Famous Places Dedicated to Music Part 4.
Ugarit, Syria. Home of the oldest song in human history.
Music has been with us for a very long time already. We knew that for a fact because we knew that the Neanderthals made music too. But there is one song that enchanted the entire music industry and by extension the rest of the world.
The Hurrian Hymn, more commonly known as the oldest song in the history of mankind, was created around 3400 years ago and written down on a clay tablet with cuneiform text.
The tablet was found in a cave in the 1950s in Ugarit that is now part of modern-day Syria, and this cave therefore has a powerful meaning in the history of music. It might be considered the birthplace of all musical tunes that we have today.
As with everything and everyone else, music has an ancestor. While some of us might think that powerful musicians, such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or even the people who lived during the medieval period are possibly the holders of the key that brought music to life, it is commonly known that written music dates way further back in time.
To get back to that specific moment, we have to go back in time. All the way back to the middle and late Bronze Age, or the Second Millenium BC.
Around the 1800s and 1700s BC, there was someone in the smaller regions of Syria who decided to engrave the music he was making in a clay stone so that he or she was able to read the parts of music made over and over again. This way the songs could also be read and played by other people and that’s how these ancient songs became the ancestors of written music as we know it today.
The song itself was written as a song dedicated to a loved one who left, or perhaps someone that the writer of the song worshipped dearly, as the lyrics state;
‘Once I have endeared the deity, she loved 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’
The text written above might not apply completely to the original one, as academic states; “The lyrics are very difficult to translate, but this might be the closest reference to the ancient words written in the clay stone.”
To this day, the place where the cave is located is still visible with bare eyes, and people from all over the world, especially those who are at the very least interested in the history of music, are visiting the site on a daily basis. It therefore has become known to many people as the birthplace of music. Or at least that’s what I should call the most important place in the history of music.