The masses, in company with prisoners of war and slaves from Central Africa, were mere servitors to the monarchs and priests in executing their ambitious schemes. Although their labor built up indubitable testimony to the greatness of their masters, the burdens imposed upon them century after century finally wore away their fealty; therefore the decadence and downfall of great Egypt. There could not possibly have been anything like art enthusiasm among a people so oppressed. Despite this vital lack, ancient Egypt did more, directly and indirectly, to foster music, and to give it an onward impulse, than all other agencies of the first era combined. This was somewhat attributable to the fact that then, for the first time, tone expression was associated with rhythmic texts; still, I infer that their music was merely an accessory to euphonious declamation,--subservient to poetry,--for had their melodies possessed independent import, those resourceful people would have found some way of recording them. These relations between music and poetry were perpetuated in Greece; indeed, our art was not accorded equality as a contributive element in song until in quite modern times. There have been several distinct epochs in this relationship,--viz., that in which tone expression, because of its little understood capacities was held in vassalage to her sister art; music's equality (dating from the adoption of notation), during which she greatly extended and beautified her forms; her ascendency, which characterized the vocal works of the early part of the present century; and now the Wagner school, in which the two are again made to collaborate on equal terms. The ancient Egyptians employed pan pipes, flutes, horns, instruments of percussion, and small harps. Mural pictures of the fourth dynasty represent players blowing upon pipes of different lengths, and consequently of different pitches, which is a dumb declaration that at least some principles regulating the simultaneous use of tones had been recognized. Outside this pictorial record, we can find no intimation that anything analogous to modern harmony was known and practised by this people. In the absence of specific data we are forced to predicate the condition of music in that stupendous, though exclusive, civilization, upon the elements of the atmosphere from which it drew its impulse. As the more prominent of these elements were profound religious feeling, scientific learning, insatiable ambition, and a clearly pronounced lyric tendency, their melodies must have been coherent and expressive. ARYAN RACE