The World’s Oldest Surviving Music from circa 1950 BC

This is “Musical instructions for Lipit-Istar, King of Justice“ brought back to life by the Ensemble De Organographia. You can find it on their 2000 album Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians & Greeks, in which they play music from various ancient cultures exactly as indicated in the notations written on stone tablets and papyri. Every year archaeologists continue to peel back layers of history, exhuming artefacts from people so ancient to us, they might as well be aliens. One particular find, however, etched onto cracked tablets in fine, deliberate writing, immediately bridged the gap between us and a people who lived over four thousand years ago in the ancient region of Mesopotamia. Music! These were the notations of hymns written in honour of King Lipit-Ishtar (also Istar and Eshtar). Also found along with them was an ancient code of laws, which can be read in this PDF file: It makes the mind wonder wh