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SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 40

by Major di Cesnola,1 during his excavation in the Island of Cyprus, is almost the only one of the kind that has been found, but it is in too fragile a state to be played upon. Nevertheless, by careful measurements, an exact copy has been made in brass, by Mr. R. Carte, the celebrated flutist, and his son, Mr. Henry Carte, and this ' reproduces the notes of the original instrument. They are nearly those of the modern chromatic scale, the lowest note being C in the bass staff, while the treble extends to G, an octave and a half above it. The notes produced by the model are thirteen: C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, G, A, B flat, B, C, E, G. " This scale is very like that of the ivory flutes found in the excavations at Pompeii, and now in the museum at Naples. However, one of the latter has a B below the bass C, and it has both F sharp and G sharp, which seems to be deficient in the bronze flute. Again, the Pompeian flutes ascend from the upper C to C sharp, and stop there, while the bronze flute ascends from upper C to E and G

" These Greek instruments would now fall rather under the denomination of pipes than of flutes, because they were not held transversely, as is the modern flute, but longitudinally,

1 Mr. C. T. Newton, C.B., informs me that he found a bronze flute at Budrum, the site ofthe ancient Halicarnassus; (See Guide to the Second Vase-Room in, the British Museum); and that Mr. Alessandro Castellani has two bronze flutes in his possession. Another bronze flute has been brought from Egypt by the Rev. Greville Chester.

and they were played from the end by a reed held in the mouth, as is the clarionet. The bore is cylindrical, as in the flute and clarionet, in contradistinction to hautboy and bassoon, which are slightly conical, and thereby require another form of reed to sound them. Cylindrical pipes require the flapping reed, one form of which is found in the clarionet, and another in the bagpipe. The latter kind is enclosed within the mouth, the lips extending beyond the vibrating part, and reeds of this kind are used in Egypt to this day in the little arghool or double flute. Dr. Stainer was kind enough to lend one of the arghool flutes in his collection to Mr. Henry Carte, who made an exact copy of the reed, and by proper adjustment, as to length, for the model he had taken, he succeeded in producing the above named scale. " In place of the keys used in modern flutes to sound extra notes which the fingers do not cover, the Greeks used flat rings of metal round the tubes of their flutes, and bored through them into the tube.1 Then the rings could be turned slightly round, so as to cover or uncover the holes in the body of the flute, and thus the notes which were to be used in the scale that the player had selected, were adjusted to his requirements, and all others were temporarily stopped. The Greek chromatic scale had only seven notes in the octave, not twelve, as in the modern chromatic scale." An interesting experiment2 was made about four years ago by M. Victor Mahillon, Conservator of the Museum attached to the Conservatoire of Music at Brussels, with a view to determining the tone and compass of the ancient ivory flutes found at Pompeii, of which there are four in the museum at Naples. The simplest of the four was selected by M. Mahillon for an experiment for reconstruction, which he undertook with the double object of preserving these precious instruments from the too frequent handling of the curious, and of determining their tone and compass. The pipe in question measures exactly twenty-one English inches, and it is

1 A careful examination of the flute shows several rings of this nature upon it.
2 Musical World, March 1878.

composed entirely of ivory, the bore cylindrical in its whole length, and the ivory tube covered with metallic rings of bronze and silver, which turn to the right and left, but are kept from moving up or down by a fixed ring below them holding them in their respective positions. By means of these turning sockets, which are each pierced with a side-hole establishing communication with the corresponding hole in the ivory tube, the executant was able to suppress at will those he did not wish to employ. It is plain, from the shape of the cup of the bore, that it was destined to contain a reed; but the question was, "What sort of a reed ?" M. Mahillon fortunately was acquainted with the Egyptian arghool flute, an instrument of reed-cane, described by Villoteau, a specimen of which is in the Brussels

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