Have you heard the world’s first hymn? Called the ‘Hurrian Hymn’ it was discovered in the 1950s on a clay tablet inscribed with Cuneiform text, and it is simply breathtaking.
Thought to be over 3400 years old, this oldest surviving melody was found in Ugarit, now part of modern-day Syria, and is dedicated the Hurrians’ goddess of the orchards Nikkal.
The clay tablet text, which was discovered alongside around 30 other tablet fragments, specifies 9 lyre strings and the intervals between those strings – kind of like an ancient guitar tab.
Sadly, this is the only piece of tablet which can now be resurrected and even though the notations used here are slightly different, as the system of music notation we use now wasn’t invented until 1000 AD, it is nonetheless enchanting.
The notation here is essentially a set of instructions for intervals and tuning based around a heptatonic diatonic scale. There’s much more detail about the precise language and instructions here .
The lyrics are very difficult to translate, but one academic has come up with this rendering of them:
‘Once I have endeared the deity, she will love me in her heart,
the offer I bring may wholly cover my sin,
bringing sesame oil may work on my behalf in awe may I’
