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The Bull Headed Lyre is one of the oldest string instruments ever discovered. The lyre was excavated in the Royal Cemetery at Ur during the 1926–1927 season of an archeological dig carried out in what is now Iraq jointly by the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum. Leonard Woolley led the excavations.
The "Bull Headed Lyre" is 40 cm in height, 11 cm in width, and 19 cm in depth. The shape of the lyre is meant to resemble a bull's body. Its head, face and horns are all wrapped in gold foil while its hair, beard, and eyes are made of lapis lazuli. [13] Below the head is a front panel made of shell inlay set into bitumen. [14]
The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. [5] In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family. [6]
Yet another lyre incorporated various materials including wood, shell, lapis lazuli, red stone, silver and gold. The lyres found at Ur often included the representation of animals including a cow, stag, bearded bull, and a calf. Of particular note is the Bull-headed lyre from PG 789, also referred to as the "King's Grave".
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. [113]
Initially depicted as a goddess in Sumerian times, when it was called Lamma, it was later depicted from Assyrian times as a hybrid of a human, bird, and either a bull or lion—specifically having a human head, the body of a bull or a lion, and bird wings, under the name Lamassu. [3] [4] In some writings, it is portrayed to represent a goddess. [5]
Scorpion-men appear in the visual arts of Mesopotamia and ancient Iran before we know them from literature. Among the earliest representations of scorpion-men are an example from Jiroft in Iran, [5] as well as a depiction on the Bull Lyre [6] from the Early Dynastic Period city of Ur. Drawing of an Assyrian intaglio depicting scorpion men.
The word rhyton is not present in what is known about Mycenaean Greek, the oldest form of Greek written in Linear B. However, the bull's head rhyton, of which many examples survive, is mentioned as ke-ra-a on tablet KN K 872, [7] an inventory of vessels at Knossos; it is shown with the bull ideogram (*227 VAS; also known as rhyton).