Double and Bulbed Flutes
at a festival in honour of the god Ptah. Double flutes are still used in Greece and by the boatmen on the Nile, who call them "Archool," or "Zimmerah." Mr. Herman Smith thinks that the double pipe, with three or four holes on each pipe, preceded the six-holed single pipe. By the Greeks it was termed δίαυλος, and by the Romans Tibia Pares, or Gemini, when of equal length, and Impares when unequal. It consisted of two distinct pipes, sometimes united in one common mouthpiece. (Fig. 4.) As a rule the two pipes were not in unison; the longer and deeper pipe, called the Male (as representing a man's voice), was generally on the right, and it (according to the taste of the age) played the melody.
Fig. 4.—Double Flute. (From Hoissard's "Roman Antiquities.")
Fig. 5.—Double Flutes, with several bulbs.
The shorter or Female pipe played the accompaniment, which was pitched higher than the melody. One pipe may have been sometimes used as a drone. When both were played together it was termed γαμήλιον αὔλημα = married piping. Sometimes the instrument was played with reversed hands, the right hand playing the left pipe and vice-versa. In Egypt the double flute would appear to have been played by women only. On Etruscan vases, dating about 400 B.C., we find double flutes depicted with one or more bulbs at each of the mouth-ends (which
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