Music in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt

Abstract

Almost all categories of instruments were represented in Mesopotamia and Egypt, from clappers and scrapers to rattles, sistra, flutes, clarinets, oboes, trumpets, harps, lyres, lutes, etc. As early as 2600 B.C. harps and lyres are attested at Ur. In the New Kingdom, Egypt borrowed several instruments from Mesopotamia: the angular vertical harp, square drum, etc. The organ, invented in Ptolemaic Egypt, is first attested in its new, non‐hydraulic form in the third century A.D. Hama mosaic. Musical theory, based on the heptatonic system with seven scales and modes is found in Mesopotamia as early as the eighteenth century B.C. This theory is reflected in a musical score written beneath a Hurrite hymn of the fourteenth century B.C.

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