In the Feast of Hathor club a copper bowl on a stand with a lotus capital now stands in front of the dais. Walk up to it (click the bowl or press E next to it) and a window opens: what is playing now and what comes next, the requests in the queue and the club’s five tunes with the musicians who play them.
Choose a tune and an offering: a plain one is 1,000 debens, a generous one 5,000 and a royal one 25,000. The tune that is playing finishes, then the musicians play yours. A line appears in the middle of the screen for everyone in the hall — who made the offering and which tune they asked for — and when it starts, “Playing at the request of …”. A generous offering brings a golden line and applause from the guests, a royal one a shining line and the whole hall cheering.
Up to three requests can wait in the queue, one per guest and each tune only once. The coins pile up in the bowl. If a requested tune doesn’t get to play (for example, the hall closes), the offering comes back.
One more thing: the musicians’ hands now play the notes of their own instrument, as in the tomb paintings of Nakht and Nebamun. The lute player stops the strings on the long neck and plucks with a plectrum on a cord; the singer holds the frame drum by its rim and strikes the middle with her palm or the edge with her fingers, shakes the sistrum and holds a menat in her other hand; the piper fingers her two pipes; the harpist plucks the low strings with her near hand and the high ones with her far hand. All in time with the tune everyone hears.
