 Beginning Practice of Ancient Egyptian Religion
Part 9
Music in Ritual
It's soothes the savage beast and helps create atmosphere
by Reverend Michael Poe, High Priest of Ptah, CES
 One (of the many) requests we get is "What kind of music do we use?" An apt question if there ever was one. Years ago BI (before internet) your choices were very limited. Belly dancing or Middle Eastern music and New Age music was generally the most available. Now, AI (after internet) you have a wider variety of choices.
In ancient Egypt chanting was probably the most common type of music used in ritual. As for instruments, we know what they had, we just don't know if they were used in ritual except for sistrums. Sistrums were hand held instruments, wood or metal handles, and a U shape (wood or metal) on top with several metal rods with belly dancing type finger cymbals on them. It makes a nice tinkling sound and according to the ancient Egyptians, please the gods and drove away bad spirits. African sistrums can be found occasionally but a tambourine, which the ancient Egyptians also had, can be used for a substitute.
Other musical instruments included drums, wood clappers, finger cymbals, tambourines, harp, flute, and a somewhat strange looking guitar. But we don't know if they were used in ritual.
Today you can still get sistrums, drums, belly dancing finger cymbals, tambourines, harp and flute. Clappers would have to be made, and as for the strange looking guitar, just don't use a banjo!
Belly dancing or Middle Eastern music is great after a ritual, but a lot of time just doesn't sound right for a ritual. The music is a little too fast for such solemn affairs.
You can't go wrong with New Age flute music such as Paul Horn or any other musician who makes that type of music, but we have found a couple of artists or CDs that work perfectly for ritual One is a CD called Sacred Liturgy where they do Egyptian chanting. Another is a group called the Hathor Ensemble who tries to do a reconstruction of sacred Egyptian like music, and does it extremely well. There are a few others who make Egyptian-like music but I find them either boring or discordant or both!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art put out CD of Egyptian-style music but you can't order from them any more, but you might find the CD on Amazon or EBay or elsewhere.
And lastly, I personally think that theme to the movie "Wind and the Lion" to be a great introduction of pomp and circumstance of leading people into the temple and setting the tone before switching to calmer music for the actual ritual.
Go to Music Reviews to read about some of the cd/albums that I have mentioned and some I haven’t.
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