em, so they continued until
they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial
fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July,
A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the
beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as
handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh--the little triangular
harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all
sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp
changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of
strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the
horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to
which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the
sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the
same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present
day--that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the
solemn moment has arrived.

Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service,
4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with
the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus,
this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the
numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players
upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly
exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great
place among this people.

The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent
little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the
older time was the _Kinnor_, or little triangular harp, which we find
in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years
later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This
also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this
again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to
have been Phoenician, a fact which points to this as the source of
its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless
we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at
a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of
the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp
having from ten to twenty strings. The usua