Music of Mesopotamia

a depiction of a lyre player entertaining guests, made with shell, lapis lazuli, red limestone, and bitumen

A depiction of a singer and a lyre player entertaining guests at a banquet c. Template:Trim BCE. Music was a normal part of social life in Mesopotamia. Detail from the Standard of Ur. British Museum, London.Template:Sfn

Music was ubiquitous throughout Mesopotamian history, playing important roles in both religious and secular contexts. Mesopotamia is of particular interest to scholars because evidence from the region—which includes artifacts, artistic depictions, and written records—places it among the earliest well-documented cultures in the history of music. The discovery of a bone wind instrument dating to the 5th millennium BCE provides the earliest evidence of music culture in Mesopotamia; depictions of music and musicians appear in the 4th millennium BCE; and later, in the city of Uruk, the pictograms for ‘harp’ and ‘musician’ are present among the earliest known examples of writing. Additionally, 5,500 year old instruments have been discovered in Mesopotamia.

Music played a central role in Mesopotamian religion and some instruments themselves were regarded as minor deities and given proper names, such as Ninigizibara. Its use in secular occasions included festivals, warfare, and funerals—among all classes of society. Mesopotamians sang and played percussion, wind, and string instruments; instructions for playing them were discovered on clay tablets. Surviving artifacts include the oldest known string instruments, the Lyres of Ur, which includes the Bull Headed Lyre of Ur.

There are several surviving works of written music; the Hurrian songs, particularly the "Hymn to Nikkal", represent the oldest known substantially complete notated music. Modern scholars have attempted to recreate the melodies from these works, although there is no consensus on exactly how the music would have sounded. The Mesopotamians had an elaborate system of music theory and some level of music education. Music in Mesopotamia influenced, and was influenced by, music in neighboring cultures of antiquity based in Egypt, East and West Africa, and the Mediterranean coast.

Much of what researchers know about Mesopotamian music comes from clay tablets. Scribes would use a reed stylus to make wedge-shaped impressions in wet clay, and the tablets would be baked. Using this cuneiform script, they recorded texts that listed genres and song titles, included instructions on how to play instruments, and articulated their music theory. By piecing together thousands of surviving tablets, as well as examining surviving artworks and instruments, researchers have been able to offer a detailed picture of Mesopotamian music culture.

Uses of music

Religious

a statuette in a museum display

Ea (also Enki), deity of music, wears a horned helmet and holds a cup from which water overflows. Old Babylonian period, 19th–17th century BCE. Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

Music played a central role in ancient Mesopotamian religion. In the Old Babylonian period (c. Template:Trim BCE – c. Template:Trim BCE), when music was performed as part of a religious ceremony, the practitioners, known in Sumerian as gala priests, sang in a dialect of Sumerian called Emesal.Template:Sfn There were two types of Emesal prayers, the Balag and the Ershemma, named after the instruments used in their performance (the balag and shem, respectively).Template:Sfn In some depictions of religious festivals, musicians were accompanied by dancers, jugglers, and acrobats.Template:Sfn

Evidence from the city of Mari offers a picture of how the musicians were situated within the temple. An instrument called Ninigizibara was placed opposite a statue of that city's deity, Eštar. Singers sat to the right of the instrument, an orchestra sat to its left, and female musicians stood behind the instrument. Ritual acts were performed during these sung lamentation prayers, whose purpose was to persuade the local deity not to abandon the city.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Moreover, some laments included grief over the loss of music itself during the destruction of a city and its temple. In one such work, the "weeping goddess" Ninisinna laments the destruction of her city, Isin, not only bemoaning the loss of food, drink, and luxury, but also because there were “no sweet-sounding musical instruments such as the lyre, drum, tambourine, and reed pipe; no comforting songs and soothing words from the temple singers and priests.”Template:Sfn

Some rituals involved the instruments themselves, deified, and capable of receiving animal sacrifices as gods.Template:Sfn In a ritual closely associated with a drum described in an Akkadian text,Template:Sfn a bull was brought to the temple and offerings were made to Ea, god of music and wisdom.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Various parts of the bull were burned with a torch during the ritual.Template:Sfn Twelve linens were placed on the ground,Template:Sfn and a bronze image of a god was placed on top of each linen. Sacrifices were made and a drum was put into place. The bronze images were then put inside the drum, incantations were whispered into the bull's ears, a hymn was sung accompanied by an oboe, and the bull was sacrificed.Template:Sfn

Secular

File:Bas relief Ninive musiciens AO 19908.jpg

Musicians of the Assyrian army c. Template:Trim BCE. Nineveh, bas relief in Gypsum alabaster. Palace of Ashurbanipal, Nineveh.

