By far the most interesting and instructive relics of Egyptian musical instruments that have come down to us are a number of pipes and flutes, many well-preserved specimens of which may be seen in the British and Leyden museums. They contain from three to five--usually four--holes, and in many of them pieces of thick straw or other similar material are found inserted in the playing ends. There does not appear to have been any restriction as to the number of holes. In the British Museum there is an Egyptian pipe about twelve inches long, with seven holes burned in the sides. Two straws of about the same length as the pipe were found with it. Straw reeds have also been found with Egyptian flutes. The latter were very long instruments, reaching from the player’s mouth to beyond the length of his arm. The most interesting and perfectly preserved specimens of those that have yet come to light are a pair of reed flutes, eighteen inches long and three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, which were discovered by the distinguished Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in a rock-hewn sepulchre at Kahan--the town inhabited by workers employed in building the pyramid of Userteen II. On these flutes were elicited the following notes: [Illustration: THREE HOLES.] [Illustration: FOUR HOLES.] The testing of facsimiles produced between the flutes the following scale: [Illustration: Music] By varying the pressure, a fifth and an octave higher were obtained, and by the same means was elicited from the three-holed flute the complete diatonic scale of C. Allowance must, of course, be made for the possible differences between the facsimiles of these old flutes and the original instruments, as they were in the time of Userteen II. There is also to be considered a probably wide divergence in method between modern European and ancient Egyptian flute players. The experiments, however, suggest interesting speculations. The double-pipes are represented frequently on Egyptian monuments; the trumpet less frequently. Trumpets apparently were not very popular in Egypt. They seem to have been made of wood--though brass may have been used. The scarcity of trumpets is peculiar, because the Egyptians obviously did not affect a soft, suave style of music, as the Assyrians did. Some of their dances look almost riotous, and they must have had a strong sense of rhythm. They had a partiality for drums, of which they possessed a variety. Besides drums, their instruments of percussion included _sistra_, _crotola_, bells, cymbals, and tambourines. The _sistrum_ or _seshesh_ was a peculiar instrument, almost identical with the _sarasel_ used to-day by the priests of a Christian sect in Abyssinia, and seems to have been employed exclusively in religious ceremonies. The _crotola_ were two balls or knobs of wood or metal, with handles, and were used apparently in the same way and with the same effect as castanets.