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Greek lyres the strings are of equal length. In a harp, on the other hand, the strings are attached to an arched or angled neck fixed at one end of the soundbox, and they meet the soundboard at an oblique angle. They lie in a plane perpendicular to the soundboard, not parallel as in the case of the lyre, and they are of conspicuously differing lengths. In a lute the relation of the strings to the soundbox is similar to that in a lyre, but instead of the two arms and crossbar there is a single extended neck along which the strings run and against which they are pressed to shorten the vibrating length and obtain different notes. |
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Lyres, harps, and lutes were all in use in Mesopotamia well before 2000 BC, and widely established in west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean in the second millennium. The Greek instruments have their own features and history, but they are visibly related to oriental models. |
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The lyre makes its first appearance in a pavement graffito at Megiddo, Israel, dated to about 3100 BC. From early in the third millennium it is attested for the Sumerians, as a massive instrument with up to eleven strings. Similar lyres are represented in artefacts of the Hittite Old Kingdom in the first half of the second millennium. A lighter, more portable version was developed by the western Semites and spread to Babylonia and Egypt.3 |
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These oriental lyres had a more or less rectangular soundbox and were often asymmetrical, with one arm longer than the other, a slanting crossbar, and strings of unequal length. The lyres depicted in Minoan and Mycenaean art, on the other hand, are symmetrical and have a round base. The number of strings, where determinable, is usually seven or eight, though the lyre depicted in a fresco from the palace at Pylos has only five, and one vase sherd from Tiryns shows only three. In some cases, including one of the earliest representations, a Middle Minoan II sealstone from Knossos (c. 1900-1700 BC), we can see that the player supported the lyre against himself by means of a sling attached to the further arm of the instrument and looped round his left wrist, and that he used a plectrum attached by a |
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3 See B. Bayer, The Material Relics of Music in Ancient Palestine and its Environs An Archaeological Inventory (Tel Aviv, 1963), 26f.; Sachs. HMI; Rimmer; NG under Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Lyre. |
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