Ancient Egyptian Music

Ancient Egyptian music denotes both the music practised in pharaonic Egypt, from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period, and the modern recorded reconstructions that attempt to recover its sound. No notation survives, so knowledge rests on tomb and temple iconography, excavated instruments and literary references: arched and angular harps, lyres, double oboes, end-blown flutes, sistra, clappers, hand drums and long trumpets, performed by temple, court and military musicians and by blind harpist-singers. Modern recordings rebuild this repertory from measured copies of surviving instruments, depicted playing techniques and plausible modal scales, combining scholarly reconstruction with ambient evocations of the Nile world.