Understanding Archaeomusicology

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This book covers about 5,000 years of Near and Middle-Eastern Archaeomusicology. The primary sources come from authentic autographic clay tablets mostly written at the time of their inception, in the Sumerian, Akkadian and Hurrian languages, unlike Ancient Greek musicology, for instance, which only relies on much later copies and translations of elusive originals. It could even be said that these original texts offer more accurate details on the nature of musicology 4,000 years ago than Western musicology can offer about music of the first centuries of the Common Era. There is evidence that the Gregorian modes came from Babylon 4,000 years ago. The corpus of Mesopotamian musicology includes the oldest ever written song about 3,400 years ago in modern Northwest Syria and also gives the name of the scribe, the name of the god to whom the song was dedicated, and most importantly the name of the composer.