Interpretations of an Ancient Song: Babylon

 

 Was Babylon really as bad as people say?

We are, after all, talking of the "cradle of civilization"-- almost a dozen cities which date back some 6000 years (which is old even by Chinese standards!) Ur, Ninevah, Babel, Uruk, Babylon, and Aleppo are just a few of the great cities that flourished between the rivers.

These places, it turns out, were every bit as cosmopolitan as the later cities of the Silk Road. Dozens of languages co-existed side-by-side-- with six of the major languages sharing the same cuneiform script. The languages (which were mostly unrelated to each other) were used interchangeably-- or even in side-by-side translations--hinting at what must have been a surprisingly sophisticated world.

As linguistic scholar extraordinaire Nicholos Ostler tells us,

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbors who spoke different languages or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language; but also by contrast, the first generalized use of a totally foreign language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumphant of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment 

The Babylonians and their friends were the great list makers (ie memory tools) of the world it seems-- and these lists, written on clay tablets, are what remain so impressive to us today.

Composed of a combination of hieroglyphic characters as well as phonetic symbols their writing system had much in common with Japanese.  Extremely difficult to master, writing things down was left to educated scribes. And, by "writing things down," I mean: use a blunt reed to scratch out what you wanted to say on slabs of clay, which were then fired in a kiln like earthenware pots.

In addition to temples, the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia are known for their  museums and libraries-- yes, libraries (They had to have somewhere to store all the tablets). Palace libraries contained countless numbers of clay tablets written in many languages. Composed in Hurrian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Ugaric, there were unending lists, measures and astronomical data. There were also texts on medicine and tales of a Great Flood. All of this, remember, predates the Ancient Greeks by 1000 years and the Bible by even longer.

Thousands and thousands of these clay tablets have been uncovered. The world's first private (ie royal) library was discovered in what was the ancient state of Ugarit, located on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Populated by the Canaanites of the Bible, the people of Ugarit had a reputation every bit as morally degenerate as that of the Babylonians. In the city, the oldest (so far) clay tablet was unearthed, dating back 3400 years.

And, what was this oldest (thus far discovered) piece of cuneiform writing about?

Out of all those endless lists of transactions and fruits and diseases that the ancients seemed to like jotting down, the oldest surviving piece of writing is----a musical score-- which, of course, makes it the oldest musical score on earth.

Not only is it music, but it has vocals and musical notation as well (written at the bottom of the tablet).

The tablets had been broken in two and were discovered about two decades apart. When the pieces were put together, though-- well, it became a puzzle. How to reconstruct music written down in a language now dead with no instructions on the tuning of the instrument?

The song itself  turns out to be a sad hymn about an infertile woman praying to the Moon Goddess to grant her a baby. It is very sad and somehow very moving as well. The music was for a harpist (a lyrist) who played facing the vocalist much as shown in the picture at top. Many scholars have worked at reproducing the ancient song. The most recent attempt by a Dutch professor and musician is here. It is truly beautiful. The Dutch scholar based his rendition on the content of another recently discovered tablet which had instrument tuning instructions. Basing his song on these tones, he reproduced the music at a concert in Chicago in the late 1990s. (The video is embedded in the article).

And here is another, much earlier atempt. Made by a professor from Berkeley after 15 years of study, this version includes a very ancient form of harmony (which had been thought to be a technique totally absent from ancient musical traditions). This earlier one in particular is so like the chanting and music one hears in a Greek Orthodox Church today that it took me by surprise. The music is in the Western "do-re-mi" scale, which is perhaps why it seems so strangely familiar to us today-- considering that it is the world's oldest song.

Finally, it should be pointed out that while found in Ugarit, the tablet was actually written in the Hurric language, which at the time was a language going extinct. Scholars surmise that perhaps the tablet was placed in the library as much for its musical content as it was an effort at preserving a relic of a dying language.

I like to imagine the antiquaniarian impulse in people so ancient themselves. My man Huizong would have liked that, I bet.

**

I've only just started it, but I'm finally reading Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word. The book addresses the rise and fall of languages in history. Not only about languages dying their slow and painful deaths (as thousands of languages today, he tells us, are just one step away from the grave), but more interestingly, why some languages become world languages (for example, English today).  

The obvious answer is that powerful countries' languages become powerful too. That is to say, "world powers make world languages." That certainly was the case with English and Spanish-- both languages which had their rise during their countries' colonial periods of expansion. 

It makes sense, and yet, Ostler tells us that this is not the case and that there is more involved:

As soon as the careers of languages are seriously studied-- even Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Sanskrit, and English-- it becomes clear that this self-indulgently tough-minded view is no guide at all to what really makes a language capable of spreading.

So, according to Osler, we have Latin making great inroads along the Western parts of Pax Romana but making almost no impact at all toward the East (In Greek speaking areas). Or, in my part of the world, Mongolian made almost no impact anywhere; in fact no foreign conquest dynasty had much impact on China, and Persia also has remained stunningly intact for thousands of years. Yes, the plot thickens...

 I would think this all has less to do with the languages being spread as with the cultures doing the embracing or rejecying of foreign languages, but we'll have to see what Ostler says....

