This Mesopotamian hymn to an ancient goddess is over 3,000 years old.
Nobody knows when mankind started to create and play music, but we now know that the ancient residents of Mesopotamia most definitely were because of the discovery of a remarkable cuneiform tablet. Known as “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” the 3,400-year-old tablet records a tune in praise of the ancient goddess Nikkal.
The Hurrians were a Bronze Age people of the Near East. They had a rich culture, although much of their history and origins are still shrouded in mystery. They left behind clues however, such as a tablet bearing cuneiform discovered in the 1950s in the ruins of the city of Ugarit in northern Syria. The city was a center of trade and exchange with other Near Eastern civilizations, and even kingdoms as far as Egypt. On the tablet are four lines of text in the Ugarit dialect. While the language is difficult to interpret, the Hurrian Hymn No. 6 is clearly the world's earliest extant melody or song.
The “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” tablet is one of 29 musical texts discovered in the palace of Ugarit dating to around 1,400 B.C.E. However, these musical relics are not the oldest ever discovered, although this tablet is inscribed with the oldest full song. A fragment of 4,000-year-old Sumerian musical notation with instructions and tunings for a song about the ruler Lipit-Ishtar predates the “Hurrian Hymn.”
Here's what the song would have sounded like...
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