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The "Golden Lyre of Ur" or "Bull's Lyre" is the finest lyre, and was given to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. [10] Its reconstructed wooden body was damaged due to flooding during the Second Iraqi War; [11] [7] a replica of it is being played as part of a touring ensemble. [2] The "Golden Lyre" got its name because the whole head of the bull is ...
A depiction of a singer and a lyre player entertaining guests at a banquet c. 2500 BCE. Music was a normal part of social life in Mesopotamia. Detail from the Standard of Ur. British Museum, London. [1] Music was ubiquitous throughout Mesopotamian history, playing important roles in both religious and secular contexts.
The lyre (Hittite: zinar; Summerogram: GIŠ.d INANNA 'Ishtar-Instrument' after the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar) is the best attested musical instrument. The textual and archaeological evidence distinguishes between small and large lyres. The two kinds of lyre could be played one after the other, but probably never at the same time.
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]
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]
While similar clay heads have previously been found in Mesopotamia, the Bahra 1 discovery is the first such in the Gulf region, archaeologists from the University of Warsaw, who are part of the ...
Copper figure of a bull from the Temple of Ninhursag, Tell al-'Ubaid, southern Iraq, around 2600 BCE. The Kesh temple hymn, Liturgy to Nintud, or Liturgy to Nintud on the creation of man and woman, is a Sumerian tablet, written on clay tablets as early as 2600 BCE. [1]