In 1988, Robert Fink published an article in
Archaeologica Musica
describing how a scholar was able to translate tablets from the ancient
Levantine city of Ugarit. These tablets, which date back to about 1,400
B.C.,
contain a form of musical notation:
For
fifteen years Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer puzzled over clay tablets
relating to music including some excavated in Syria by French
archaeologists in the early '50s. The tablets from the Syrian city of
ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) were about 3400 years old, had
markings called cuneiform signs in the hurrian language (with borrowed
akkadian terms) that provided a form of musical notation. One of the
texts formed a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with
notation in the world. Finally in 1972, Kilmer, who is professor of
Assyriology, University of California, and a curator at the Lowie Museum
of Anthropology at Berkeley, developed an interpretation of the song
based on her study of the notation (fig. 1).
Michael Levy, an expert on the lyre, performed the composition. It sounds like this:
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