IFAO

Prohibition of music is only known by six documents; three date from the Ptolemaic period and three come from Hellenistic literature. Despite several hypotheses proposed in earlier studies, the reasons for this taboo remain unclear. After a review of all the -documentation, this paper analyses the set of musical instruments that are forbidden and reaches the conclusion that none of them seems to have been banned because of a specific liturgical taboo concerning the material they are made of, nor do the restrictions stem from an exclusive profane or military purpose, or from a use that was restricted to certain festive rites, or because there was an instrumental practice which would be reserved to either men or women. However these instruments have a common character: the noise they make when people play them. So the solution seems obvious when we realise that in five documents these restrictions are related with Osiris and his abaton: Osiris as the ruler of the domain of the dead, Lord of the West, of the necropolis and of Silence loathes noise. But this cannot account for it entirely since other sources indicate that this god has a privileged relationship with music. Nevertheless, this contradiction seems to be resolved in the Osirian doctrine and its funerary practices. Indeed, the rite of reviving Osiris’ body apparently begins after a period of sepulchral silence during which all music is banned in order not to disturb the repose of the god. With the crucial act of mummification music the songs first play a prophylactic role and, during the ritual of the Opening of the mouth, they finally participate in the rebirth of Osiris. So the prohibition of music has its roots in the oldest Egyptian beliefs in a cycle which endlessly opposes nothingness to creation, death to life and silence to noise; emerging from this eternal fight, Osiris – with all the deceased whom he embodies – triumphs over death forever.