The Ancient Egyptian Harp

An improvisation on a 3500 year old ancient Egyptian scale, performed on an archaic skin-membrane harp - almost identical to the arched harps played in ancient Egypt, from over 4500 years ago in the Old Kingdom onwards... This composition is in the minor pentatonic scale - one of the ancient Egyptian scales deciphered by the late Prof Hans Hickmann. Although the ancient Egyptians did not have any written musical notation, they did have a form of musical notation based on hand gestures (chironomy) - whereby specific hand gestures represented specific changes in pitch. Remarkably, chironomy still survives today (along wiht some of the ancient Egyptian language) in the Coptic Church - a living musical legacy maybe dating back some 5000 years! This is my first rough draft recording of this piece, “Ancient Harps of Kemet“ - which I am planning to use as the first track on a new album featuring this incredibly archaic arched anyone out there got any good ideas for a suitably mystically ancient-sounding album title? All suggestions welcome - thanks! The arched harp I am playing is still played today in Uganda, where it is known as the Adungu. Like the ancient Egyptian harp, the 9-string Adungu has a soundboard of taut leather - the tension of the strings fixed to a wooden pole behind the skin keeps the skin taut. The strings on my Adungu harp are made of some sort of natural fibre (possibly silk) - these low tension strings are much easier to tune by ear than the high tension nylon. I tried to achieve just intonation in tuning the harp by ear - I do not have perfect pitch, but if someone out there does, I would appreciate thier feedback on how close I am to achieving this authentic ancient tuning - thanks! For all details on my attempts to recreate the music of the ancient world, & my 10 albums of ancient lyre music available from iTunes, Amazon & Reverbnation& CD Baby, please visit: Many thanks for watching!