The Akkadian word for music, , also meant ‘joy’ and ‘merriment’, well illustrated by a seal in the Louvre showing a peaceful scene of a shepherd playing a flute to his flock.Template:Sfn Music was a normal part of social life in MesopotamiaTemplate:Sfn and was used in many secular contexts.Template:Sfn Music played important roles at funerals,Template:Sfn among royalty,Template:Sfn and was also depicted in relation to sports and sex.Template:Sfn Mesopotamian love songs, which represented a distinct genre of music, nevertheless shared features in common with religious music. Inana and Dumuzi, often featured in laments, are also prominent as the divine lovers in romantic songs, and both genres used Emesal, a dialect associated with women.Template:Sfn The use of Emesal by women singers extended into wedding songs as well, but over time these singing roles were taken over by male performers, at least among the elite.Template:Sfn In the Early Dynastic III period, music was depicted at banquets, but the purpose is unclear. The celebration may have been “a regular calendrical event, such as the New Year’s festival” or the occasions may have been “extensions of temple practices or celebrations of successful military campaigns.”Template:Sfn

As in neighboring cultures, Mesopotamian music played an important role in the military.Template:Sfn While the musical instruments of war varied from culture to culture, the intention of the music was the same — to “carry terror to the hearts of the foe.”Template:Sfn Martens writes:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote

Musicologist J. Peter Burkholder lists genres of secular music including "work songs, nursery songs, dance music, tavern music, music for entertaining at feasts, and epics sung with instrumental accompaniment."Template:Sfn Vibrant wall paintings illustrate dancing, and several genres of dance can be distinguished on wall reliefs, cylinder seals, and painted pottery; depictions of musical instruments accompany them.Template:Sfn Secular music was comforting to the Mesopotamian people: one incantation tells of a homesick scribe who was stuck and ill in Elam-Anšan; he longed “to be healed by the music of the horizontal harp with seven strings.”Template:Sfn

Musicians

Education

As in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian schools taught music.Template:Sfn Active by the 3rd millennium BCE, these schools—known in Sumerian as edubbas—were chiefly for educating scribes and priests.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Extant clay tablets often record information on student activities in edubbas, and indicate that their examinations included questions on differentiating and identifying instruments, singing technique, and analyzing compositions.Template:Sfn Other tablets include information on how to play musical instruments.Template:Sfn Sumerian texts indicate that choral training occurred by 3000 BCE in the temple of Ningarsu in Lagash; choral performances developed into highly complex responsorial chanting with instrumental parts, which the musicologist Charles Plummeridge notes "must have required expert tuition and direction."Template:Sfn

In the 18th century BCE,Template:Sfn a nascent music school existed in Mari, where young musicians may have been purposefully blinded.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The fact that Mesopotamians connected blindnessTemplate:Efn with musicianship is expressed in literature. Gabbay writes: “In the Sumerian myth Enki and Ninmah, the goddess Ninmah creates various human creatures, and their destiny is then fixed by the god Enki. When Ninmah creates a blind person, Enki allots him the “art of the musician.””Template:Sfn Texts reveal that a disproportionate number of Mesopotamian musicians were blind.Template:Sfn

Outside of the classroom, music was taught through one-on-one apprenticeship.Template:Sfn Both male and female musicians were trained,Template:Sfn some of whom lived with their teachers.Template:Sfn Contracts for training were either official, as among royalty, or in a private agreement between two families; music was also passed down within a family.Template:Sfn Among the elite class, children received a comprehensive education in reading, writing, religion, the sciences, law, and medicine, among other topics; whether music was included is largely uncertain.Template:Sfn Some evidence suggests that Mesopotamians had toy instruments.Template:Sfn

Societal role

a clay plaque in relief

Plaque with male musician playing a harp. Ischali, baked clay. Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, Chicago.

Sumerian and Akkadian language texts provide insight into the role of musicians in society.Template:Sfn Two distinct types of musicians are known, the gala and the nar.Template:Sfn Both classes of musicians were highly regarded, and associated with religion and royalty, but their roles differed.Template:Sfn The gala (Akkadian: )Template:Sfn musician was closely associated with temple rituals; it has been suggested by the musicologist Piotr Michalowski that their job was "normally less glamorous and perhaps temporary".Template:Sfn Musical instruments associated with the gala priests include a small drum (Sumerian: , Akkadian: ), a timpani (Sumerian: ),Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and a sistrum or cymbals (Sumerian: ),Template:Sfn although not much is known about these instruments.Template:Sfn There are hundreds of individual named musicians, such as the gala musician Ur-Utu, who are known from administrative documents. In some cases, archaeological findings have identified the homes and family histories of these musicians, revealing their high status in society.Template:Sfn Gala musicians were associated with the god Enki.Template:Sfn

The nar (Akkadian: )Template:Sfn musician, who had a close association with royalty, was known to play and transport musical instruments and to have a close correspondence with the king. The chief musician of the palace directed musical performances and also taught apprentice musicians.Template:Sfn In the royal harem, which included the king's wives, concubines, children, and servants, the king also kept young apprentice musicians.Template:Sfn The possession of musicians was a sign of status, and musicians were traded over long distances, including as diplomatic gifts and in war.Template:Sfn When the Assyrian military conquered a city, they would spare the musicians and send them to Nineveh with the spoils.Template:Sfn An epic tale called “The Death of Gilgamesh” details how Gilgamesh offered gifts to the gods on behalf of his wives and children, but also on behalf of his musicians.Template:Sfn Musicians sometimes accompanied royalty to their graves.Template:Sfn In the Royal Cemetery at Ur, archaeologist Leonard Woolley found a girl musician lying down, harp in hand, inside the tomb of Queen Puabi.Template:Sfn

