Musicians Performing (Chapel of Pa-Aten-Em-Heb)

Musicians perform as the seminary priest offers libation. A harpist, flute and lute player can be seen performing a Harper’s Song.

Interestingly, the Harper’s Song accompanying this scene within the Chapel of Pa-Aten-Em-Heb, has a somewhat agnostic lyric, telling the listener through song, that lamenting and worrying about an Afterlife is seldom constructive, and one should enjoy life on Earth, rather than obsess and worry over death:

“Make holiday, don’t weary of it/ Look, there is no one allowed to take their things with them/ And there is no one who goes away comes back again.”

The song’s initial line states that the song was transcribed from the tomb of King Intef (a name used by various rulers from the 11th and 17th Dynasties).

Such a song is also found on the Ramesside Period’s Harris 500 papyrus, and scholars agree that both the Harpers Song of Pa-Aten-Em-Heb’s chapel and the Ramesside era lyric are both copies of the Middle Kingdom songs with the same theme.

Scene depicted within the Chapel of Pa-Aten-Em-Heb, Commander-in-chief of Akhenaten’s army, at Saqqara.
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1333-1307 B.C.
Now on display at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands.