2,000 yr old whistle or flute wall painting in Petra Jordan

[Beoracha]

Some 2,000 yr old wall painting was recently uncovered at Petra in Jordan. A character appears to be playing a whistle or maybe flute. The overall design is grape vines. Apparently the ancient Nabateans liked to drink wine and play music. Some things never change. Is it a whistle or flute? or something else?

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/ ... tings.html

[MTGuru]

A character appears to be playing a whistle or maybe flute ... Apparently the ancient Nabateans liked to drink wine and play music.

And then they disappeared. Let that be a warning to you!

[Denny]

Whistle is a subtype of flute

[Steve Bliven]

Whistle is a subtype of flute

Ya got your lumpers and ya got your splitters....

Best wishes.

Steve

[Denny]

right!

we'll split an' then lump

fipple flute

[hans]

Remarkable gorgeous artwork. Looks to me not like a fipple flute, nor like a ney or similar end blown flute, but rather like a transverse flute. Note the inclination of the head, and the end of the flute going further than the mouth!

[LorenzoFlute]

Left handed people are surprisingly common...

[Beoracha]

I thought the detail in the art was very good. Just too much wear and tear. It looked like a whistle (end blown flute type instrument) at first but zooming in it looks like the left arm is behind the leg instead of in front. Maybe a transverse blown flute. Not sure what's going on at the mouth end. It's really old whatever it is. Left handed. Party on Nabateans, wherever you are.

[qbradq]

It looks like the embouchure is 1/3 of the way down the shaft. See the little end of the flute extending past the head? That struck me as odd. Or perhaps the painter was not terribly familiar with flute construction.

[LorenzoFlute]

Chinese dizi is quite similar in this...

[Adrian]

Here is a photo I took recently of a mosaic in ancient Corinth. It looks to me like another traverse flute. The mosaic is from a Roman house and also dates to about 2,000 years ago. I read somewhere of a Cornelius of Corinth who apparently won the prize for playing flute at various Roman games.

There are several bone flutes and pottery (3rd-5th cent. BC) depicting flute players in the museum.

[LorenzoFlute]

And yet another left handed...
Flute playing and cows together remind me of Krishna.

[Ted]

The Roman one looks like a monaulos, a reed pipe, not a flute or whistle. The Hellenistic cult of Dionysus used reed pipes as well, but it is hard to tell what is going on with that one. The zampognari of today still often prefer the right hand on top. Left-handed is our modern interpretation of hand preference.

[Beoracha]

Cool mosaic! The relationship of the hands to the head is very similar to the Petra painting. Maybe the art style of the times. Doesn't look like a good position to play. It does look like the blown end extends past the mouth in the Petra art. Interesting comments from all. The amount of history and variety of these instruments amazes me.
I know someone that plays bass and native American flute. He plays the flute "lefty" because he's used to his left arm extending out.

[Infernaltootler]

I wonder if the reason they appear left handed is that the image has been taken from another source and transposed by an artisan unfamiliar with or indifferent to how a flute is played?