Getting to the Root of People, Places and Things Musical

Getting to the Root of People, Places and Things Musical

Although modern Egyptology has made a massive effort to limit the history of Egypt to roughly coincide with the history of Europe, recent research has placed the possible age of the pyramids at 73,000 BC. It has been said that, "man fears time, but time fears the pyramids." We could add that modern (Western) man fears the age of the pyramids. Why? If these architectural marvels predate Western history to an immeasurable degree, this would have the effect of negating many accepted historical assumptions. A friend, who was looking for a good PhD program with a focus on Egyptology, spoke to the chairman of an African Studies Program, explaining that he wanted to include the study of "other African countries located South of Egypt." The university professor exploded, "Egypt has nothing to do with Africa!!! Who have you been talking to?!!" My friend's response was, "perhaps that may be true with regard to moder-day Egypt, but Ancient Kemet (Egypt) was Africa." Other pyramids situated far south of Egypt, well into the continent of Africa (Sudanese valley), have been intentionally flooded leaving these pyramids obscured beneath water in an unprecedented effort to obscure historical fact. 

If the above examples reveal the "modem" practice with regards to African history as redefined by non-Africans, one must ask, how much more about Ancient Kemet and its cultural influence has been obscured as not to raise questions about the true origin of things we commonly accept today as having their origin with the conquerors of Kemet? Research has also showed that Kemet or Kem (later named Egypt by the Greeks) was an Empire that extended itself throughout all of, was later to become known as, Africa. There is evidence that the Ancient Kemetians traveled around the world seeding and influencing other cultures. One can look to the step- pyramids of Mexico and the massive pyramid that was finally revealed in China as physical representations of this influence. The genetic history of Australia's Aboriginals is said to be linked to that of Ancient Egyptians. In North America 5000-year-old remains were exhumed from what was presumed to be an "Indian" burial ground. The DNA was found to be identical to that of the Aboriginals. A 1903 cover story in the Arizona Gazette newspaper revealed the local discovery of a massive mountain cave that had housed over 50,000 people. Inside were numerous "hieroglyphs" and "ancient artifacts". There are numerous surgical tools and pharmaceutical cures in use today by practitioners of Western medicine, which were depicted on reliefs (drawings) inside ancient pyramids, tombs and temples. These reliefs and numerous paintings were created in unlighted chambers without a carbon based light source (this is substantiated by the fact that no carbon deposits were found). Does this mean that the pyramid artists possessed electric battery powered lighting? This question is answered when a soldier in Napoleon's army suddenly "dis- covered" the battery after a French invasion of Egypt. 

It is not generally acknowledged that music and Medical tools in use today appear on ancient pyramid relief musical instruments were given birth in Kemetic culture. The purpose of my research is to learn about the history of ancient musical instruments and how they may have evolved into what we know to be moder day instruments. The focal point of this my initial investigation is the evolution of my favorite musical instrument, The Piano. The piano is the last in a long line of predecessors from which its design form can be seen to have evolved. The piano is classified as a percussion instrument because its keys are "struck" to produce tones in much the same way a hand-drum is struck. However, the shape of the grand piano is identical to the shape of a harp, although, laid horizontally inside a wooden casing. In fact, piano strings are strung in the same way as a harp. Technically this suggests that the piano is a stringed instrument, although almost all stringed instruments are plucked or bowed. 

It is also known that numerous versions of the bow harp appear in reliefs appearing on the walls of the pyramids and Kemetic tombs. One of the earliest musical instrument discoveries showed a harp-like instrument on rock paintings dating back to 15,000 BC in France. We know that neither France nor any other European culture existed in 15,000 BC. A painting from a tomb in Thebes showing three female musicians playing a flute, a lute and a 13- string-harp. This painting is said to be dated from the seventh to fifth century BC. Later, the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses M (presumably 1198-1166 BC) has harps measured up to 6.5 feet in height with 19 strings painted in his tomb. 19 strings would have given this instrument the capability to be played polyphonically in about five octaves. Today's concert harps have 24 to 35 single strings and some have double stringing to give the harpist more flexibility with 46 strings (23 strings on each side directly parallel). The overall shape of the Kemetic harps is the basic shape of today's grand piano. 

As the automobile could not have been conceptualized without the preexisting wheel and the subsequent development of the wagon and numerous wheeled conveyances, which succeeded it, certainly an instrument as conceptually complex as the piano must have been inspired by instruments that preceded it. 

There is no doubt that the piano is a "harp" with ivory and or wooden keys. The question is, from what did the concept of wooden keys evolve? To find the answer, let's continue to follow the chronology of relevant musical instruments as they appeared and examine their successive tuning systems and known uses and correlate this information with other historical factors to bring us closer to a plausible answer to this question. In this writing I use Kemet and Egypt interchangeably. Many dates, which are made reference to, are inherently incorrect due to the aforementioned phenomenon of distorted historical data. These dates will, oftentimes, betray their authors. 

