Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/380

368 :—"Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp:" worship which was joined with the execution of "vengeance upon the heathen."

This association of dancing and singing as forms of worship, and by implication their more special association with the priesthood, is not so conspicuous in the accounts of Egypt; probably because the earlier stages of Egyptian civilization are unrecorded. According to Herodotus, however, in the processions during the festival of Bacchus, the flute-player went first and was followed by the choristers who chanted all the praises of the deity. Naming also cymbals and flutes and harps as used "in religious ceremonies;" Wilkinson says that "the sacred musicians were of the order of priests and appointed to the service, like the Levites among the Jews." Songs and clapping of hands are mentioned by him as parts of the worship. Moreover the wall-paintings yield proofs. "That they also danced at temples, in honor of the gods, is evident from the representations of several sacred processions." Wilkinson is now somewhat out of date, but these assertions are not incongruous with those made by later writers. The association between the temple and the palace was in all ways intimate, and while, according to Brugsch, one steward of the king's household "was over the singing and playing," Duncker states that "in every temple there was a minstrel." So too, Tiele, speaking of Im-hotep, son of Ptah, says—

"The texts designate him as the first of the Cber-hib, a class of priests who were at the same time choristers and physicians."

But Rawlinson thinks that music had, in the days of historical Egypt, become largely secularized:—"Music was used in the main as a light entertainment. . . The religious ceremonies into which music entered were mostly of an equivocal character."

Similar was the genesis which occurred in Greece. A brief indication of the fact is conveyed by the statement of Guhl and Koner that all. the dances "were originally connected with religious worship." The union of dancing and singing as components of the same ceremony, is implied by Moulton's remark that—

"'Chorus' is one example amongst many of expressions that convey musical associations to us, but are terms originally of dancing. The chorus was the most elaborate of the lyric ballad-dances."

And that the associated use of the two was religious is shown by the description of Grote, who writes:—

"The chorus, with song and dance combined, constituted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece. It was originally a public manifestation of the citizens generally. . . But in process of time, the