The gender of ancient Mesopotamian musicians is debated.Template:Sfn Some sources indicate that gala priests, for example, were either genderfluid or regarded as a third gender.Template:Sfn Gabbay writes, "The term Gala/kalû should be understood as a general concept, relating to a third gender which shares features of both female and male, but which is an independent gender category."Template:Sfn Other sources suggest they may have been homosexual or intersex. Still, other texts, including music instruction texts, differentiate between male and female apprentice musicians.Template:Sfn Some of the ambiguity surrounding the gala's gender could be explained by the history of lamentation prayers, which may have originated with the funerary laments of women. The earliest documented gala performance was in the context of a funeral, with women lamenters accompanying the gala in the mourning. These origins may explain why female characteristics, and the dialect associated with women, Emesal, have long been associated with the gala and temple prayers.Template:Sfn

Specific personalities

a plaque in relief

The goddess Ishtar, to whom Enheduanna composed numerous hymns. Old Babylonian, 1800-1750 BCE. British Museum, London.

Shulgi of Ur, who ruled c. Template:Trim – c. Template:Trim BCE during the Third Dynasty of Ur, was a generous patron of the arts, especially music. In self-laudatory texts, he professed to be an expert musician, claiming that the zeal with which he studied it prevented it from being too difficult.Template:Sfn He listed numerous instruments he claimed to have mastered:Template:Efn the , the , the , the , the , the “Great Lion,” the , and the ;Template:Sfn he also claimed to have mastered the art of composition of genres such as the and the .Template:Sfn Shulgi seemed to enjoy playing all instruments except the reed pipe, which he believed brought sadness to the spirit, whereas music should bring joy and cheer.Template:Sfn Shulgi generously funded Sumer's two major edubbas, those of Ur and Nippur; in return, Sumerian poets composed hymns of glorification in his honor.Template:Sfn

The best-known musician of the Third Dynasty of Ur period, Dada, was a wealthy individual who held the title of gala.Template:Sfn His career began during the reign of Shulgi, and it seems that he was a special kind of gala who acted as the gala of the royal court or even of the state, and was in charge of other galas.Template:Sfn Dada organized musical events, looking after both the instruments and related entertainment,Template:Sfn including handling a bear cub. He and his family owned residences in both Girsu and Ur, and two of Dada's children, Hedut-Amar-Sin and Šu-Sin-migir-Eštar, entertained the king with their own music. Dada's main assistant, or perhaps star performer, was a nar musician named Ur-Ningublaga. While Dada's story offers a glimpse into the life of a Mesopotamian musician, it is likely that he was an exceptional example, and that most gala musicians would have held more mundane roles.Template:Sfn

Among the earliest known composers in the history of music was an Akkadian priestess, Enheduanna,Template:Sfn active around 2300 BCE. The daughter of Sargon of Akkad, founder of the Akkadian Empire,Template:Sfn Enheduanna was simultaneously a princess, priestess, and poetess who wrote a cycle of hymns to the temples of Sumer and Akkad, including devotional hymns for the gods Sin and Inanna, the texts for which survive.Template:Sfn Her work was prolific and also well documented; as many as fifty copies of some of her hymnal works have survived,Template:Sfn but none of her music.Template:Sfn She authored , a short (153 line) poem in which she may allude to her own songwriting at a critical moment in the work.Template:Sfn She is the likely author of a hymn entitled the ‘Myth of Inanna and Ebih’ (). Some of her works had themes related to her father's accomplishments,Template:Sfn while others are autobiographical—she speaks in the first person at least once.Template:Sfn Her poems were quite popular in Babylon and her hymnal organization likely influenced many generations of composers.Template:Sfn She is referred to by name in a hymn to Dumuzi, attesting to her popularity in the region.Template:Sfn

Instruments

a clay tablet with cuneiform writing

Clay tablet recording the names of 23 types of musical instruments. Sumer, 26th C. BCE. The Schøyen Collection, Oslo.

Instruments of ancient Mesopotamia include harps, lyres, lutes, reed pipes, and drums. While much is known about Mesopotamian instruments, musicologist Carl Engel points out that because the main depictions of musical instruments come from reliefs celebrating royal and religious events, it is likely that there are many instruments, perhaps popular ones, that scholars are unaware of.Template:Sfn

Divinity of instruments

Musical instruments were intimately associated with Mesopotamian religion, and some were regarded as minor gods: intermediaries that could help the priest communicate with a major god.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Clear evidence for the divinity of musical instruments comes from the Sumerian language.Template:Sfn Determinatives, or unvocalized logograms that show the category of a noun,Template:Sfn inform the reader whether the object in question is, for example, made of wood (𒄑, giš), is a person (𒇽, lú), or is a building (𒂍, é).Template:Sfn The proper names of certain Mesopotamian musical instruments are always accompanied by the divine determinative (𒀭, dingir) used for gods.Template:Sfn Furthermore, these instruments’ names appear in written lists of gods.Template:Sfn Franklin writes, "These were not symbols of the gods, but instantiations of some sort […] divinized cult-objects were gods." The Mesopotamians made various offerings to these instruments, such as animal sacrifices, spices, and jewelry.Template:Sfn

