Private Investigations

qablite 3 irbute 1 qablite 3 šahri 1 titimišarte 10, etc.

This is the notation in this lineAfter Dumbrill, The archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East (Victoria, 2005).. It consists of Akkadian words followed by numbers. To give you some point of reference, the two series of three vertical cuneiform signs next to each other stand for ‘3’. These numbers indicate either time intervals between notes, or the number of times a note should be played. Alternatively, they could explain which variation of the dischord is to be played in relation to the starting note and mode of the notation.

This musical notation is completely different from our modern staff notation. The words before the numbers are the Akkadian names of strings on a lyre or harp (like the ones in figs. 8 and 9). Such instruments had around 9 strings which were identified by their names. These can be discerned from tuning texts (written instructions on how to tune lyres). However, it is debatable whether the words refer to single strings, or dichords, harmonic pairs of strings that are played simultaneously. Notably, this system does not express the pitches that the strings produce, because that all depends on the mode (or scale) of the song.