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The proper names of certain Mesopotamian musical instruments are always accompanied by the divine determinative (𒀭, dingir) used for gods. [68] Furthermore, these instruments’ names appear in written lists of gods. [71] Franklin writes, "These were not symbols of the gods, but instantiations of some sort […] divinized cult-objects were ...
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]
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.
Ugarit, where the Hurrian songs were found. The complete song is one of about 36 such hymns in cuneiform writing, found on fragments of clay tablets excavated in the 1950s from the Royal Palace at Ugarit (present-day Ras Shamra, Syria), [5] in a stratum dating from the fourteenth century BC, [6] but is the only one surviving in substantially complete form.
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]
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]
A problem for understanding the Hittite names for musical instruments lies in the fact that no bilingual texts or word lists which deal with music are known to us. Even many of the Akkadian terms for musical instruments are not yet entirely certainly understood. Names of Hittite musical instruments may be transmitted to us in Hittite, Luwian or ...
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." [26] [27]