This was especially true of an instrument known as a balag, whose identity is disputedTemplate:Sfn but which may have been a string instrument or a drum. During his reign in Lagash (c. Template:Trim BCE), Gudea commissioned balags such as 'Great Dragon of the Land' () and 'Lady as Exalted as Heaven',Template:Sfn and some calendar years were named for the balag that was deified and dedicated.Template:Sfn Several balags are known to have been minor gods related to the sun-god Utu, associated with law and justice, including ‘Let me live by His Word’, ‘Just Judge’, and ‘Decision of Sky and Earth’.Template:Sfn Other named instrument-gods include Template:Sfn and the ‘Red-Eyed Lord’ ().Template:Sfn Furthermore, some kings inserted their names into the proper name of the instrument; Ishbi-Erra, during the Isin dynasty, dedicated a deified balag named 'Ishbi-Erra trusts in Enlil', suggesting that this instrument was “an intermediary between the earthly king and his divine counterpart.”Template:Sfn During the rituals associated with these balags, the lines between priest, musician, instrument, god, and king were blurred, and within this context, the Mesopotamians believed the balag played itself.Template:Sfn Franklin writes:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote

Voice

Contracts for the employment of musicians in temples survive and reveal that a large number of singers were used in the ritual performances.Template:Sfn While the exact nature of these performances may never be known,Template:Sfn musicologist Peter van der Merwe speculates that the vocal tone or timbre was probably similar to the "pungently nasal sound" of the narrow-bore reed pipes. He suggests that ancient Mesopotamian singing included trills, mordents, glides and microtonal inflections associated with a nasal timbre; Mesopotamian singers also made use of the drone.Template:Sfn Reliefs carved in stone show that singers would sometimes squeeze their larynx with their fingers in order to achieve high notes.Template:Sfn Researchers also know that choral singing was sometimes done in unison and at other times in parts; Geshtinanna was the goddess of singing in unison.Template:Sfn

Percussion

Percussive instruments in ancient Mesopotamia included clappers, scrapers, rattles, sistra, cymbals, bells, and drums.Template:Sfn A scraper consisted of a stick and an object with notches cut in it,Template:Sfn while rattles were made of gourds or other materials and contained pebbles or clay objects that produced the rattling sound when shaken. A Mesopotamian sistrum consisted of a handle, a frame, and cross bars that jingled.Template:Sfn Cymbals were small but heavy, with some shaped like plates and others like cups,Template:Sfn and some were made of bronze.Template:Sfn

Mesopotamian art depicts at least four types of drums: a shallow drum, which a Sumerian relief dating to 2100 BCE depicts as an estimated across, and which required two men to play;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn a small cylindrical drum held horizontally; a large footed drum; and a small drum with one head, carried vertically.Template:Sfn Sumerian drums were made of metal rather than woodTemplate:Sfn and were played with the hands rather than with sticks.Template:Sfn The skin of the Babylonian drum was made from bull hide, and the placement of the skin over the sacred instrument was itself the subject of a ritual at the Temple of Ea.Template:Sfn

Wind

Almost no wind instruments survive,Template:Sfn but there is ample evidence of their use in artistic depictions and literature. Wind instruments included flutes, oboes, horns, and pan-pipes,Template:Sfn made of wood, animal horn, bone, metal, and reed.Template:Sfn A short horn instrument used by the Hittites was a precursor to the Jewish shofar.Template:Sfn The reed pipe was played on sad occasions, such as funerals.Template:Sfn

Two silver pipes dating to 2800 BCE were discovered in Ur.Template:Sfn Both pipes are in length. One has four finger holes and the other has three; when placed next to each other, three of the finger holes from each pipe are aligned. While scholars agree this was a reeded instrument, it's unclear whether it was a single or double reed,Template:Sfn and some scholars claim that ancient Mesopotamians did not have a single-reeded instrument such as a clarinet.Template:Sfn These silver pipes are the oldest known wind instrument, predating a set of Egyptian reed pipes by five hundred years.Template:Sfn Similar pipes made of gold, silver, and bronze are described in texts from the same city.Template:Sfn

The word “flute” (Akkadian: Template:Sfn) appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest surviving literary work from Mesopotamia. The text describes “A flute of carnelian”.Template:Efn There are numerous depictions of flutes in visual art throughout Mesopotamian history, including a woman playing a flute on a Sumerian shell ornament from Nippur dating to 2600–2500 BCE,Template:Sfn a flautist on an Akkadian cylinder seal dating to 2400–2200 BCE,Template:Sfn an ivory box from Nimrud dating to 900–700 BCE,Template:Sfn and in a bas relief from Nineveh dating to 645 BCE.Template:Sfn

String

a bronze bull's head in a museum

Bull's head ornament for a lyre, Sumerian, c. Template:Trim – c. Template:Trim BCE. Bronze, inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

String instruments included harps, lyres, lutes, and psalteries.Template:Sfn The Mesopotamian harp originated from the warrior's bow, perhaps by the addition of a gourd as a resonator,Template:Sfn and became the ancestor to the lyre and other stringed instruments.Template:Sfn Strings may have been made with catgut, as was done by the Egyptians, or with silk.Template:Sfn Plucked instruments came in many varieties, differing in the manner in which they were intended to be held.Template:Sfn The psaltery, whose strings are parallel to the soundbox and stretched across its full length,Template:Sfn first appears in the 8th century BCE on a Phoenecian ivory piece (British Museum).Template:Sfn This instrument is sometimes called the ‘dulcimer’ when struck or the ‘psaltery’ when plucked.Template:Sfn When used by royalty or as part of a religious ceremony, string instruments were adorned with precious metals and stones, such as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and mother of pearl.Template:Sfn

a line drawing of two standing musicians each playing a horizontal string instrument

Musicians play the Mesopotamian dulcimer, a string instrument with many modern names and derivatives.

