Hear the World’s Oldest Identified Track, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” Written 3,400 Years In the past

Do you want previous timey music?

Splen­did.

You possibly can’t get extra previous timey than Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6, which was dis­cov­ered on a clay pill within the historic Syr­i­an port metropolis of Ugar­it within the Nineteen Fifties, and is over 3400 years previous.

Actu­al­ly, you may — a sim­i­lar pill, which ref­er­ences a hymn glo­ri­fy­ing Lip­it-Ishtar, the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Isin (in what’s now Iraq), is previous­er by some 600 years. However as CMUSE studies, it “con­tains lit­tle greater than tun­ing instruc­tions for the lyre.”

Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 presents meati­er con­tent, and in contrast to 5 oth­er tablets dis­cov­ered in the identical loca­tion, is suf­fi­cient­ly properly pre­served to permit archae­ol­o­gists, and oth­ers, to take a crack at recon­struct­ing its track, although it was not at all straightforward.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia emer­i­tus professional­fes­sor of Assyri­ol­o­gy, Anne Kilmer spent 15 years analysis­ing the pill, earlier than tran­scrib­ing it into mod­ern musi­cal nota­tion in 1972.

Hers is certainly one of sev­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions YouTu­ber Hochela­ga sam­ples within the above video.

Whereas the orig­i­nal pill provides spe­cif­ic particulars on how the musi­cian ought to place their fin­gers on the lyre, oth­er ele­ments, like tun­ing or how lengthy notes needs to be held, are absent, giv­ing mod­ern arrangers some room for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Beneath archaeo­mu­si­col­o­gist Richard Dum­b­rill explains his inter­pre­ta­tion from 1998, during which vocal­ist Lara Jokhad­er assumes the a part of a younger girl pri­vate­ly attraction­ing to the god­dess Nikkal to make her fer­tile:

Right here’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly love­ly clas­si­cal gui­tar spin, cour­tesy of Syr­i­an musi­col­o­gist Raoul Vitale and com­pos­er Feras Rada…

And a hang-out­ing piano ver­sion, by Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can com­pos­er Malek Jan­dali, founding father of Pianos for Peace:

And who can resist an opportunity to listen to Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 on a repli­ca of an historic lyre by “new ances­tral” com­pos­er Michael Levy, who con­sid­ers it his musi­cal mis­sion to “open a por­tal to a time that has been all however for­acquired­ten:”

I dream to rekin­dle the very spir­it of our historic ances­tors. To cap­ture, for only a few moments, a time when peo­ple imag­ined the fab­ric of the uni­verse was woven from har­monies and notes. To lux­u­ri­ate in a gen­tler time when the fragili­ty of life was tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed and its each motion was per­shaped within the almighty sense of awe felt for the traditional gods.

Samu­rai Gui­tarist Steve Onotera chan­nels the mys­tery of antiq­ui­ty too, by com­bin­ing Dr. Dumbrill’s melody with Dr. Kilmer’s, strive­ing and dis­card­ing a num­ber of method­es — syn­th­wave, lo-fi hip hop, reg­gae dub (“an absolute dis­as­ter”) — earlier than decid­ing it was finest ren­dered as a solo for his Fend­er elec­tric.

Ama­ranth Pub­lish­ing has sev­er­al MIDI information of Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6, includ­ing Dr. Kilmer’s, which you could down­load totally free right here.

Open them within the music nota­tion mushy­ware professional­gram of your alternative, and may it please the god­dess, per­haps yours would be the subsequent inter­pre­ta­tion of Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 to be fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture…

Word: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our web site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Historical Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That’s ‘100% Accu­fee’

The Evo­lu­tion of Music: 40,000 Years of Music His­to­ry Cov­ered in 8 Min­utes

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­cellphone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Historical Musi­cians Play Actual Clas­sic Rock

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Performs a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Instances

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and creator, most up-to-date­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Well-known: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.