rien de semblable chez les Égyptiens, les Assyriens, les
Babyloniens, qui pourtant ne leur étaient pas inférrieurs
en civilisation." ¹ Mr. Engel, nevertheless, holds that
"judging from analogy we may conjecture that Assyrians,
Egyptians and Hebrews had musical signs". ² This "ana-
logy" is, however, quite inappropriate, for Mr. Niebuhr,
who travelled in the east at the end of the last century,
remarks: "Neither in Egypt, nor in Arabia or India did
they understand how to commit music to writing. Although
it was said that the great artists in Constantinople had
secret musical signs, I did not come across anybody
there who knew music notes, not even among the dervishes
of the order Mevlaui, who were known for the greatest
composers of the Turks." ³

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