Step 6 of 7

More Than A Feeling

The mode, in this case nid qabli, is found in the colophon we saw before, located all the way at the bottom of the tablet. Because this mode also occurs in the tuning texts, we know the intervals between the individual notes and the positions of the fingers that they represent on the 9 strings of a lyre or harpSee Kilmer, ‘Musik A. I. In Mesopotamien,’ in E. Ebeling, B. Meissner, D. O. Edzard, E. Weidner (eds), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Meek - Mythologie (Berlin, 1997), 463-482.. This is the key to translating these foreign words into sounds.