life, and was sung in connection with that gruesome custom
of bringing in, towards the end of a banquet, an effigy of a
corpse to remind the guests that death is the birthright of
all mankind, a custom which was adopted later by the Romans.

Herodotus also gives us a vague but very suggestive glimpse
of what may have been the genesis of Greek tragedy, for he was
permitted to see a kind of nocturnal Egyptian passion play, in
which evidently the tragedy of Osiris was enacted with ghastly
realism. Osiris, who represents the light, is hunted by Set or
Typhon, the god of darkness, and finally torn to pieces by the
followers of Set, and buried beneath the waters of the lake;
Horus, the son of Osiris, avenges his death by subduing Set, and
Osiris appears again as the ruler of the shadowland of death.

This strange tragedy took place at night, on the shore of
the lake behind the great temple at Saïs. Osiris was dressed
royally, in white, and after the horrible pursuit and his
murder by Set and his sinister band, Horus, the rising sun,
dispels the gloom, and a glorious new god of light appears. Set
and his followers are driven back to the gloomy temple where,
perhaps, there was another scene showing the shade of Osiris,
enthroned and ruling the dead. We have no means of knowing the
character of the music which accompanied this mystery play;
but certainly the deep tones of the harps and the flutes,
together with the chanting of men's voices, must have been
appropriate. Add to these the almost silent rattle of the
sistrum, which, for the Egyptians, possessed something of the
supernatural, and we have an orchestral colouring which is
suggestive, to say the least.