Hurrian Hymn no. 6: the oldest musical notation
Himno hurrita n.º 6: la notación musical más antigua
- Date
- c. 1400 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Latakia, Syria
- Credited to
- Scribes of Ugarit (Hurrian tradition)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A clay tablet bearing a hymn to the goddess Nikkal and, beneath the text, musical instructions in cuneiform. It is the oldest surviving notated composition, found at Ras Shamra in 1950.
The tablet (RS 15.30 and fragments) is in Hurrian and the musical interpretation of its signs is highly contested: several incompatible transcriptions exist and there is no consensus on how it sounded.
What it led to
- first modern reconstructions of Bronze Age music (Kilmer, Duchesne-Guillemin)
- study of Mesopotamian music theory (nine-string scales)
- debate on the origins of written musical notation