When we use the term “Ancient Egypt,” a hazy picture of pyramids forms in the mind and we have a vague notion that it refers to a culture that reached an exceedingly high plane a very long time ago. How long ago, it is almost beyond the everyday mind to grasp. Our ideas of time are, after all, only relative; and when we speak of “six thousand years ago” it conveys little more to our minds than would “two thousand years ago.” Five hundred years is a very long time; yet if we enquire what was the state of music at that distance of time back, we should find things in a very primitive state. A thousand years ago we only find King Alfred burning cakes, and two thousand years ago we should see the Romans teaching our barbarous ancestors how to build roads, to dress themselves decently, and to take baths. Yet, when Greece was only just beginning to show her first promise of greatness later, the Twelfth Dynasty of Egyptian Kings was ruling a country that enjoyed a musical culture that must seem astonishing to us. We find evidences of musical activity as far back as the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties (ca. 4000–3500 b.c.), and the music made then, and the instruments upon which it was made, could not have been the result of a sudden inspiration and invention. A long era of development must have preceded these early evidences of music—and allowing for the inevitable periods of decline and decadence, we arrive at a date which is so remote that we could scarcely realise its meaning.