[Encyclios]

Music of Mesopotamia

The music of Mesopotamia followed the different artistic traditions of the peoples who inhabited the lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates, including the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Hittites. Instruments in Mesopotamia included harps, lyres, lutes, flutes, and drums. Many of these were common to neighboring cultures. East African lyres and West African lutes dated to the same period actually retain some characteristics of Mesopotamian instruments (van der Merwe 1989, p. 10).

Excavations of the royal cemetery of Ur, a Sumerian city, and the musical iconography with which the architecture of early historical Mesopotamia was not richly decorated suggest that music was probably very important in the ritual forms typical of Sumerian civilization. Bas-relief specimens in the Louvre from Lagash, for example, show harp-like chordophone instruments.

In the Sacred Texts of Judaism, music is mentioned for the first time (in a reference that seems to allude to a time around 3300/3200 BCE), when Iubal or Jubal, son of Lamec and Ada, is mentioned, of whom it is said that:

[…] was the father of all those who play the zither (or guitar, Hebrew kinnor) and the flute (Hebrew ugab).

Genesis 4:21

Among the Hurritic texts found at Ugarit are the oldest examples of musical writing, dating from about 1400 B.C.[1] In these fragments, the names of four composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya(na), Urẖiya, and Ammiya, were found.