SAMBUQUE SAMBUE SAMBUUT SAMBUTE

SAMBUCA  , an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin generally supposed to be a small triangular harp of shrill tone (Arist . Quint . Meib. ii. p . 1o1) . The sambuca was probably identical with the Phoenician sabecha and the Aramaic sabka, the Greek form being vaj.Bbxn . The sabka is mentioned in Dan. iii . 5, 10, 15, where it is erroneously translated sackbut . The sambuca has been compared to the military engine of the same name by some classical writers; Polybius likens it to a rope ladder; others describe it as boat-shaped . Among the musical instruments known, the Egyptian nanga best answers to these descriptions . These definitions are doubtless responsible for the medieval drawings representing the sambuca as a kind of tambourine,' for Isidor elsewhere defines the symphonia as a tambourine . During the middle ages the word sambuca was applied (1) to a stringed instrument about which little can be discovered, (2) to a wind instrument made from the wood of the elder tree (sambucus) . In an old glossary (Fundgruben, i .

368),

article vloyt (flute), the sambuca is said to be a kind of flute . " Sambuca vel sambucus est quaedam arbor parva et mollis, unde haec sambuca est quaedam species symphoniae qui fit de ilia arbore." Isidor of Seville (Etym . 2 . 20) describes it as " Sambuca in musicis species est symphoniarum . Est enim genus ligni fragilis unde et tibiae componuntur . " In a glossary by Papias of Lombardy (c . 1053), first printed at Milan in 1476, the sambuca is described as a cithara, which in that century was generally glossed " harp," i.e . " Sambuca, genus cytherae rusticae . " In Tristan (9563-72) the knight is enumerating to King Marke all the instruments upon which he can play, the sambiut being the last mentioned: " Waz ist daz, lieber mann ? —Daz veste Seitspiel daz ich kann." In a Latin-French glossary (M.S. at Montpelier, H . 1ro, fol . 212 v.) Psalterium = sambue .

During the later middle ages sambuca was often translated sackbut in the vocabularies, whether merely from the phonetic similarity of the two words has not. yet been established . The

great Boulogne Psalter (xi. c.) contains, among other fanciful instruments which are evidently intended to illustrate the equally vague and fanciful descriptions of instruments in the apocryphal letter of S . Jerome, ad Dardanum, a Sambuca, which resembles a somewhat primitive sackbut (q.v.) without the bell joint . It is reproduced by Coussemaker, Lacroix and Viollet-le-Duc, and has given rise to endless discussions without leading to any satisfactory solution . (K .