Hint: It’s not “The dog ate my homework!”
Here’s my final, way cool snippet of archaeological info I learned from writing Submerged Hopes. Although this April, an Assyrian clay tablet was reconstructed, representing a near-complete ancient song from 3400 years ago, the oldest complete musical composition is the Seikilos epitaph, which dates from the first or second century B.C. and was engraved on a cylindrical tombstone, or stele. This artifact served as the inspiration for the piece in Submerged Hopes.
It was first discovered in 1883 in Turkey, and the base was partially cut off so it could stand straight, to serve as a pedestal for a potted plant belonging to the railway director’s wife. The symbols and lines incised above the lyrics indicate the melody. It’s a brief, poetic entreaty to enjoy life, because it’s ephemeral, and was a dedication from Seikilos to his wife. It resides in a museum in Copenhagen now. If you check the first link below, halfway down on the right is a recording of the song, in the Greek dialect of the time.
Honorable mentions include a couple of Delphic hymns from 158 B.C., the Oxyrhynchus hymn (the oldest known Christian Greek hymn, from an Egyptian papyrus), The Phos Hilaron (often called Lumem Hilare, the lamp-lighting hymn, the oldest complete hymn that is still widely used by the Greek Orthodox Church today though it dates from the early 3rd century B.C.), Te Deum, most likely written by Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine in 387 CE (and still used by the Roman Catholic Church), and lastly, Sumer Is Icumen In (also called Summer Cannon or Cuckoo Song, the oldest existing English song and the first recorded use of the word “fart.”) It dates back to medieval England in the mid-13th century.
Here’s a link to the Seikilos epitaph:
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