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oval outline, seems to have an early cognate in a curious lyre depicted on a sherd from Old Smyrna, dating from the first half of the seventh century, though here the soundbox appears very small.30 |
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The other type is a later development, appearing in South Italian vase-painting after about 360 BC. It has been called the 'Italiote kithara'. It differs from all previous Greek lyres in having a rectangular soundbox and (as its arms are straight, continuing the lines of the sides of the soundbox) a rectangular shape overall.31 Lyres of a similar shape had long been current among the western Semites and in Egypt,32 and it may be that the Italiote model, which breaks so markedly with Greek tradition, was an import from the Levant. |
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Bowl lyres (lyra and barbitos) |
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We pass now to the bowl lyres. These did not require the services of a skilled cabinet-maker for their construction, and although at Athens and elsewhere they were turned out by professional instrument-builders, they could in principle be put together by anyonea lonely herdsman, for example. It was the herdsman's god, Hermes, who was supposed to have invented the lyra. The fourth Homeric Hymn describes how he constructed it from materials that lay naturally to hand in his rural environment. He scraped out a tortoise's shell, drilled holes in it, and fitted some lengths of cane into them. He stretched a piece of hide across the open side. Then he attached arms and a crossbar, and strung the frame with seven strings of sheep-gut.33 |
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Words for 'tortoise' (chelys, chelunna) sometimes stand for 'lyre' in poetry. The size and markings of shells depicted in art indicate that the tortoise used was the testudo marginata, whose carapace nowadays grows to between nine and twelve inches in length and four to five in depth.34 The arms may sometimes have been made |
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30 Maas-Snyder, 42 fig. 1. |
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31 See Pl. 17; A.M. Di Giulio in Gentili-Pretagostini, 117-19; Maas-Snyder, 175-8, 192-3. |
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32 See M. Wegner, Die Musikinstrumente des alien Orients (Münster, 1950). pl. 8a (Asiatic Bedouin in an Egyptian painting from the early 2nd millennium) and 5b (Assyrian relief from Zenjirli, 8th c.); Aign, 164f. (North Syrian seals, 8th-7th c.), 314 (N. Syrian grave stele, 8th c.). 160 (Egyptian silver bowl from Cyprus, 7th c.), NG vi. 73 (Egyptian steatite bowl, 6th-5th c.). |
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33Hymn. Hom. Merc. 41-54. Cf. Soph. Ichneutae, 298-320, 374-5, and for other versions of the myth T. Hagg, Symb. Osl 64 (1989), 36-73. |
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34 H. D. Roberts. World Archaeology, 12 (1981), 303; Maas-Snyder, 95. Remains found at Bassae (Arcadia) and other sites, however, are from shells only 15-18 cm. long: P. Courbin, BCH Supp 6 (1980), 93-114 (testudo hermanni hermanni); |
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(Footnote continued on next page) |
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