87446429 egyptian furniture and musical instruments c l r

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Egyptian Furniture and Musical Instruments

Author(s): C. L. R.Reviewed work(s):Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Apr., 1913), pp. 72-79Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3252729 .

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BULLETIN OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

EGYPTIAN FURNITURE ANDMUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

OTN HHE Egyptian Department ac-

quired in I912 a number ofmusical instruments and piecesof furniture, which will be on

exhibition during the month of April inthe Recent Accessions Room. The most

important pieces are shown in the accom-

panying illustrations. All are of wood andare in wonderfully good condition consider-

ing their great age. Egypt's dry climatehas preserved to modern times many ob-

jects of daily household use which cannot

be paralleled among the antiquities ofother Mediterranean countries.

The oldest object (Fig. i)1 is a couch

dating from the beginning of the historical

period, that is, from about 3400 B. C. It

lacks only the leather thongs which once

fastened the legs and rails together andthe filling of interwoven thongs between

the rails. Perhaps it served the purposeof a bier in the tomb, the body being placedon it in a contracted position, or it was a

part of the funerary equipment, ensuringto the deceased the use of such a couch inthe next world. However this may be,its form is one which appeared in secularuse. One interesting bit of contemporaryevidence is a relief showing a person seatedwith limbs doubled under him on just sucha short couch having supports which imi-tate bulls' legs; the couch had served as a

litter, the person having been borne in and

deposited in front of the king's throne.2The couch acquired by the Museum is

obviously too short to lie upon. The

form, however, survived far into the his-

torical period, probably until the Eigh-teenth Dynasty (beginning about I580B. C.)3 and many such couches have

'From Tarkhan. Gift of the Egyptian Re-search Account. Ht. ii in.; length, I yd. 4

in.;width,2 ft. I3in.

2Petrie,Hierakonpolis, , PI. XXVI B.

'The latest couch of this type known to me,the date of which is assured,s of the EleventhDynasty (beginningabout 2160 B. C.), but afew chairsand stools with legs imitatingbulls'legs are of the EighteenthDynasty and it isprobable hat the correspondingype of couchlasted equally long. After the Old Kingdom(DynastiesIII-VI),however, his class of furni-turewasclearlyon the wane.

come down to us, among them some longenough to sleep upon. The couches of this

early type, even when intended to be used

as beds, were without foot-rails. Verymany of the types of beds which developedin the historical period had foot-rails or

foot-boards; the person slept with his headat the open end of the couch and the use ofa head-rest was common. There is noevidence that Egyptian beds ever had head-boards,though foot-boards areoccasionallyso misnamed in publications. Examina-tion of a small model of a bed in Wall CaseG in the Seventh Egyptian Room will

show the position of the occupant's headand make clear the propriety of the termfoot-rail. Many such models exist andalso ancient pictures of such couches with

figures recumbent on them. Very elegantbeds of about 1400 B. C. with gold leafadornment and foot-boards having sculp-tured panels were found a few years agoin the Valley of the Kings at Thebes andare now in the Cairo Museum.4

The two low stools are interesting

chiefly because their plaited seats are inpart preserved. The low stool of Fig. 25

has the rails perforated to receive thestrands of twisted grass which were inter-woven in a simple over-one, under-one

pattern with large interstices. The otherstool6 has a webbing of much closermesh. Its strands enwrap rather than

pass through the rails, are knotted alongtheir inner faces, and extend from side toside interlacing to form a diagonal pat-

tern; in the interlacing each strand pas-ses under two, three, or four strands andover ten, eleven, or twelve. These stoolsare seats and not footstools, as the observer

might naturally suppose, footstools not

being introduced into Egypt until the

Empire (beginning I580 B. C.).In Figs. 3 and 4 are shown two folding

stools. The leather seat of one has been

preserved, although the stool was made

4Davis,The Tombof IouiyaandTouiyou,P1.XXXVII. Quibell,Tomb of Yuaa andThuiu,PIs. XXVIII-XXXI.

'From Meir. Purchase,RogersFund. Ht.5-4 in.; 158 in. square.

6FromThebes. Purchasedfrom the Egyp-tian Government,Rogers Fund. Ht 5i in.Seat 142 n. x 13?in.

