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...Het-Heru (Hathor) was called the Mistress of Singing, and the Mistress of Dancing. The seven Het-Heru represent the intimacy of music and dancing, to the seven planets nearest to us—on earth.
All swiftly vibrating, whirling (dancing) bodies produce sounds—like a vibrating string that produces sound when it is struck. The sound produced from the string depends—among other things—on its thickness/weight, the speed of its movement, and its distance from the human ear. Likewise, the sounds (relative pitches) produced from the whirling planets are a function of the weights of the bodies, their particular speeds, and their relative position.
To recognize the impact on Earth by the heavenly sounds, Earth is considered unmoving at the center of all things.
The seven planets that have impact on us Earth dwellers are, from the nearest to the farthest: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They revolve, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit. Those that have the lesser orbit revolve faster, and those that have the larger revolve more slowly.
The Moon, situated nearest to the earth, is the swiftest-moving body, therefore producing a note of the highest pitch. Saturn, the highest in the heavens (and farthest from Earth), produces the lowest pitch.
The movement of the seven planets is melodious. The changing speed, direction, orbit distance, and sizes of the seven planets produce the seven natural tones known as the diatonic scale (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si).
The natural tones of the seven planets provided the archetype for both the Ancient Egyptian music and the days of the week. The Ancient Egyptians were the first to adopt the seven-day week as a consequence of the harmony of the seven spheres.
The present silent majority of the Egyptian people (Baladi) correlate specific activities of their daily life to certain days of the week. These activities are concentrated in two focal periods: the Eve of Monday (Sunday night) and the Eve of Friday (Thursday night), with more focus on the Eve of Friday (this has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, whatsoever). Marriage ceremonies are only allowed on these two nights, with preference to Friday Eve. Thousands of local shrines (nothing related to Islam) are visited on both these eves, with special preference to Friday Eve. People spend the night of Friday Eve at the tombs of their departed relatives (contrary to Islam). Intercourse between married couples is very special on Friday Eve. Courtship activities of all kinds are more prevalent on Friday Eve. All types of activities (cutting hair, butcher work, ...etc) follow the same pattern.
Since Ancient Egyptian times, the week started on a high (musical) note, namely Saturday. [Equating Saturday to Saturn, the highest, will be clarified at the end of this chapter.] As such, the layout of the week, with the two special focal eves will look as follows:
The concentrated activities towards both ends of the week (with two centers of activity—one more prominent than the other) correspond to an elliptical form that conforms to Kepler’s first planetary law.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) rediscovered—from Egyptian sources—that the orbit of a planet/comet about its sun is an egg-shaped path (ellipse). Each planetary system is balanced only when the planet’s orbit is an egg-shaped plane that has two foci, with its sun’s center of mass at one of its foci. Similarly, the Egyptian traditions follow the same pattern. All aspects of their thinking and society can be reasoned to the egg-shaped characteristics—including music.
The musical comma is also consistent with the Ancient and Baladi Egyptians’ belief that the universal energy matrix consists of nine realms: seven heavens (metaphysical realms) and two lands/earths (physical realms). The two earthly realms are commonly known as the Two Lands/Earths—the one we live in, and another one where each’s twin (of the opposite sex) live. Each twin is subject to the same experiences from date of birth to date of death.
The seven higher realms are represented by the seven natural tones of the diatonic scale. The 8th realm is represented by the human being—the image of God. At the 9th realm is each’s twin (of the opposite sex).
Musically, the ratio of 8:9 is called the Perfect Tone. The Perfect Tone equals a major whole tone of 9 Egyptian commas—in Western terms = 203.77 cents.
The excess between the twin souls at realm 8 and realm 9 is 1/9. The 1/9 ratio of the value of the Perfect Tone = 1/9 x 203.77 = 22.6411 cents, representing the Egyptian comma—the difference in vibration between you and your siamese twin, of the opposite sex.
The phenomenon of the musical siamese twins created the famed Ancient Egyptian twin-octave system. This is based on the fact that each natural tone has a mirror image (complementary opposite) tone—at a ratio equal to the Egyptian comma. By a shift of a musical comma in the internal structure of any scale, it will produce its “siamese twin” scale. The 2-octave scale is a twin scale—one is based on a sequence of natural tones and the other is based on the sequence of their opposite notes. In Western terms, the twin scales are called “plagal” and “authentic”!!
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3. The depicted musical scenes in Ancient Egyptian tombs, as well as instruments found from the Old and Middle Kingdoms, indicate ratios between the open strings of the harp, the densely ordered frets on the long necks of string instruments, as well as the measurements between the fingerholes in wind instruments that reveal/confirm:
a. Several types of musical scales that are based on the unique Egyptian musical comma and its triple parts of buk-nunu.
b. Narrow-stepped scales were common from the earliest known Egyptian history (more than 5,000 years ago.
c. Playing and tuning techniques of string instruments to provide solo and chordal playing of instruments.
d. Playing techniques of wind instruments that provide small increments and organ effect.
e. The use of both the cyclic (up-and-down) method, and the divisive method. [See chapters 9 and 14.]
The Egyptian orchestra/ensemble consisted generally of the four instrument groups:
Horns/trumpets were known in Ancient Egypt since its very early times. Generally, trumpets in Ancient Egypt always appeared in pairs. With the typical two horns: one was sounded at dawn, the other at dusk.
Buq/buk is an Egyptian (not Arabic) word that means mouth. It was out of the divine mouth (Ra) that the divine sound (Tehuti) came, with the harmonic series (over- and under-tone series). The more or less conical horn (al-buq) has survived in the Spanish terms: alboque, alboquea, or albuquea.
The Egyptian trumpet was straight, like the later Roman tuba, or the present-day trumpet. Ancient Egypt had a variety of trumpets. They were generally 2 to 3 feet (60-90cm) long, and made of brass or bronze, with mouthpieces, and with flares or “bells” at the other end.
The horn/trumpet was not a “military” instrument. The sounds of the horns/trumpets were related to rebirth motifs—a transition from one stage to another. As such, they were/are utilized: