![]() The rounded soundbox and randed shape of the rear upright resembled those of a harp while the similarity of the stag to the two copper stags, as well as its use in the context of a musical instrument, raised the question of whether the stag was part of the instrument. Although Woolley carefully and accurately recorded and described the lyre as he excavated it, its unique shape and the equally unique presence of the stag soon raised questions. This sheathing and other non-perishable parts were all that survived and defined the lyre. The wooden soundbox had been covered with a single silver sheet which ran unbroken from side to side over the base, while a separate narrow strip completely covered its top. ![]() Unlike the “Ram,” however, each branch was tipped by a single spade-shaped leaf. Like the “Ram,” the stag’s head was flanked by two branches, with a central branch at his chin. The boat-shaped lyre lay on the face that is now its “front.” The figure of a silver stag (identified as a roe deer, native to the northern grasslands rather than the southern alluvial plain of Ur) stood with his front hooves supported by the branches of a copper tree, just like the goat in the “Ram in the Thicket.” His rear hooves stood on the top of the soundbox and conformed to its width, while the front upright of the instrument passed between his horns. It was found with two box lyres now in the British Museum, London, and the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, and near a pair of badly corroded figures of copper roe deer standing in trees and set on a rectangular base (see Fig. The boat-shaped lyre was excavated during the 1928-29 season in the so-called Great Death Pit (designated PG 1237), the same grave that yielded the “Ram in the Thicket” (see Rakic, this issue, and Rakic Fig. Nine lyres and two harps were found (see box on Lyres and Harps Compared), as well as other instruments including a pair of pan pipes and perhaps some sistra (rattles). ![]() The general shapes of the instruments were preserved through their precious-metal sheathing or decorative inlays of non-perishable materials, or in some cases, their outlines were identified by the voids left by the perished materials from which they had been made. These were perhaps intended to provide melodic accompaniment for the dead. ![]() Several of the grave pits in this cemetery and a few of the tomb chambers-almost all of the latter had been looted in antiquity-had musical instruments among their grave goods (Fig. Among these is the unique “boat-shaped” lyre, with a silver stag adorning the front. The University of Pennsylvania Museum is fortunate to house some of the earliest actual remains of stringed instruments from the Near East: intricate and beautiful examples from the Royal Cemetery at Ur in southern Iraq, dating to about the middle of the 3rd millennium BC (see Kilmer, this issue). These early prototypes evolved over time into differentiated, often elaborately decorated and revered instruments. Stringed instruments have probably been around since the first time someone stretched a gut, rawhide, or fiber string over a resonator and plucked it. ![]()
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