WORLD’S OLDEST SONG IS 3,400 YEARS OLD AND YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT TODAY
What if the world's oldest song wasn't merely a myth and could still be heard today? The oldest known playable song in the world is "Hurrian Hymn No. 6," which is thought to be approximately 3,400 years old. The hymn, which was discovered in the 1950s in the ancient Syrian port city of Ugarit (now Ras Shamra), serves as a reminder that music served as a medium for spiritual communication and human expression even thousands of years ago.
A hymn glorifying Lipit-Ishtar of the First Dynasty of Isin is believed to predate the “Hurrian Hymn No. 6″ by 600 years. It's impossible to play today, however, because it “contains little more than tuning instructions for the lyre.” In contrast, the tablet containing “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” features cuneiform writing in Hurrian and Akkadian and instructions for musicians’ finger placement on the lyre. Four other tablets similar in nature were also recovered from the Ugarit region, but none of them were legible enough to attempt a musical reconstruction in the same way as the “Hurrian Hymn No. 6.”
After 15 years of investigation, Dr. Anne Kilmer, an emeritus professor of Assyriology at the University of California, finally transcribed the tablet into contemporary musical notation in 1972. The song mentions making libations and offerings to Nikkal, the moon goddess, and makes allusion to promoting fertility. Although there is some guidance on finger placement on the tablet, it skips over the intricacies of the song, including how long to hold a note or even how to tune the lyre.
Because of this, contemporary arrangers who try to play "Hurrian Hymn No. 6" have some creative license. Archaeomusicologist Richard Dumbrill's 1998 rendition uses a singer to express the song's appeal to fertility, whereas Syrian-American composer Malek Jandali's version is performed only on the piano.
Some interpretations of “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” aim for historical accuracy, like the version recorded by Michael Levy, a “new ancestral” composer. Levy plays the song on a replica of an ancient lyre, in a bid to “open a portal to a time that has been all but forgotten.”
On the other extreme, Steve Onotera, also known as the "Samurai Guitarist," transforms the song into several modern styles, including synthwave, lo-fi hip hop, and even reggae dub, before settling on a simple and timeless electric guitar solo. Although the "Hurrian Hymn No. 6" is ancient, its continued relevance today demonstrates that music's ability to unite people transcends time.