The Armour Archive

Now you can hear for yourself the world's oldest recorded song.

A tablet found at Ugarit, and dating to the 13th century B.C., contains in the upper portion the text of Hurrian hymn.

In the lower portion (highlighted in red) it contains a series of numbers and technical terms that have been interpreted as a score rendering the tune to which the hymn would have been sung.

This is then the earliest known musical score in history.

http://128.97.6.202/urkeshpublic/music.htm

Kinda cool.

Well yes, but not in the strict sense, because of the technical difficulties in recreating the actual tune.

The oldest complete tune actually recognized as such is the Song of Seikilos


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyXPpf7Vjo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph

The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone, near Aidin, Turkey (not far from Ephesus). The find has been dated variously from around 200 BC to around AD 100.

Also on the tombstone is an indication that states in Greek "Εἰκὼν ἡ λίθος εἰμί.Τίθησί με Σείκιλος ἔνθα μνήμης ἀθανάτου σῆμα πολυχρόνιον" , "I am a tombstone, an icon. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance".

While older music with notation exists (for example the Delphic Hymns), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition.


Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
Hoson zês, phainou,
While you live, shine,

μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·
mêden holôs su lupou;
don't suffer anything at all;

πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
pros oligon esti to zên,
life exists only a short while,

τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.
to telos ho chronos apaitei.
and time demands its toll

And yet, some 2,000 years later I can play this tune in my lyre....

Yes Eff, it does not matter which one is oldest, but it does matter that we walk in our ancestor's sandals and realize they were men and women as we are...

Drink, and don't be sad.. in 2,000 years men will wonder about us and what kind of people we were...


Glaukos

They won't wonder if all they can find is "death metal."

I'm fascinated by the concept of musical forensics. It's just so COOL -- like opening a tiny crack into a window allowing us to experience the lives of our distant ancestors.

Effingham wrote:They won't wonder if all they can find is "death metal."

Justin Bieber, just sayin'

Or this.

needs more cow bell.

Not OLDEST but incredibly complete for its age.

Mesomedes of Crete was a late 1st.- early 2nd century AD writer, a freedman of Emperor Hadrian. There are 15 pieces known to have been composed by him.

Here is one of the favorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkTgkoOouhY

Hymn to Nemesis
(1st Century C.E.)

(for Voice, Lyra, Psithyra)
"Nemesis, winged one that tips the scales of life,
dark-eyed goddess, daughter of Justice,
you restrain the futile pride of mortals with your unyielding bridle and,
hating hurtful vanity, destroy black envy: below your wheel, always
moving but leaving no trace, the fortune of man turns.
Unseen, you come at once to defeat arrogance;
by your hand you gauge the span of life, and, frowning,
you scrutinize the thoughts of men, you always hold the balance.
Be merciful, hallowed judge, winged Nemesis, life's force.
We honor you, Nemesis, immortal goddess,
victory incarnate with wings unfurled, faultless,
sharing the throne of Justice; you resent human vanity and banish
men to Tartarus below"

I love this kaka.

Effingham wrote:I love this kaka.

Fur Sich


http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mane/index.htm

This site contains the musical fragments found on cuneiform tablets in Ugarit, stemming from about the mid-second millennium BC. They contained text (in Hurrian language) and musical scores of several "songs to the gods", all composed in the same tuning or mode (called nîd qabli). Only one piece, labeled h. 6, is almost complete.

In the same vein, it's the same with a lot of ancient languages. While we can read ancient Egyptian, for example, I don't believe anyone has come up with a truly believable formula for how it was pronounced without basically cribbing huge portions of the Coptic language. Fascinating stuff!

Good point. Dang it.

I wonder if the original guys would even understand "our version" of their songs.

"Dude-- you really have a bad Babylonian accent."

btswanfury wrote:In the same vein, it's the same with a lot of ancient languages. While we can read ancient Egyptian, for example, I don't believe anyone has come up with a truly believable formula for how it was pronounced without basically cribbing huge portions of the Coptic language. Fascinating stuff!

This is most certainly true about Egyptian, but the languages of the Near Eastern ancient world is a complex matter, and there are wide variations in the supposed exactness of how well we've interpreted the symbols into sound. For the most part, it is safe to say that modern linguists are not confident about almost any of the non-Semitic languages and how they sounded. Those Semitic languages that date back as far as the bronze age, such as Akkadian and Sumerian, are also at risk of having sounds that derive heavily from modern linguistic interpretation rather than any hard evidence.

This particular language, Hurrian, is not well-established and is also not an Indo-European language, making it even harder to understand properly. The entire language has thick layers of mystery and decipherment is slow going. That's why the lyrics interpreted on that page are given with such caveats as they are - it's merely one man's attempt to identify the words from the tablet. At that, it seems to be a double translation into English!

-Gerhard