72



'4

FIG. I. COUCH FRAME

ABOUT 3400 B. C.

FIG. 2. LOW STOOL

ABOUT 2000 B. C.

FIG. 3. FOLDING STOOL

ABOUT 2000 B. C.

FIG. 4. FOLDING STOOL

ABOUT 1400 B. C.




nearly four thousand years ago.1 The

perforations in the railsof the secondfoldingstool2 indicate that it once had an inter-

woven seat. This stool is noteworthy be-cause of its design and material. Thelower rails and the legs terminate in ducks'heads and the eyes and the markings onthese heads are rendered by inlays of ivoryand ebony. The type is well known,there being similar stools in the Louvre andthe British Museum.The rivets on which the

legs played in foldingare of bronze and in the

better stool are pro- Svided with washers to

protect the wood aboutthe holes from wear.

The most interestingof these new accessions,

perhaps, is the chair

illustrated in Figs. 7and 8.3 It is completeexcept for its interwov-en seat and one panel iF

from the back. Theseat was of linen string, i :

*f

as many as twelve ipieces of string being . 'intact in some of the . " 'L~~,"

holes of the rails; in a

number of places on

the under surface of 2i"

'

-the rails nine to twelve m 1 4^ [ .lengths of string pass-ing from hole to hole -

may still be counted.It seems probable that

the plaiting was ar- FG. 5. G

ranged on a system of

twelve strands to a

hole.4 The interwoven filling of bed- and

chair-frames had the advantage of givinga certain elasticity: it was the nearest ap-

From Meir. Purchase,RogersFund. Ht.14 in. Seat, i22 in. x 14' in.

2Provenance unknown. Purchase, RogersFund. Ht. 12 in. Seat i6 in. x I3 in.

'From Thebes. Purchase, Rogers Fund.Ht. of seat, 12 in.; of back, I7' in. Seat, 15 in.x i8? in.

'A descriptionof a well-preservednterlacingof this kind on a bed in the Cairo Museum sgiven nQuibell,op. cit. p. 50.

proach to springs known to the ancientworld. Except in the case of certain typesof stools, unyielding wooden seats are rare

in Egyptian furniture. Comfort was oftenfurther secured by the use of thick cushions.In this chair some of the characteristic

methods of Egyptian carpentry may bestudied. Not a metal nail is used, all the

parts being held together by dowels and

pegs. Bronze was of course employedfreely in Egypt at thistime. We have alreadynoted the bronze rivetsin the folding-stools

and large bronze nailsin chairs are not un-

^'^! m *^ known.5 But for or-

dinary carpentry thewooden dowels and

pegs were adequate

::,~7 it ! and their relative

cheapness and the forceof inherited methodstended to keep them inuse. The whole con-

i struction is strength-ened by angle bracescut out of forked

branches, thus utiliz-

............ 'T ing the natural growth

', of the wood. Four ofthese curved angle

t.~ 5...^ pieces reinforce the

,,lF ?f0WIN joining of the legs tor I

the seat of the chair.Two other braces hold

back and seat more

firmly together, afford-

00AVE

STELA

B ing,too, by their curved400 B.. outlines a pleasing el-

ement in the design.The legs of the chair are very well carved.

Their pattern is striking, being a fairlyrealistic imitation of lions' legs. Manyof the better pieces of Egyptian furniture,whether stools, chairs, or couches, have

supportsin the form of animals'

legs.The

.imitation of lions' legs came into vogue atleast as early as the Third Dynasty (about2900 B. C.) and by 500ooB. C. had nearlysuperseded the design of bulls' legs.6 It

'Quibell,op. cit., p. 54.6See note 3, p. 72.

74

R




has been said of the chair with legs resem- the thought that first led to the adoption

bling those of a lion that it seems "as if the of such designs, they soon became accepted

king of beasts were offering his back as artistic conventions and were handed down

FIG. 6. CHAIR FIG. 8. CHAiR

ABOUT 1400 B. C. ABOUT 1500 B. C.

I FT 0 3 6 9 12 N.

II - , O I I. . .

FIG(.7.