MUSIC IN ANCIENT EGYPT 

Tomb and temple paintings show a variety of musical instruments in both sacred and secular environments. The dead were often buried with musical instruments. Music is known to have been an integral part of Ancient Egyptian rituals, daily life and recreation. In the book of translated Kemetic love songs, Barbara Hughes Fowler wonderfully describes a Kemetic tomb painting; "women mingle freely with men, although sometimes they are seated on opposite sides of the room. Food is plied sumptuously on tables and servants move about offering food, wine, and fresh cones of the perfumed ointment that the women wear upon their heads. Musicians who during the New Kingdom were women more often than men, play harps, lyres, lutes, clarinets, and oboes while others sing or dance, acrobatically or more sedately, to their tunes." It is said that no written pieces of music have survived, and that no system of notation is known to have been developed by the ancient Egyptians. Music is thought to have been passed down from one person to another in the form of "aural" tradition and apprenticeships. Various universities and institutions are working to extrapolate what ancient Egyptian music might have sounded like based on present-day music forms and known historical forms using recreations of instruments. The Ancient Egyptians were mathematically adept as evidenced by the mathematical papyrus inscribed by the Kemetic copyist, Ahmose (reportedly around 25 BC. Certainly they must have recognized the mathematical nature of music and had probably developed a tuning system and a notation system that accommodated the interaction of large groups of musicians. Such a tuning system would have had to be based on the harp since it was the master instrument with polyphonic capability (ability to play more than one note at a time, i.e.; chords or harmony). This would be similar, today, to the way an entire orchestra will tune to the piano. Later we will do a comparative analysis of various known- tuning systems. 

CONFUSION IN BIBLICAL REFERENCES OF ANCIENT INSTRUMENTS 

The Bible is considered by many to be the authoritative historical reference to explain the creation of the world and the origin of musical instruments and musicians. Lets consider that the first indication of the emergence of a system of writing according to Western scholars is the inscription of simple symbols on coins in Sumer during about 9000 BC with an intelligible writing system emerging from this culture by 3500 BC. Nevertheless, historians ascribe the first intelligible writing system to the Egyptians as "late" as 3000 BC. The Torah, which makes reference to the harp, is said to be about 3000 years old. This means that it would have been written about 1000 BC. This means that Hebrews would have been exposed to at least 2000 years of Kemetic cultural influence prior to and during slavery. Ac- cording to "historical" accounts in the Torah, Egypt enslaved the Hebrews and so it is reasonable to assume that Kemetic, language, arts and music would have significantly in- fluenced Hebrews, as subservient people. We know that several musical instruments were mentioned throughout the Old Testament Biblical texts. The harp, that was mentioned 29 times, was the most prominent. The Hebrew name for the harp was the 'kinnor" As a student of advanced Medu Neter (reading, writing and speaking of the hieroglyphs- literally translated to be: "language of the gods") I have found many correlations between this ancient language and Hebrew. It is clear to me that the word kinnor is a simplified version of the hieroglyph for harp that can be phonetically rendered as "keniniula" The first mention in Genesis 4:21 says, 52 "Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ". This is in conflict withe Pestem history, which assets that the first organ, called the Portative Organ (some-times spelled Portatif Organ) first appeared in about 1100 AD (2100 years later than the accepted date of the Genesis writing). We will talk more about this instrument later. However, this discrepancy suggests that either the Genesis passages were written after the Portative Organ was created and the writer(s) adapted currently used instruments for inclusion or that there is a missing link in the chronological continuum in the development of musical instruments. However, scholars do concede that the Torah and successive books of the Old Testament were re-written by "unknown sources" after-the- fact; and in some cases, centuries after the original writings had been destroyed. Also in historical conflict is the claim that Jubal was the father of harpists when, clearly, numerous Kemetic harpists had been documented at least 2000 thousand years prior to this (based on Western history's dating). The time of Hebrew King, Solomon is set at around 975 BC. His father, King David first non- Kemetic musician documented to have "played" the harp. The Biblical account of this would make him the first non-Kemetic "music therapist". In this account, David was summon to play the harp as a means by which to free King Saul from the grips of an evil spirit. This the first documented non-Kemetic use of the harp for spiritual practice. 

In the next volume we will continue to explore the historical events that eventually lead to the demise of Kemet as a world power; this at the hands of Kemet's greatest "students" who turned into its most cunning captor: the Greeks. The Greeks went on to assimilate Kemetic culture, philosophy, medicine, spirituality and music making it all "their own". We will unlock an important "key" leading to evolution of the Kemetic harp into our modern-day piano. Stay tuned and we'll get to the root. Until then C# (see sharp).