Review: Empires of the Word

And:  John Derbyshire on Empires of the Word

 

 Was Babylon really as bad as people say?

We are, after all, talking of the "cradle of civilization"-- almost a dozen cities which date back some 6000 years (which is old even by Chinese standards!) Ur, Ninevah, Babel, Uruk, Babylon, and Aleppo are just a few of the great cities that flourished between the rivers.

These places, it turns out, were every bit as cosmopolitan as the later cities of the Silk Road. Dozens of languages co-existed side-by-side-- with six of the major languages sharing the same cuneiform script. The languages (which were mostly unrelated to each other) were used interchangeably-- or even in side-by-side translations--hinting at what must have been a surprisingly sophisticated world.

As linguistic scholar extraordinaire Nicholos Ostler tells us,

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbors who spoke different languages or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language; but also by contrast, the first generalized use of a totally foreign language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumphant of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment 

The Babylonians and their friends were the great list makers (ie memory tools) of the world it seems-- and these lists, written on clay tablets, are what remain so impressive to us today.

Composed of a combination of hieroglyphic characters as well as phonetic symbols their writing system had much in common with Japanese.  Extremely difficult to master, writing things down was left to educated scribes. And, by "writing things down," I mean: use a blunt reed to scratch out what you wanted to say on slabs of clay, which were then fired in a kiln like earthenware pots.

In addition to temples, the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia are known for their  museums and libraries-- yes, libraries (They had to have somewhere to store all the tablets). Palace libraries contained countless numbers of clay tablets written in many languages. Composed in Hurrian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Ugaric, there were unending lists, measures and astronomical data. There were also texts on medicine and tales of a Great Flood. All of this, remember, predates the Ancient Greeks by 1000 years and the Bible by even longer.

Thousands and thousands of these clay tablets have been uncovered. The world's first private (ie royal) library was discovered in what was the ancient state of Ugarit, located on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Populated by the Canaanites of the Bible, the people of Ugarit had a reputation every bit as morally degenerate as that of the Babylonians. In the city, the oldest (so far) clay tablet was unearthed, dating back 3400 years.

And, what was this oldest (thus far discovered) piece of cuneiform writing about?

Out of all those endless lists of transactions and fruits and diseases that the ancients seemed to like jotting down, the oldest surviving piece of writing is----a musical score-- which, of course, makes it the oldest musical score on earth.

Not only is it music, but it has vocals and musical notation as well (written at the bottom of the tablet).

The tablets had been broken in two and were discovered about two decades apart. When the pieces were put together, though-- well, it became a puzzle. How to reconstruct music written down in a language now dead with no instructions on the tuning of the instrument?

The song itself  turns out to be a sad hymn about an infertile woman praying to the Moon Goddess to grant her a baby. It is very sad and somehow very moving as well. The music was for a harpist (a lyrist) who played facing the vocalist much as shown in the picture at top. Many scholars have worked at reproducing the ancient song. The most recent attempt by a Dutch professor and musician is here. It is truly beautiful. The Dutch scholar based his rendition on the content of another recently discovered tablet which had instrument tuning instructions. Basing his song on these tones, he reproduced the music at a concert in Chicago in the late 1990s. (The video is embedded in the article).

And here is another, much earlier atempt. Made by a professor from Berkeley after 15 years of study, this version includes a very ancient form of harmony (which had been thought to be a technique totally absent from ancient musical traditions). This earlier one in particular is so like the chanting and music one hears in a Greek Orthodox Church today that it took me by surprise. The music is in the Western "do-re-mi" scale, which is perhaps why it seems so strangely familiar to us today-- considering that it is the world's oldest song.

Finally, it should be pointed out that while found in Ugarit, the tablet was actually written in the Hurric language, which at the time was a language going extinct. Scholars surmise that perhaps the tablet was placed in the library as much for its musical content as it was an effort at preserving a relic of a dying language.

I like to imagine the antiquaniarian impulse in people so ancient themselves. My man Huizong would have liked that, I bet.

**

I've only just started it, but I'm finally reading Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word. The book addresses the rise and fall of languages in history. Not only about languages dying their slow and painful deaths (as thousands of languages today, he tells us, are just one step away from the grave), but more interestingly, why some languages become world languages (for example, English today).  

The obvious answer is that powerful countries' languages become powerful too. That is to say, "world powers make world languages." That certainly was the case with English and Spanish-- both languages which had their rise during their countries' colonial periods of expansion. 

It makes sense, and yet, Ostler tells us that this is not the case and that there is more involved:

As soon as the careers of languages are seriously studied-- even Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Sanskrit, and English-- it becomes clear that this self-indulgently tough-minded view is no guide at all to what really makes a language capable of spreading.

So, according to Osler, we have Latin making great inroads along the Western parts of Pax Romana but making almost no impact at all toward the East (In Greek speaking areas). Or, in my part of the world, Mongolian made almost no impact anywhere; in fact no foreign conquest dynasty had much impact on China, and Persia also has remained stunningly intact for thousands of years. Yes, the plot thickens...

 I would think this all has less to do with the languages being spread as with the cultures doing the embracing or rejecying of foreign languages, but we'll have to see what Ostler says....

Review: Empires of the Word

And:  John Derbyshire on Empires of the Word