musical rake

What is the musical instrument that served in the temple under the nickname Magrapa?

In the temple, as is known, and as is found in the ancient temples in general, musical instruments were used. Some of them, by the way, are intended, and as the Mishnah explicitly testifies, to arouse among the public elation, emotional turmoil and above all a feeling that God hovers among them.

One of them was a "rake", so in the language of the Sages. This instrument, whose description and dimensions were unknown, belonged, so it seems, to the category of percussion instruments, and despite its appearance in the temple, its instruction is not clear at all.
The "rake" was used in the temple to give a signal to the various superiors lest they be late in fulfilling their duties. This instrument was thrown by one of the priests "between the hall and the altar" (from the book of Timid XNUMX:XNUMX), and by this a tremendous, deafening sound would be heard, such that no other instrument was comparable in strength.
His teaching was condemned by the Amorites of Babylon, who stated that the dimensions of the vessel are - a cubit in length and a cubit in width as a square pattern, and from it comes a small handle. The instrument is multi-perforated and hundreds of sounds are produced from it, "mini singers" as they say.
As mentioned, the ambiguity surrounding the instrument in question, and the degree of exaggeration attributed to the aforementioned Babylonian source does not contribute to removing the fog, a number of scholars have cast great doubt on whether it is a musical instrument at all. Some believe that it is a type of drum or organ. One of the scholars wishes to hypothesize that the "rake" is nothing more than the shovel for raking the manure in the temple, as he seeks to rest his assumption on the parallel between the above description of the tool and the description of the shovel, as it appears in paintings and reliefs, alongside the other implements of worship. In his opinion, it was a genius Jewish invention, when by raking in the hot fertilizer, or throwing it from some height, some mechanism was activated in the tool, a "rake", and thus the tremendous sound, the strong sound, was produced.

It is difficult to accept this assumption, if only for the reason that the vessel in question, in the words of the Mishnah, would have been thrown away, and perhaps precisely because of this, it is more reasonable to make the following assumption: Is this a mireadi-minadi device, a kind of "gong", an instrument that was accepted in the Far East and traveled, after Many incarnations, to the Near East. It is a two-part instrument: a large copper plate, which sometimes had coils, a kind of perforations to amplify the sound (which is common in percussion instruments and purpose in general) and a hammer-like hammer.
If so, the following picture may be drawn: the copper plate was hanging in the passage, "between the hall and the altar" (as the source says), and next to it was hanging a hammer, shaped like a hoe, like a kind of rake, the same rake with which they raked-leveled-the manure in the temple. One of the priests, given the sign, would "throw" the hiya (which hangs precisely on the support of the plate) and then a mighty voice was heard, a voice like the sounding and varied waves, which may, perhaps, be the foundation of the Babylonian Talmud's extreme explanation of hundreds of "singing species", And lest even the many holes that are thrown during the voyage leave it, they originate from the many irregularities on the surface of the plate in question.