HISTORY

OF MUSIC
Research 1
MUSIC IN
MESOPOTAMIA

Prof:TAWFIQ KRBEJ
VIKEN JALIAN NO:13/1079
DATE:
HISTORY OF MUSIC MUSIC IN MESOPOTAMIA VIKEN JALIAN NO:13/1079

Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (in modern day
Iraq), is as widely accepted is the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia is generally
credited with being the first place where civilized societies truly began to take
shape. People around there started many elements, Scholars say that Agriculture
was established around 8000 B.C, and People living in southern Mesopotamia
developed one of the earliest writing forms in the world. The system was
developed so that information could be recorded. Also established Religion, Gods,
and Architect, government, Law, mathematics, art, astronomy, medicine,
technology, philosophy and many more. It had been believed that western music
got its origin in later period Greek music, but scholars are now taking a closer look
at Sumerian origins as a distinct possibility.

Figure 1 map of mesopotamia

The Oldest inscribed music in the world was found on fragments of clay tablets
excavated in the 1950s from the Royal Palace at Ugarit (present day Ras Shamra,
north-west Syria), the complete song is one of about 36 such hymns in cuneiform
writings, in a stratum dating 1400B.C. but the only one surviving in substantially
complete form.is catalogued by the field archaeologists as H6, contains the lyrics
for a hymn to Nikkal, a goddess of Ugarit/Canaan and later of Phoenicia. She is a
goddess of orchards, and fertility whose name means "Great Lady and Fruitful
“her origins as a goddess goes to an earlier period of time where she was called
Ningal, was daughter of Enki, god of sweet waters and crafts, and Ninikuga,
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goddess of reeds and marches. She herself caught the attention of Nanna the
moon-god and became his wife. Hurrian cult hymn or A Zaluzi to the Gods, or
simply h.6), making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated
music in the world. While the composers' names of some of the fragmentary
pieces are known, the fragment h.6 is an anonymous work. The fragment h6 was
deciphered by Professor Anne Draffkorn Kilmer.

●Map of Ugarit location and The Entrance to the royal palace at Ugarit, where the
Hurrian songs were found.

● Ningal NIN=GREAT, GAL=LADY Drawing which the Hymn to Nikkal is inscribed

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As we come to conclusion that the music at first was performed for religious
rituals, in the case of fragment h6, is dedicated to goddess Nikkal, to provide a
fruitful season to the orchards, music back then it appears to have its roots in the
temples called Ziggurat Sumerian TEMEN.NÍ.GÙR (U). (RU) meaning "house
whose foundation creates terror, king courts and worship of gods, Musicians
would purify their hands before playing the instruments such as the Lyre. The
music was religious. Another reason for the music was kept in these places is that
the manufacturing of such instrument were very expensive, we find that a
millennium later smaller lyres appear which was affordable for general public.

Sumerians, used the heptatonic scale first; using 7 note scales, the instruments
that was used is the lyre, drum, which was excavated in 1929 by Sir Leonard
Woolley, in Ur was made of Silver, and in 1960 the British museum decided the
reconstructing of the lyre, by prf.Richard Dumbrill, who narrates that for the first
time they found out it was made of silver not wood or leather, as they thought, it
was made with purpose to not let the strings be detuned by humidity or weather
change, and the most interesting part is that the tuning knots are just like similar
to guitar string knot of today, the strings were made of pig gut, after long
researches and measurements the strings were made and placed on the model
lyre and when measuring the frequency of the middle string gave 294 Hz which is
the note D,

Amazingly The tuning of the lyre was mentioned in a cuneiform text cataloged
CBS176.which names the strings, the first the second string the third string (thin)
the fourth string created by the god Ea. fifth string. Fourth string of behind third
string of behind second string of behind and behind string. This makes 9 strings.