DRA\NVINGS TO SHOW CONSTRUCTION OF CHAIR IN FIG. 8

a seat to the great lord."1 Both the bull

and the lion were prominent in Egyptian

imagery, the king being often conceived

as the one animal or the other. Whatever

IErman,Life n AncientEgypt,p. 184.

ulnthinkingly from generation to genera-tion. To modern taste the copying of the

entire animal leg, not merely the foot, and

the differentiation of the front and back

legs of the chair as the fore and hind legs

75




of the animal are displeasing. The per-sistence of these designs is due to the factthat they had already become conventionsbefore

Egypt emerged from barbarism.While the Egyptians never eliminated thisfeature, it is interesting to observe in their

furniture, as one turns from the Old King-dom to the Empire, the development ofbetter lines and proportions, of greaterpracticability and comfort. Indeed, anAmerican furniture firm has given testi-

mony to these qualities by reviving one ofthe later Egyptian types of stools (not as

yet represented in the Museum collection).

These modern stools are scattered far andwide in the United States, though few ofthe people who possess them know thatthe design was borrowed from Egypt and

originated fifteen hundred years beforeChrist. Chair backs high enough reallyto support the upper part of the body didnot become common until the age of

luxury under the Empire. Earlier seats

usually have no back at all or only a verylow one, rarely reaching to the waist of the

occupant. The Empire also saw the re-vival of arms in the designs of chairs. Arms,as well as the high back, did, it is true,

appear for a brief time under the Old

Kingdom (about 2650 B. C.) but then fellinto disuse. The early high backs andarms were built on straight lines and re-mind one of modern "Mission" chairs;but the comparison fails when one looksat the legs of the chairs, these being of the

style which simulates an animal's legs.

The arm chairs of the Empire, however,were elegant and luxurious.

It is noticeable that our chair is verylow. The ancient Egyptian, like hismodern descendant, was fond of crouchingon the ground or floor and consequentlyshowed a predilection for low furniture.The number of low chairs and stools among

IFrom Abydos. Purchase, Rogers Fund.Ht. 21 in.; width, i?in.

2Oneof the rareexceptionswhere a noble is

shown n anunconventional ttitudeoccurs n areliefof the Sixth Dynasty (about2500 B. C.).Capart, Une rue de tombeaux A Saqqarah,PI. CIV. In this intimate scene the nobleanda girlare seatedoppositeone anotherona couchor settee. They have their feet drawnup onthe seat. Thegirl s in the attitudeof the maidenon the stela of Fig. 5 and is playinga harpto

extant pieces of Egyptian furniture is

greater than the proportion of such furni-ture depicted on the monuments would lead

one to expect. Presumably the explana-tion is that ancient paintings and reliefsshow the better class of Egyptians in theirmore formal and dignified aspects, there-fore occupying their full-sized chairs. This

point is illustrated by a family gravestone(Fig. 5)1 also among the recent accessionsof the Egyptian Department. In the

upper register a man and his wife areseated. Their chairs are of such heightthat they require low blocks or cushions

under their feet. Below sit their son anddaughter. The son's chair is somewhatlower and both his feet are on the floor.The daughter's chair has similar propor-tions to those of the little chair which hascome into the possession of the Museum,that is, it is low and the seat is deep. Themaiden has both feet drawn up on the seat;her right knee is raised and her elbow rests

against it as she smells of a lotus bud; herleft leg is doubled back; at any moment,

it seems, she may shift her position slightlyto sit on her left heel! Thus the monu-ments give us occasional glimpses of these

informal, typically Oriental attitudes ofthe Egyptian, but almost always in thecase of the minor persons in the scene -

children or people of humble estate.2 Thechairs pictured on the stela differ onlyslightly from our original, namely, in theconstruction of the back which slants back-

ward, vertical struts bracing it from be-

hind. Such backs also curved from sideto side, as is known from a chair in the

Leyden Museum (Fig. 6).3 This stylecompared with our chair shows a slightadvance in the direction of luxury, the

slanting, hollowed-out back accommodatingthe human form with greater comfort thanthe straight back.4

whoseaccompaniment er lord s perhaps boutto sing. He has both feet flat on the mattressand his knees elevated.

