Syria | Hurrian Hymn To Nikkal (1400 BCE)
The Hurrian songs are a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient Amorite Canaanite, city of Ugarit, a headland in northern Syria, which date to approximately 1400 BCE.
-0001-11-30 00:00:00 - Ancient Music
One of these tablets, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal (also known as the Hurrian cult hymn or A Zaluzi to the Gods, or simply h.6), making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world.
While the composers' names of some of the fragmentary pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work.
There were 29 tablets found in Ugait Syria that were from around 1400BC where the Hurrians lived at that time. This was at the end of the Hurrian civilisation. The tablets had the oldest music and oldest lyrics ever discovered written on them. They were hymns to the Hurrian Moon Goddess, Nikkal.
They all had bits missing and we don't know all the Hurrian writing and Hurrian language yet, we only know some of it. Only one of the tablets could be made into a proper song and with music. The tablet is Hurrian tablet number 6, H6.
These tablets were discovered in the early 1950s. It took a long time for the music to be deciyphered and even longer for the lyrics because the lyrics was more destroyed the music. The music would of been played on the instrument commonly used at the time, a lyre.
There are many videos on YouTube of the music and the lyrics of this song being played and sung. Some have longer notes than others, or are faster, because there was no specified timing, there was just notes I think. So you could make various styles of music out of this.
Some of the Hurrian language we know, while some bits we don't so the song would not make that much sense in English since there would be gaps in sentences. There were songs and music before this, but they were not recorded and are lost.
There is one Assyrian tablet with a hymn with music and lyrics from the same time, but these tablets are probably older since the Assyrians succeeded the Hurrians and might of got record/written down music from the Hurrians. The Hurrian hymn H6 is more popular than the Assyrian tablet, because there more versions of H6 and the lyrics for H6 have been deciyphered more than the old Assyrian tablet.
These hymns are not quite completely intact and bits are missing, but they still sound nice. The oldest intact completed song is the Ancient Greek the Seikilos Epitaph. Music and Songs were around before 1400BC, but it was never recorded and is lost.