Würzburg 2024
Students, staff, and members of the public made seven Sumerian and one ancient Egyptian doublepipe in the Zentrum für Philologie und Digitalität “Kallimachos”, Universität Würzburg, 13–14 December 2024.
Everyone made reeds from Avena sterilis using a method described by Theophrastus, discussed by Marco Sciascia and Barnaby Brown in Journal of Music Archaeology 2: https://doi.org/10.1553/JMA-002-01. For the pipe bodies, we used Phragmites australis harvested in Palma de Mallorca in 2019 (Lotos Lab harvest # H005) with a kitchen blow torch to heat the hole-making tools.
Reed caps, PVC cases, and three videos on how to practise were made on 17 December 2024 in the Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg:
Special thanks to Florian Leitmeir, Dahlia Shehata, and Oliver Wiener for organising the workshop; Sonja Killat, Markus Maier, and their colleagues for letting us use the Martin von Wagner Museum for follow-up sessions; and Stefan Hagel for his excellent suggestion of making reed caps from cardboard and tape. We discovered that pizza box and masking tape work brilliantly!
