Instruments Used In Ancient Mesopotamia

In ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, much like modern human, had a passion for music. The Mesopotamians and Egyptians incorporated music into most festivities, celebrations, and even funerals. That being said, there was a vast number of different instruments that were used such as; idiophones, membranophones, aerophones, and chordophones. This showed that even in one of the world’s earliest civilization, music played an important role in people’s everyday lives. One of the most known instrument from this time is the Lyre (Figure 1). Having this knowledge, allows a chance to look at how music intertwines into the lives of the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians. The idiophone is one of the simplest instrument of the ones listed. An idiophone produces

Membranophones made by stretching some type of membrane (most common was animal skin) over an open barrel like structure and hitting the stretched membrane to produce sound (Figure 9). Those type of instruments are the ancient version of today’s drums; in contrast, were often used without sticks to hit them. Even though common in Mesopotamia, find membranophones in Egypt is relatively rare. Only in the new kingdom did membranophones become

Chordophones use strings that vibrated manually by a musician to produce vibrations. These vibrations became sound. Different regions had different types of Chordophones. There were several types such as; the harp (Figure 17), Lyre (Figure 18), lute (Figure 19), and psaltery (Figure 20). The harp used strings to produce different types of pitches. Often musicians would hold the harp to their shoulder and puck the strings. As time went on, slight variations of the harp would emerge. Each respective region would also have their own variation of the instrument. The lyre emerged from this, a slight variation of the harp, it formed a U shape and contain strings that were vertical to the instrument . Usually decorated in the fashion of an animal’s body. Each region and era had their own variation on the instrument. However, to the Egyptians, the lyre was a foreign item that they never produce. The harp and lyre were found in ancient times, while the lute and psaltery were only found in the 15th century and 8th century respectively. Both were very similar, strings that were parallel to a sound box. These were the ancient versions of the modern-day guitar. All of chordophones were used for varies event, but the idea behind them were almost the same; plucking string to produce vibrations. Plucking at different length produce different vibrations, thus producing different