Is “Egyptian” music shown in movies etc. historically accurate in terms of instruments used? Like this one where the author claims to be “ancient” as well.
Hi. Egyptian here. And no. The music you generally hear that’s being attributed to that period is just the sensationalised Hollywood vision of what I would have been like.
What you’ll usually come across is Arabian music, not Egyptian. It’s not the pharaonic style, which I assume is what you’re asking about. It would be more akin to Coptic music.
Another missing criteria is that many instruments emerged in different eras, over thousands of years, so there’s that too.
I think the most important instruments that should be the oldest and seem ubiquitous are the Darboka (also called Tabla in present day Egypt) and the Ney.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across an Egyptian that doesn’t love the sound of the Ney on a primal level. This is what it sounds like: https://youtu.be/wYQ_ol3L9Ag
And this is the closest/most-faithful rendition of a real song that makes sense that I’ve ever come across in the wild: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ntnBuQAvFjA (by Peter Pringle)
There are also some renditions of real songs like this one: https://youtu.be/0TJR_l-uSVo
Unfortunately, I can’t enthusiastically recommend this one as an authentic example, because while the lyrics are historically real, rhe rendition is still not faithful, because they didn’t exclusively use period-appropriate instruments.
I think there are also some other examples from the recent Grand Egyptian Museum opening ceremony (at least I heard someone say that, but aren’t sure because I didn’t watch it personally)
I wouldn’t recommend those as reference material because they’re essentially promotional material designed to captivate tourists, and with a healthy side-serving of propaganda for the Egyptian audience (hence why I opted out of watching that).
The Wikipedia article music of Egypt has a decent section on ancient music in the history portion.
But it’s important to remember that ancient Egyptian history is incredibly long and varied. It’s hard to pin down musical styles over thousands of years. The reality is that we don’t really know what the music sounded like, so educated guesses are the closest we can get. Notation would not be invented for thousands of years.
The instruments they used provide most of the insight that we have. Here’s a YouTube video of some people playing reconstructions of period instruments. This would just be a guess at the music, but it is at least informed by later tradition from around the region.
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thousands of years
Every once in a while I’m reminded of how long “ancient Egypt” lasted and how little meaning that phrase really has and I need to sit down.
What? It only lasted about a century longer than Iranians have been in Persia to now. Or than the Latin tribe has been in Italy. Or than rice has been cultivated in Vietnam.
Oh and all those things happened 2/3 of the way through ancient Egypt.
The person who uploaded your example also says they composed it so it’s not “ancient”, despite what the title says.
Egyptian Lover had a few hits back in the day
I think you may need to provide an example.
I’m pretty sure it’s all over the place - like a 1940’s Bob Hope/Lucille Ball comedy set in Egypt isn’t going to be accurate.
Depends on the studio, the movie, the budget, the people in charge being knowledgeable enough and the Egyptian music itself.