The body of the lyre (Sumerian: zami, Babylonian: sammu, Hittite: zinar)Template:Sfn was a representation of an animal's body, such as a cow, bull, calf, donkey, or stag. Archaeologist Leonard Woolley suggested that the animal head depicted on the front of the lyre indicated the instrument's register. For example, a bull-headed lyre would be in the bass register, a cow-headed lyre would be a tenor, and a calf-headed lyre would be an alto.Template:Sfn The legs of the instrument were meant to represent animal legs, with the rear post as the tail. The instrument was played either in place with its legs on the ground, or as part of a procession,Template:Sfn carried over the shoulder with a strap.Template:Sfn

The oldest pictorial record of lute playing is on an Uruk-period cylinder seal (British MuseumTemplate:Sfn) dating to 3100 BCE that depicts a female figure with a long-necked instrument sitting at the back of a boat in a musician's posture.Template:Sfn Two seals in the British MuseumTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn from the Agade period (c. Template:Trim BCE – c. Template:Trim BCE) depict lutenists playing their instruments in the presence of Ea.Template:Sfn Later representations appear after the Third Dynasty of Ur, including a relief from Larsa (Louvre) showing a sexual scene involving two participants, a lute, and a small drum; a relief from Mari (Iraq Museum) depicting bow-legged figures playing three-stringed lutes while apes watch; a relief from Nippur (Philadelphia Museum) showing a shepherd playing a lute; a relief from Nippur (Iraq Museum) showing a figure holding a lute in the right hand and a plectrum in the left;Template:Sfn a relief from Uruk (Vorderasiatisches Museum) showing a lute being played alongside a lyre; and a Kassite seal (Louvre) showing the same.Template:Sfn A comparison of these depictions reveals that lutes were held in different postures during different time periods, possibly affecting the range of the instrument.Template:Sfn

Surviving instruments

a stringed instrument with a bovine head

The Gold Lyre from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. C. 2500 BCE. Iraq Museum. Some elements are original, including the shell and lapis-lazuli mosaic, some of the sheet gold, and part of the silver cross-bar. The wood body and gold head are modern. The instrument also likely had legs, but these were not reconstructed. Iraq Museum, Baghdad.Template:Sfn

Although musicians and musical instruments were depicted in Mesopotamian art in various forms over a 3,000 year period, very few of the instruments themselves have survived.Template:Sfn Only eleven stringed instruments have been recovered, nine lyres and two harps, all from the Royal Cemetery of Ur.Template:Sfn These Lyres of Ur include the "Gold Lyre" (Iraq Museum)Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and the "Bull Headed Lyre" (Penn Museum).Template:Sfn

The Gold Lyre of Ur now held in the Iraq Museum is a partial reconstruction; the original was destroyed in the looting that followed the US invasion of Baghdad during the second Iraq War.Template:Sfn Musicologist Samuel Dorf details the event:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote The destruction of these antiquities during the war sparked widespread international condemnation.Template:Sfn In a 2016 event held in London's Trafalgar Square meant to condemn ISIS and the looting, singer/composer Stef Conner and harpist Mark Hamer performed with a replica of the lyre, recreated by harpist Andy Lowings.Template:Sfn The lyre was built of authentic wood, and adorned with lapis lazuli, other precious stones, and $13,000 worth of 24k gold.Template:Sfn They played a musical interpretation of The Epic of Gilgamesh from their 2014 album The Flood.Template:Sfn

At Ur, an especially ornate harp was found in the grave of Queen Puabi.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Whereas the largest of the lyres had a register similar to a modern bass viol, and the smaller silver lyre had a register like a cello, Puabi's harp fell in the register of a small guitar. UC Berkeley professor Robert R. Brown made three playable replicas of Puabi's harp,Template:Sfn one of which is held in the British Museum.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Musicologist Claire Polin describes the richly adorned instrument:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote

Other instruments discovered at the cemetery include a pair of silver pipes,Template:Sfn as well as drums, sistra, and cymbals.Template:Sfn In earlier findings dating to the 5th millennium BCE, two bone wind instruments have been recovered, one complete and the other in fragments. Also recovered is a fragment of a clay whistle from Uruk dating to c. Template:Trim BCE.Template:Sfn Two pairs of copper clappers from Kish are in the Oriental Institute, and there are two scraper instruments dating to 1500 BCE in the Teheran Archaeological Museum.Template:Sfn There is a large, elaborately decorated Assyrian bell in the Berlin Museum.Template:Sfn At one time there was a bone whistle recovered from Nimrud, which produced three distinct pitches, but it was subsequently lost.Template:Sfn

