[Illustration: FIG. 2.――PAINTED WOODEN HARP. Ancient Egyptian, XVIIIth dynasty (B.C. 1450). British Museum.] As regards the instruments of the ancient Egyptians we now possess perhaps more detailed information than of those appertaining to any other nation of antiquity. This information we owe especially to the exactness with which the instruments are depicted in sculptures and paintings[2]. Whoever has examined these interesting monuments with even ordinary care cannot but be convinced that the representations which they exhibit are faithful transcripts from life. Moreover, if there remained any doubt respecting the accuracy of the representations of the musical instruments it might be dispelled by existing evidence. Several specimens have been discovered in tombs, preserved in a more or less perfect condition. The Egyptians possessed various kinds of harps, some of which were elegantly shaped and tastefully ornamented. The largest were about 6½ feet high; and the small ones frequently had some sort of stand which enabled the performer to play upon the instrument while standing. The name of the harp was _bene_. Its frame had no front pillar; the tension of the strings therefore cannot have been anything like so strong as on our present harp. (Fig. 2.) The Egyptian harps most remarkable for elegance of form and elaborate decoration are the two which were first noticed by Bruce who found them painted in fresco on the walls of a sepulchre at Thebes, supposed to be the tomb of Rameses III. who reigned about 1170 B.C. Bruce’s discovery created a sensation among musicians. The fact that at so remote an age the Egyptians should have possessed harps which vie with our own in elegance and beauty of form appeared to some so incredible that the correctness of Bruce’s representations, as engraved in his “Travels,” was greatly doubted. Sketches of the same harps, taken subsequently and at different times from the frescoes, have since been published, but they differ more or less from each other in appearance and in the number of strings. A kind of triangular harp of the Egyptians was discovered in a well-preserved condition and is now deposited in the Louvre. It has twenty-one strings; a greater number than is generally represented on the monuments. All these instruments, however much they differed from each other in form, had one peculiarity in common, namely the absence of the fore pillar.