The Sound of Silence

This vertical break is just one of the many parts that had to be put back together during the restoration process of this object. To many, maybe even you, this tablet, which is about as big as a smartphone, may not look very exciting at first glance, but there is something about this weathered and battered clay tablet that surprised everyone when scholars were able to reconstruct it from a pile of broken fragments. It is this tablet that may hold the key to unlocking an important aspect of ancient Mesopotamian culture and society: the sound of their music.

Music played an important role in life. Music accompanied laborers in the fields, soldiers on campaign, kings in palaces, and priests in temples. It was just as ubiquitous as it is nowadays.

One thing however remains elusive: its sound. Yes, we may have found actual instruments (Fig 1), reliefs that depict musical performances (Fig 2), and written instructions on how to tune lyres, called tuning texts (Fig 3) See Kilmer, ‘Musik A. I. In Mesopotamien,’ in Ebeling et al. (eds.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Meek - Mythologie (Berlin, 1997), 463-482. However, the richness of the evidence still does not tell us the complete story.

To give us that extra sonic dimension to history, scholars turn to this tablet, containing a text known as Hurrian Hymn no. 6.