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The Multiflute (Hydraulis) of Dion in Macedonia and Pai Xiao in China by Theresa Mitsopoulou The bamboo, the cane and reed have given the inspiration for musical instruments and were this material not available in nature, the flute and the multiflute may have never been invented. The flute is a very simple instrument and apparently it was invented by accident. But the multiflute (hydraulis and pai xiao) is on the contrary, a product of advanced technology. The instrument is described by Heron of Alexandria, a mathematician and expert in physics of the 1st Century BC, and its manufacture is attributed to Ktisivios, an engineer in Alexandria of that time. In 1992, during the excavations at Dion, at the foot of Mount Olympus, a multiflute was discovered and declared "the earliest musical instrument of that kind". However one must take into consideration that western archaeologists are not familiar with the art of the far east and in this case they may have jumped to conclusions about their exciting find. Ktisivios had manufactured his instrument, which worked with compressed air passing through water, balancing the pressure and sending the sound through tubes of different height. In other words, water entering the different sized tubes displaced the air, and produced the different tones of the musical scale. The 19 corroded bronze tubes of the instrument found at Dion copied the bamboo found in nature. The instrument was described as the ancestor of the church organ harmonium which Byzantium "donated to the west". In Byzantium and Rome the playing of this instrument was the privilege of the emperor but it also had wide secular use in the theater and the hippodrome.
