It seems like a fairy tale that we can bring back the manners and customs of three thousand years ago through studying the writings in stone called hieroglyphics, and by examining the things used every day, that were found in the excavations. For a long time the hieroglyphics were unsolved riddles until the discovery in 1799 A.D. of the Rosetta stone, on which was an inscription in hieroglyphics with its Greek translation. Although ancient Greek is called a dead language, it still has enough life in it to bring back the history and records of antiquity. Through this knowledge of Greek, the Egyptian inscriptions speak to us and tell us marvelous stories of ancient Egypt. In one of the tombs at Thebes, was a harp with strings of catgut, which when plucked, still gave out sounds although the harp had probably not been played upon in three thousand years! Going once more to our ancient stone library—or collections of monuments in our museums or in Egypt—we see many pictures of dancers. The Egyptians danced in religious ceremonies as well as in private entertainments. They loved lively dances, and the men did all sorts of acrobatic steps and even toe-dancing like our Pavlowa, while the women did the slow, languorous dances. Egyptian music was greatest as far back as 3000 B.C.! After that it grew poorer until 525 B.C. when Egypt was conquered by Persia. THE EGYPTIAN SCALE The Egyptians must have used a musical scale of whole steps and half steps, covering several octaves, not unlike ours. Think of the piano keyboard with its black and its white keys and you will get an idea of the Egyptian scale. We learned this through the discovery of a flute that played a scale of half steps from _a_ below middle _c_ to _d_ above the staff with only a few tones missing. ASSYRIAN MUSIC In the British Museum in London and in the Louvre in Paris, you can see ancient records which archaeologists unearthed from three mounds near the River Tigris in Asiatic Turkey. These mounds were the remains of the Assyrian cities of Nimroud (Babylon), Khorsabad, and probably the famous Nineveh, and date from 3000 to 1300 B.C. Did Assyria influence Egypt or was it the other way around? The Egyptians excelled in making mechanical things such as instruments, utensils, tools, and in building temples and pyramids; while the Assyrians were sculptors, workers in metals and enamel, and knew the secret of dyeing and weaving stuffs, and of making beautiful pottery. But whose music was the better, the Egyptians or the Assyrians, is impossible to say. We do know, however, that the Assyrians, as well as the Egyptians and Hebrews, had perfected music far beyond the standard reached by many nations of our own time.