Again, at the public ceremonies which took place on the accession of
a prince to the throne the new monarch addressed a prayer to the god,
in which occurred the following allegorical expression:--“I am thy
flute; reveal to me thy will; breathe into me thy breath like into a
flute, as thou hast done to my predecessors on the throne. As thou
hast opened their eyes, their ears, and their mouth to utter what is
good, so likewise do to me. I resign myself entirely to thy guidance.”
Similar sentences occur in the orations addressed to the monarch. In
reading them one can hardly fail to be reminded of Hamlet’s reflections
addressed to Guildenstern, when the servile courtier expresses his
inability to “govern the ventages” of the pipe and to make the
instrument “discourse most eloquent music,” which the prince bids him
to do.
M. de Castelnau in his “Expédition dans l’Amérique” gives among the
illustrations of objects discovered in ancient Peruvian tombs a flute
made of a human bone. It has four finger-holes at its upper surface
and appears to have been blown into at one end. Two bone-flutes, in
appearance similar to the engraving given by M. de Castelnau, which
have been disinterred at Truxillo are deposited in the British museum.
They are about six inches in length, and each is provided with five
finger-holes. One of these has all the holes at its upper side, and one
of the holes is considerably smaller than the rest. The specimen which
we engrave (p. 64) is ornamented with some simple designs in black.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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