31n hed'AnastasyCollection,whichasboughtbythe DutchGovernmentn 1828.Ht. of seat,13in. Ht. of back aboveseat, I8in. Seat, I74 in.x i87 in. Reproducedn Fig.6, p.75,by courtesyof Dr. P. A. A. Boeser of the LeydenMuseum.

4The reader nterested o pursuethe subjectof Egyptian urnitureurtherwillfind a number

76




FIG. 9. COPTIC LUTE

IV-VIII CENTURY A. D.

The Museum is fortunate in havingadded to its collections actual pieces of

ancient Egyptian furniture. Not onlydoes it make these early people seem more

human and less remote to be able to look

of richly decorated chairs, which were discoveredin the Valley of the Kings, published in the twoworks cited in note 4, p. 72. Ancient picturesof a great variety of elaborate chairs are repro-duced in colors in Prisse d'Avennes, Histoire del'art egyptien d'apres les monuments, II, Pls.i6 and i8. A chair whose design is preciselylike that of the one just acquired by the Museum

(Figs. 7 and 8) is published in the Report on

upon household objects once used by them;it is also of importance for the study of the

history of the minor arts and crafts to

secure such material. Similar and no less

interest attaches to the musical instru-

Some Excavations in the Theban Necropolisduring the Winter of 1898-9 by the Marquisof Northampton and others, Pls. V and VI.This chair is of the Eighteenth Dynasty.General statements with regard to Egyptianfurniture and many illustrations are containedin Erman, op. cit., pp. 183-186 and Wilkinson,Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,III, Ch. VI.

FIG. IO. FOUR-STRINGED MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, HARP FAMILY

ABOUT 1600 B. C.

77

i

I




ments, on exhibition for the first time, and

to these we may now turn our attention.Two of these instruments belong to the

harp family (Fig. io)1 and closely resemblethe rude harps used to-day by the natives

of the Upper Nile Valley. One of our harpshad four, the other five open gut strings,the fixed ends of which were fastened to a

bar extending the length of the sound box.

The sound box and its bar were once

covered with a membrane which was se-

cured by tightly drawn cords, traces of the

compression they exerted being observ-

able on the wood. The strings issued

through perforations in the membraneand were wound about movable pegs in

the neck of the instrument by means of

which their tension was controlled. In

one instrument the neck and body are of

a single piece of wood; in the other, theyare of separate pieces. This is the smal-

lest kind of harp used by the Egyptians.A reproduction of a larger specimen of this

type - one in the Louvre - may be seen

in the Gallery of Musical Instruments, No.

39. An ancient wall-painting shows aharp of the form and size of the Louvre

original held, while being played, on the

shoulder of the performer. Our instru-

ments, however, being smaller, would

hardly have been elevated to the shoulder.

They date from about I6oo B. C. and are

as early as any instruments of the typereal or pictured - known. Previous to

this date all the harps depicted on the

monuments have a somewhat heavier and

larger frame, the strings varying from five

to eight in number. The performercrouched on the ground; the instrument,

too, rested on the ground, or on the per-former's knee, or on a low support. This

instrument frequently had a large bulgingresonance box at the bottom. A repre-sentation of it may be seen in a Fifth

Dynasty relief (about 2700 B. C.) on the

north wall of the Third Egyptian Room.

In addition to the harps of the twogeneral classes just described, there were,under the Empire, large harps, taller than

the performer, who stood in playing them.

1FromThebes Purchasedromthe EgyptianGovernment,RogersFund. TheinstrumentofFig. Io is 3 ft. 3- in. long, theother2 ft. 2a in

These occasionally had as many as twenty

strings. While our little instruments are

very simple and crude, the larger harps

represented in Egyptian art are often ofelaborate and pleasing forms and with their

greater number of strings must have had a

fair compass. Nevertheless, they bearno comparison with the modern harp.One and all, they lack the front pillar neces-

sary to hold the frame of the instrument

firm enough to permit a precise adjust-ment of the tension of the strings and, of

course, music was not yet sufficientlyevolved to give rise to anything in the

nature of a system of pedals. Theseinstruments were not used for indepen-dent performances but to accompany the