Works of music

a musical score with modern music notation

Hurrian Hymn No. 6 interpreted by Raoul VitaleTemplate:Sfn

The most famous surviving works of music are the Hurrian Hymns,Template:Efn a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient city of Ugarit, modern-day Syria, dating to approximately 1400 BCE. Hurrian Hymn No. 6, the "Hymn to Nikkal", is considered to be the oldest surviving substantially complete written music in the world.Template:Sfnm At least five interpretations of this tablet have been made in an attempt to reconstruct the music,Template:Sfn notably by Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, Marcelle Duchesne-Guillemin, Raoul Vitale, and others. Experts agree on some points, for example, the name of each string of the instrument, its intervals, and its tuning.Template:Sfn Nevertheless, each interpretation yields different music.Template:Sfn In 2009 Syrian composer Malek Jandali released an album, Echoes from Ugarit, which contains an interpretation of Hurrian Hymn No. 6 on piano accompanied by a full orchestra.Template:Sfn

The Hurrian hymns were authored by four composers from Ugarit: Tapšihuni, Puhiya(na), Urhiya, and Ammiya, and were recorded by two scribes, Ammurabi and Ipšali.Template:Sfn To notate the music, the scribes used cuneiform, including both words and numerals from the script.Template:Sfn The tablets were divided by a double horizontal line; the song’s words were written above the lines and the musical notation was written below.Template:Sfn The music notation consists of a musical term followed by a numeral. While the musical terms are better understood, including the Hurrian words sa ('string'), ašhu ('upper'), and turi ('lower'), the numerals are more mysterious.Template:Sfn It is unclear whether the numeral is meant to represent a tone in the scale, the number of times to repeat a note, or something else.Template:Sfn

Although the music for most hymns is lost, their surviving texts provide insight as to how the compositions were organized. These compositions, according to Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer, show "a rich variety in both content and structure", and fall into two groups, hymns for the king, and hymns for gods. Kramer details some elements of hymnal organization:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote

Furthermore, an Akkadian language tablet from AssurTemplate:Efn contains a catalog of song titles organized by genre,Template:Sfn including workmen's songs, shepherds’ songs, love songs, and songs of youth,Template:Sfn although the melodies are lost. Nevertheless, Mesopotamian views of love, sex, and marriage can be inferred from some love songs. In two surviving examples, love songs related to a wedding between a priestess and a king “ring out with passionate love and sexual ecstasy”. Kramer infers from the surviving words that some marriages were motivated by sex and love, rather than practical considerations, and relates this fact to a Sumerian proverb: “Marry a wife according to your choice!”Template:Sfn

Music theory

A corpus of thousands of surviving clay tablets provides details about ancient Mesopotamian music theory.Template:Sfn While some relate to tuning,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn others relate to musical scales.Template:Sfn Mesopotamian art also provides information; the musicologist Curt Sachs describes a relief that depicts the Elamite court orchestra as it welcomes the Assyrian conqueror in 650 BCE:Template:Sfn

Its seven harpists are identically depicted, except that they are plucking different strings. As the style is realistic, indeed almost photographic, this cannot be accidental; that variety in that one point cannot be explained by any consideration for design. Each harpist plucks two strings, but the only strings plucked are the fifth, eighth, tenth, fifteenth, and eighteenth of the set. If the instruments, as it is likely to suppose, were tuned to a pentatonic scale – say on C, without half-tones – the plucked notes were A, e, a, e', a', e", that is, a fifth chord orchestrated in the modern way, the two notes being distributed among the seven players in different combinations, as double octave, octave, unison, and fifth.Template:Sfn

a treble clef and ascending scale with the notes C D E F# G A B C

An example of a Lydian scale, a heptatonic, diatonic scale used by the MesopotamiansTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler

From this relief, Sachs draws three conclusions: (1) that musicians used the pentatonic scale, (2) that different orchestra members played different parts, and (3) that musicians knew how to use chords.Template:Sfn Researchers also know that the Mesopotamians used a heptatonic,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn diatonicTemplate:Sfn scale. They had the concept of musical intervals, including the octave, and understood the circle of fifths.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Tablets reveal words in the Mesopotamian musical vocabulary.Template:Efn For example, on a nine-stringed harp, the strings were numbered from one to five, then back down to one:Template:Sfn '1st', '2nd', '3rd-thin', 'God-Ea-made-it', '5th', '4th-behind', '3rd-behind', '2nd-behind', and '1st-behind'.Template:Sfn In addition, a text composed by Shulgi around 2070 BCE articulates Sumerian technical terms such as ‘tuning up’ (ZI.ZI), ‘tuning down’ (ŠÚ.ŠÚ), ‘tightening’ (GÍD.I), ‘loosening’ (TU.LU), and the term ‘adjust the frets’ (SI.AK).Template:Sfn

Two surviving tabletsTemplate:Efn give instructions for tuning string instruments. According to O.R. Gurney these tablets are better thought of in terms of re-tuning rather than tuning:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Template:Block quote David Wulstan offers an excerpt from a small fragment of such a text:Template:Sfn