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The strings were named 1-išartum, 2-embūbum, 3-nīd qablim, 4-qablītum, 5-

kitmum, 6-pītum, and 7-(nīšGABA.RI/nis tuhrim).The central note is the D and
the fifth string from D up would be an A and fifth down would be a G and from G
fourth up will be the note C. Fifth up from upper A, which become note E,it forms
a pentatonic scale G-A-C-D-E,by tuning the B note on the third string and from
there up a fourth tuning it F would make a tritons the order would be from lowest
string to highest string.F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B,11 Strings mode of F and mode of
G and mode of A.and in comparison with the order of string tons and the note.
One of the most significant developments in recent musicology has been the
transcription and interpretation of a number of cuneiform musical texts dating
from the second millennium BC. It has been established that Neo- Babylonian
music, and probably Old Babylonian music too, was based on seven diatonic
heptachords. So far, eight cuneiform music texts have been published: Tablets
cataloged (1) N3354 + N3355 + N7745 + N7679; (2) UM 29-15-357 (+) N3020; (3)
UET VII 74 (U7/80); (4) UET 6/3 388; (5) BM 65217 + BM 66616; (6) CBS 10996;
and (7) UET VII 126 (Nabnitu Tablet 32); and (8) CBS 1766.With respect to
documentary evidence requiring musicological interpretation, four of these texts
are particularly significant:UET VII 126; CBS 10996; UET VII 7andCBS 1766.Very
little actual notated music seems to have survived. The four texts just listed
contain lexicographical and mathematical knowledge, associated with the strings
of instruments, and which may also be related to the Akkadian language texts.

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Sexagesimal (base 60) is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with
the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, it was passed down to the
ancient Babylonians, and it is still used — in a modified form — for measuring
time, angles, and geographic coordinates. The Babylonian priest-mathematicians
seem also to have associated particular numbers with certain of their gods. The
god-numbers relevant to our present purpose are 60 = Anu; 50 = Enlil/Ninurta; 40
= Ea; 30 = Sin; 20 = Shamash; 15 = Ishtar; and10 = Gibil/Nusku/Bel Marduk. And
the notes of each string were related with the days of the week and planets.

UET VII 74: This is an Old Babylonian tablet from about 1800BC. It contains
detailed instructions for the tuning/modulating of a nine-stringed instrument, by
means of tightening/sharpening (Chapter I), or loosening/flattening (Chapter II) of
one of the components of the ‘unclear interval’ named ( la zaku),which modern
musicians would call the tritone. However, as described in the text, this cyclic
procedure works for falling scales only. Tablet IV (a) illustrates the tuning method
described in Chapter I of the text,

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TABLET CBS1766

Musical instruments of Uruk period (ca 4000 BC - 3100 BC):

Excavations at the Royal Tombs of Ur clearly indicate that there was music in
Ancient Mesopotamia at least as far back as 2500 BC as is evidenced by this
portion of a sounding box from that period showing harp and drum players.

Instruments of Ancient Mesopotamia include harps, lyres, lutes, reed pipes and
drums.

Drums (Lillis): A Babylonian plaque from about 1100 B.C., now in the British
Museum, depicts a large, ovoid drum on a very short stem, reaching from the
ground to the player's waist- perhaps some 90 centimeters (3 feet) or so high-

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and struck by a man with his bare hands: this is called “Lillis " , the prototype of
the goblet drum. The body was made of clay, and the head of the drums used a
bull skin, which had rituals to make the skin the cow should be brought to the
temple and stay for a while the priest spells some words in the cow ears and after
that it was Slaughter to make the drum head with the skin. The sound of the
drums called BALAQ meaning calling of the god.

The Silver Pipes of Ur: Silver flute from tomb PG 333. Ur ± 2500 BC. Beside the
stringed instruments flutes were excavated from the royal tombs. The instrument
might have had a reed mouthpiece. It certainly covers a diatonic scale, possible
from C-D-E-F-G-A.

The Flute: (em-bū-bu) the original text from the Epic of Gilgamesh that contains
the reference to “a flute of carnelian” comes from the last 5 lines of column 3 of
the front of a cuneiform table. Carnelian is a semi-precious reddish-brown stone
that was mined and processed in the East. It was used as early as 4000 BC in
Mehrgarh, in present-day Pakistan and the site one of the earliest centers of
agriculture and herding in South Asia, beginning in about 7000-5500 BC.

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Lute (pantur): the oldest members of the lute family of string instruments first
appear in the archaeological record more than 6,000 years ago in Ancient
Mesopotamia. However, in the late '90s, The British Museum acquired yet
another Mesopotamian cylinder seal showing a plucked lute being played by a
female lutenist. This new acquisition, BM WA 1996-10-2-1, had been dated to be
from Ancient Sumer's Uruk Period (c.4500-3100 BCE), making it at least 800 years
older than seal catalogued no: 89096.

BM WA 1996-10-2-1 1 seal 89096