voice. There is a well-known literary com-

position of the Egyptians which goes bythe name of the "Song of the Harper" be-

cause one of the extant copies on the wall

of a tomb chamber is prefaced with the

words, "Song which is in the house (tomb

chapel) of King Intef the justified, which is

in front of the singer with the harp."2 It

was, in fact, a song of mourning, celebra-ting the transitory and unsatisfactorycharacterof this life,and was chanted to the

accompaniment of these stringed instru-

ments.A more advanced type of musical in-

strument is represented by the Coptic lute

(Fig. 9)3 inasmuch as its notes could be

varied bypressing the strings while playing.The sound box is covered by a thin board

perforatedwith groups of holes. The

strings, four in number, were probablyfastened to the projection at the lower end

of the sound box; their other ends were

regulated by pegs; a bridge now lost must

have held them away from the sound

board. This bridge was probably merelya little piece of wood, pushed under the

strings, since no mark of its contact is left.

The instrument has a long straight neck

which served as a finger-board. The

date of this particular instrument prob-2Translation by ProfessorJ. H. Breasted n

whose recent Development of Religion andThought in Ancient Egypt, p. i82ff., the entire

poem s givenand commentedupon.

3Provenance unknown. Purchase, RogersFund. Length, 2 ft. 5 in.

78




ably falls within the period from the

fourth to the eighth century after Christ,but lutes were in use in Egypt, it would

seem, as early as I6oo B. C.It is probable that the object shown in

Fig. I I, which was found with the two little

harps described above, is the body of a

lute-like instrument whose long straightneck is missing. It was once covered with

a membrane which was attached by meansof pitch. Some of the lutes in pictures of

the Empire have a long and narrow sound

box, rounded at the two ends, like our frag-

mentary instrument. It is exceedingly

difficult to form any definite opinion as tothe details of the Egyptian lute of the

Empire, inasmuch as most of the available

publications showing it are more or less

inaccurate. This much, however, maybe said, the body was somewhat elongated,the neck was of the long straight type, and

the strings were plucked with a plectrumwhich may be seen in ancient picturesattached by a cord to the instrument.The one

photographicplate available to

me shows a bar extending the length of

the body, continuous with the neck. Quitepossibly the instrument did not yet have

pegs like the harp, but had its strings tied

about the neck; their tension would then

have been varied by sliding the ties up and

down. At least this view is suggested bythe apparent lack of pegs and bylines which

may have been ties in the ancient pictures,as well as by the analogy of some present-

day African instruments. The west Afri-can cambreh, No. 473, in Gallery 37 of the

Musical Instruments, may help us to un-

derstand this old Egyptian lute. It has

a sound box of the same shape, covered

as this was with a membrane, and its

strings are attached by thongs to the

straight neck which was continued under

the membrane to the lower end of the

sound box.It is exceedingly questionable whether

the Egyptian hieroglyph nefer, which in its

late form suggests a lute, was really in

origin (as commonly assumed) a picture of

a musical instrument. The early examplesof this hieroglyph do not look so much likea lute and are now differently interpreted.It is on the face of it improbable that aninstrument which involved the principleof producing a considerable number of

notes on a very few strings and which atthe time of the Empire seems to be com-

paratively undeveloped should have beenin existence in the primitive age when the

hieroglyphs originated. As a matter of

fact, the lute is not represented on the

monuments before the Empire. The in-

struments of the Old Kingdom were the

harps and simple wind instruments. The

lyre was probably introduced from Asia

about 2000 B. C. At least, the only pre-

Empire picture of a lyre, one in a tomb atBeni Hasan,1 shows it in the hands of an

Asiatic entering Egypt. Then under the

Empire the lute appears among the harpsand kindred instruments, flutes, andoccasional lyres which are represented as

being played at feasts to accompany songsand dances.2

C. L. R.

'Newberry, Beni Hasan, I, Pls. XXX and

XXXI.'O20nusical nstrumentsconsult the worksofWilkinsonand ProfessorErmanalreadycited,Prisse d'Avennes, op. cit. 11, Pl. 7, Boeser,Beschr.van der Eg. Verz.te Leiden. NieuweRijk. Part I (1911), PI. VII, and the MuseumBULLETIN for 1911 , cuts on pp.53 and 58.

FIG. II. BODY OF A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

ABOUT I6OOB. C.

79

87446429 egyptian furniture and musical instruments c l r

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