If the harp is in tuning,

You have played the interval

You adjust strings II and IX

And the harp is now in tuning.Template:Sfn

By piecing together such fragments, researchers have been able to come up with what Leon Crickmore called "credible reconstructions"Template:Sfn of the Mesopotamian tuning systems for string instruments. Tablets reveal that string instruments were tuned by alternating descending fourths and ascending fifths; this procedure was known to the Greeks as Pythagorean tuning.Template:Sfn The seven heptatonic scales (and their Greek equivalents) were: išartu (Dorian), kitmu (Hypodorian), embūbu (Phrygian), pūtu (Hypophrygian), nīd qabli ( Lydian), nīš gabarî (Hypolydian), qablītu (Mixolydian).Template:Sfn The Babylonians regarded the tritone as dissonant and called it ‘impure’.Template:Sfn Marcelle Duchesne-Guillemin lists the four rules that governed the tuning of these instruments:Template:Sfn Template:Block quote Music theory in Mesopotamia was also connected to mathematics and astronomy.Template:Sfn For example, an Akkadian language mathematical textTemplate:Efn contains references to musical strings.Template:Sfn Musicologist Egon Wellesz suggested that in Mesopotamian thought, numbers represented a sacred force and that the seven notes of their heptatonic scales were symbolically linked to the seven heavenly bodies, including the Sun, Moon, and the five visible planets:Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Šiḫṭu (Mercury), Dilbat (Venus), Ṣalbatānu (Mars), White Star (Jupiter), and Kayyāmānu (Saturn), known from the second millennium BCE.Template:Sfn A Babylonian tablet reveals that the Mesopotamians also used another visualization of their heptatonic tuning system: a seven-pointed star.Template:Sfn However, knowledge about these Mesopotamian ideas is sparse.Template:Sfn

Influence

a colored map showing Mesopotamia and Egypt

Mesopotamia—Egypt trade routes

a colored map showing Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley

Mesopotamia—Indus trade routes

Mesopotamian music had a lasting and widespread influence on the history of music. Trade routes allowed for the free flow of musical instruments, while classical education spread Mesopotamian musical theory and insights.Template:Sfn From 1300 BCE onwards,Template:Sfn musician-priests formed guilds and were housed in a temple college, attracting intellectual attention from across the region.Template:Sfn Bahrain, home to an independent culture of its own, had connections with both the Indus Valley Civilization to the southeast, and also with Mesopotamia to the north.Template:Sfn For much of ancient history, Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, Syria, Babylonia, Asia Minor, Italy, and Greece together formed what musicologist Claire Polin called a "musical province in which free intercourse created understanding in musical exchange".Template:Sfn Musicologist Peter van der Merwe writes:Template:Sfn

The harps, lyres, lutes, and pipes of Mesopotamia spread into Egypt, and later into Greece, and, mainly through the Greek influence, to Rome. Via the Roman empire they then made their way into Northern Europe. From Egypt the same instruments spread south and westward into black Africa, where some of them survive to this day.Template:Sfn

a clay plaque in relief

Plaque with musician playing a lute, Isin-Larsa period, 2000-1600 BCE. Ischali, baked clay. Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago.

The lute, or ,Template:Sfn may have originated in Mesopotamia, or it may have been introduced from surrounding regions, such as by the Hittites, Hurrians or Kassites,Template:Sfn or from the west by nomadic people of the semidesert plains of Syria.Template:Sfn It appeared in Mesopotamia about the same time as a similar instrument in Egypt, the .Template:Efn This instrument became well known throughout the Near East as the , and is comparable to the Sumerian , the Greek , the Russian , the Georgian ,Template:Sfn and the Arabian oud.Template:Sfn The Hebrew flute () is derived from the Akkadian .Template:Sfn Contemporary East African lyres and West African lutes preserve many features of Mesopotamian instruments.Template:Sfn Mesopotamian harps diffused as far west as the Mediterranean and as far east as Asia.Template:Sfn Ancient Mesopotamian influence in Syriac culture can be seen in the (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx), and instruments.Template:Sfn

The dulcimer spread throughout the world, its variants and derivatives known in Persia as the santur; in places of Islamic influence (e.g., Egypt, Georgia, Greece, India, and Slovenia) as the senterija; in China and India as yang-ch’in; Template:Efn in Mongolia as youchin; in Korea as yanggûm; in Thailand as kim; in eastern Europe as kim balon; in western Europe as tympanon; in Britain, North America, and New Zealand as the ‘dulcimer’ (when struck) or the ‘psaltery’ (when plucked).Template:Sfn While an instrument in the dulcimer family usually consists of a box body with sound holes, derivatives include variations in body size, string length, and string tension,Template:Sfn among other characteristics.Template:Sfn Variants of the dulcimer are prominent in Persian classical music.Template:Sfn

Classical education also helped disseminate musical ideas. The Mesopotamian musical system made up part of the classical education curriculum that scribes, priests and other educated professionals went through, and there were major Mesopotamian music centers at the temples of Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, and Erech.Template:Sfn These musical centers became famous in the western world and attracted the attention of the Greeks, including the Pythagoreans,Template:Sfn for their musical achievements in addition to those in mathematics and astronomy.Template:Sfn This classical education spread abroad during the second millennium BCE, and these musical systems came to represent a common language from which cities abroad could adapt to their local circumstances in syncretism.Template:Sfn

