the goddess of festivity and mistress of music Priestesses of Hathor used sistrums to produce percussive rattling Blind Horus was a god of the harp Interestingly, many musicians in ancient Egypt are portrayed as blind or wearing a blindfold The goddess Meret was appealed to in order to bring sacred texts to life Thus, Meret could be said to be a goddess of sacred chanting The male deity Bes is shown in ancient Egyptian art playing instruments, in depictions in Egypt as well as abroad Music also was used to praise Osiris and Isis and Amun-Ra, among other gods and goddesses Music was used in both religious and royal contexts for rituals and festivals, and it was also used in daily life in the secular sphere Family members would dance and sing for their deceased ancestors at their tombs In the New Kingdom there are even examples of laborers who sang in the fields During the New Kingdom a genre of harper’s songs emerged, so called because a harper was illustrated alongside the text of these poems These texts, which would have been sung at a banquet at the tomb in honor of the tomb owner, are quite rare when compared with the rest of the Egyptian corpus, owing to their insistence on the celebration and appreciation of earthly life over the afterlife The ancient Egyptians used a variety of instruments that would have produced a range of sounds, scales, tones, and tunes There were a number of percussive instruments Sistrums, as noted previously, were used to produce a rattling sound, especially in praise of Hathor and Isis Sistrums were metal rattles held with a handle that would often be in the shape of the goddesses Hathor On top of the hand was an oval-shaped frame that held metal horizontal rods on which beads were placed to shake and make noise when rattled In fact, some large stone columns in the Hathor chapel of Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri and in the temple of Queen Nefertari in Abu Sir resemble Hathor sis-