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FEMUSINDO.com - The earliest known song recorded in writing is called "Hurrian Hymn" or "The Hurrian Hymn" which dates back to around the 13th century BC (BCE).
The text of this hymn relates to increasing fertility. The hymn refers to making offerings and drinks to the Moon Goddess, Nikkal.
It refers to giving offerings and libations (sesame oil) to the god, and placing ritual objects (tin) at the feet of the god's statue.
The bottom of the tablet (below the double line) contains musical instructions, written in Akkadian.
Found at the Ancient Ugarit Site
The tablet was found at the ancient Ugarit site (contemporary Ras Shamra), 1 kilometer from the Syrian coast. The original tablet is in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus.
Ugarit was a city known as a cosmopolitan center in the late Bronze Age (14th and 13th centuries).
This is due to the fact that the region was a gateway to trade on the Mediterranean coast, and the fact that it was constantly contested by the great powers in the east (Mittanni, northern Syria), south (Egypt) and north (Hatti).
The cosmopolitan character of Ugarit during this period is evidenced by the multilingual nature of texts found there, such as the Hurrian Hymn which uses Hurrian for its lyrics, and Akkadian for its musical notation.
Earliest Musical Notation
“The Hurrian Hymn” is the earliest known example of musical notation. It is written on a clay tablet (about the size of a smartphone), in cuneiform.
Cuneiform is the earliest known form of writing, which uses a stylus (usually a reed) to make fine incisions in wet clay.
Cuneiform is a complex writing system, used to write several different languages (as our alphabet is also used to write different languages).
Discovered During Site Excavations
The tablet contains the words of the song (lyrics) in Hurrian, and musical instructions (or “notation”) in Akkadian.
Akkadian is an early Semitic language, belonging to the same language family as Arabic and Hebrew. In contrast, Hurrian is unrelated to any contemporary language, and is poorly understood.
From the ancient site of Ugarit 1 km from the Syrian coast there are few other examples of tablets with musical notation, but one example is well preserved (although this too is damaged).
The tablet was discovered during French excavations in the 1950s, in the royal palace archives, along with various other types of texts, such as letters and administrative documents.
Transcribed into Contemporary Notation
The scholarly interpretation of its poorly understood musical notation has been transcribed into contemporary notation.
This allows the song’s musical notation to be interpreted and played uniquely at each location as it makes its circular journey.
The new interpretation of the hymn was commissioned in 2015 by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, which is a center for advanced scholarly research, graduate education, and exhibitions at NYU that cultivates and presents comparative and connective investigations of the ancient world. (*)
Photo Source: Circlethroughnewyork.com
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