From this vivid picture of real life we can now understand that our little wailing flutes, recovered from that rock cut tomb, meant very much to the old Egyptian race. A piece of the old poetic writings comes to me at the time present, that seems to complete the circle of our thoughts around this long lost nation—it comes from old Chaldea, the motherland, is one of the choice and highly valued finds of explorers, recently acquired by the British Museum,—tablets of popular songs of Chaldea which date at least B.C. 2300, and possibly earlier. These are distinctly called songs. One bard says,— I will sing the song of the Lady of the Gods; Listen the great ones, Attend ye warriors, To the song of the Goddess Mama, The song which is better than honey and wine. In fair reason may we not conceive that through long ages tradition held its sway amongst the people, and that these pipes were dedicated to the goddess Mama, were given into the hands of women to play and to cherish the melodies of songs that belonged to their race, and that they named the twin pipes _Mamms_, in affectionate reverence for the “Lady of the Gods” whose song was better than honey and wine. CHAPTER V. In the Land of Etruria. THE GRECO-ETRUSCAN DOUBLE FLUTES. THE BULBED OR SUBULO FLUTES. The Song of Linus is heard to-day in the land of Egypt; the sacred melody played on the double flutes in ancient days survives without change, but no player on these pipes exists; the song is sung in wailful cadence by lips of another race, for the old race has vanished in the long corridors of Time. Strange is the irony of history! The dwellers in the land have forgotten the name of their song, and call it after a Greek myth. Yet, in its origin, it was a very real song of lament, a true outcome of human sorrow, age remembered and treasured in the hearts of the old Egyptian people, and perpetuated by tradition even amongst those who were strangers in the land, who tilled the soil, and lived in the ruins of the past. It was a lament for the king’s son, known as the Song of Maneros, so that grand old interviewer, Herodotus, tells us. He had thought this Song of Linus to be a famous song of Greek origin. This is what he says:—“I have been struck with many things during my enquiries in Egypt, but with none more than this song, and I cannot conceive from whence it was borrowed, indeed they seem to have had it from time immemorial, and to have known it by the name of Maneros, for they assured me it was so called from the son of their first monarch, who being carried off by an early death, was honoured by the Egyptians with a funeral dirge, and this was the first and only song they used at that early period of their history.” Plutarch says Maneros was the child who watched Isis as she mourned over the body of Osiris.