For example, pottery in the Mediterranean and Near East showed a common, stereotyped motif — a typical musical ensemble that could be found throughout the region, consisting of lyres, double pipes, and percussion. Variations in this motif show local adaption, for example in ancient Greece the asymmetrical West Semitic lyres are replaced with Hellenistic instruments.Template:Sfn Musical terms also appear in connection with religious practices. The Sumerian logogram for ‘gala’ ( in Akkadian) appeared in Hatti, where the word also designated a musician-priest—a type of drummer—and was pronounced as in Hittite as . While the gala and were both musicians and priests, they were not identical. The Sumerian gala priests were often associated with a third gender category, whereas the were typically men; furthermore, there was no Hatti counterpart to Ištar — the two types of priests were involved in the worship of two distinct pantheons.Template:Sfn

Egypt

By the third millennium BCE, music and musicians were depicted in a large number of Egyptian texts.Template:Sfn Starting in the New Kingdom, evidence suggests Egypt was influenced by the Babylonians and Hittites, and from the fifteenth century BCE onwards, Egypt adopted the Babylonian vertical angular harp.Template:Sfn The Sumerian lyre was introduced to Egypt by nomadic Syrian people, and the Egyptians elaborated upon the design.Template:Sfn A seal from Ur dated to 2,800 BCE depicts a small animal playing a pair of clappers; similar clappers appear in ancient Egypt centuries later.Template:Sfn Because the lute, harp, and lyre appear significantly earlier in the Near East than in Egypt, it is often assumed that the former introduced them to the latter, but direct evidence is lacking.Template:Sfn On the other hand, the sistrum appears in Egypt either beforeTemplate:Sfn or at the same timeTemplate:Sfn as Mesopotamia. The Babylonian lute was introduced to Egypt by way of Asia,Template:Sfn from whom the Egyptians also likely inherited their heptatonic system.Template:Sfn In the first centuries CE, a certain type of clapper was simultaneously depicted not only in Egypt, but on mosaics in Hama and Carthage, on Roman sarcophagi, on Sasanian silverware, and in Byzantine manuscripts.Template:Sfn

Persia

Like the Mesopotamians, the Persians connected music to the heavens.Template:Sfn Bo Lawergren describes an early Iranian seal that depicts a harp rising above the head of a goddess and concludes, “harp and rite were so strongly linked that it was unnecessary to show the player.” Nevertheless, they're not identical—while harps shown were similar to those of Mesopotamia, they were used in a secular and more complex setting. Bull-headed lyres also show a heritage; they first flourished in Mesopotamia but spread to Susa, where they retained their strong association with animals. The first lutes appeared in Mesopotamia in 2300 BCE; 1,000 years later lutes would become the favored instrument in Persia. Parthian songs continue to be performed in Iran today.Template:Sfn Persia, in turn, influenced the Greeks, Arabs, and Indians.Template:Sfn

Greece

Mesopotamian music had a strong influence in ancient Greece. The practice of deifying string instruments was sometimes echoed in Classical Greece, but the mythology was modified resulting in the Greek ‘lyre heroes’ such as Orpheus, Amphion, Cadmus and Linus.Template:Sfn Like the Mesopotamians, the Greeks connected music to the planets. In the Pythagorean doctrine of the Harmony of the Spheres, the tuning of the lyre was seen as “a microcosm of a universal harmony.”Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Moreover, the Greeks inherited the Mesopotamians’ emphasis on the seven-stringed lyre, a seven-pitched scale, and in compositions that focus on the central string,Template:Sfn as the Hurrian hymns.Template:Sfn Sumerian adornment of lyres with animals was a practice adopted by Greece, which can be seen in the kithara instrument.Template:Sfn Greek music, in turn, had a strong influence on Roman music, especially after the Roman conquest of the Greek mainland in 168 BCE;Template:Sfn the musical theory inherited by the Romans led to the eight principal modes of Gregorian chant.Template:Sfn The modern Western seven-note scales are nearly identical to those used by the Mesopotamians and the Greeks.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Modern Iraq

Efforts have been made in modern Iraq to preserve the musical culture of Mesopotamia. In the 1970s, during an ideological shift among the Ba'th party toward preservation of pre-Arab cultural heritage,Template:Sfn the garment designers and musicians of the Iraqi Fashion House presented "a historical show inspired by the civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, Samarra and Mosul, dating from past [millennia] to the present day.”Template:Sfn Performances of a modern dulcimer are frequently featured on Iraqi television.Template:Sfn The oud is also still played today. Bassam Salim, an expert oud player and teacher in Baghdad, notes a new interest in the instrument. He says that the oud "represents every special moment in life, from sorrow, sadness, joy and all combinations of emotions ... It’s a huge national pride when I feel that through this great instrument, I represent Iraq’s cultural history."Template:Sfn

References

Sources

Articles

• Template:Grove Music subscription
• Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, Richard L. Crocker, and Robert R. Brown (1976). Sounds from Silence: Recent Discoveries in Ancient Near Eastern Music. Berkeley: Bit Enki Publications, 1976. Includes LP record, Bit Enki Records BTNK 101, reissued [s.d.] as CD.
• Template:Grove Music subscription

Other

External links

• Template:Sister-inline