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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.
In Mesopotamia, a balag (or balaĝ) refers both to a Sumerian religious literary genre and also to a closely associated musical instrument.In Mesopotamian religion, Balag prayers were sung by a Gala priest as ritual acts were performed around the instrument.
It was also common in ancient (and modern-day) Armenia, and Greece. The name derives ultimately from Ancient Greek: κανών kanōn, meaning "rule, law, norm, principle". The qanun traces one of its origins to a stringed Assyrian instrument from the Old Assyrian Empire, specifically from the nineteenth century BC in Mesopotamia. [1]
The Lyres of Ur or Harps of Ur is a group of four string instruments excavated in a fragmentary condition at the Royal Cemetery at Ur in modern Iraq from 1922 onwards. They date back to the Early Dynastic III Period of Mesopotamia, between about 2550 and 2450 BC, making them the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. [1]
The Mesopotamian sun god Utu/Shamash was often taken to assume the form of a bull, particularly in his role at sunrise, and is the figure most frequently described in some cuneiform texts as having a lapis lazuli beard. [2] For these reasons, the Penn Museum has asserted that the bull head of the lyre is a representation of Utu/Shamash. [3]
Tanburs have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BC. [1]Three figurines have been found in Susa that belong to 1500 BC, and in hands of one of them is a tanbur-like instrument. [5]
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]
The music of ancient Rome borrowed heavily from the music of the cultures that were conquered by the empire, including music of Greece, Egypt, and Persia. Music accompanied many areas of Roman life; including the military, entertainment in the Roman theater, religious ceremonies and practices, and "almost all public/civic occasions."