Music: The Epic Of Gilgamesh In Sumerian

Ive got to say when I came across this on YouTube I was first stupefied then mesmerized.

Being an ancient Sumerian lover as well as a musician this absolutely rocks!!!.



Ive heard a few ancient Egyptian ones, if anyone knows more let me know as this is fantastic.

Coomba98

Edit:

Ancient music I do have are:
* Ambient Egypt.
* Ancient Egypt- A Tribute.
* Ancient Sumerians-Egyptians-Greeks.
* Ankh- The Sound of Ancient Egypt.
* Music From Ancient Rome.

a reply to: coomba98

Well he's no Keith Richards and he probably knew Gilgamesh when he was young.

I prefer the epic of Gilgamesh to the music.

Sorry.

a reply to: coomba98

The "Gishgudi" instrument doesn't appear to exist in any known Sumerian text (I checked on Electronic Text Corpus of the Sumerian Language at Oxford University).

Just sayin'...

a reply to: coomba98

Apparently different text and language:

The Epic of Gilgameš, Standard Version, Tablet XI, lines 1-163, read by Karl Hecker - SOAS, University of London

Also in the video the final bas relief carving appears to be more of an Assyrian headdress and beard than Sumerian (but I could be wrong, there were stylistic similarities between the cultures).

a reply to: chr0naut

Hey digger.

Understand what you have said, however if you have read the epic you would know its like 1/20th of the story.

Apologies I should have posted the users description of the video/music.

The EPIC OF GILGAMESH is the earliest great work of literature that we know of, and was first written down by the Sumerians around 2100 B.C.

Ancient Sumer was the land that lay between the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, in Mesopotamia.

The language that the Sumerians spoke was unrelated to the Semitic languages of their neighbors the Akkadians and Babylonians, and it was written in a syllabary (a kind of alphabet) called "cuneiform".

By 2000 B.C., the language of Sumer had almost completely died out and was used only by scholars (like Latin is today).

No one knows how it was pronounced because it has not been heard in 4000 years.

What you hear in this video are a few of the opening lines of part of the epic poem, accompanied only by a long-neck, three-string, Sumerian lute known as a "gish-gu-di".

The instrument is tuned to G - G - D, and although it is similar to other long neck lutes still in use today (the tar, the setar, the saz, etc.) the modern instruments are low tension and strung with fine steel wire.

The ancient long neck lutes (such as the Egyptian "nefer") were strung with gut and behaved slightly differently.
The short-neck lute known as the "oud" is strung with gut/nylon, and its sound has much in common with the ancient long-neck lute although the oud is not a fretted instrument and its strings are much shorter (about 25 inches or 63 cm) as compared to 32 inches (82 cm) on a long-neck instrument.

For anyone interested in these lutes, I highly recommend THE ARCHAEOMUSICOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST by Professor Richard Dumbrill.

The location for this performance is the courtyard of Nebuchadnezzar's palace in Babylon.
The piece is four minutes long and is intended only as a taste of what the music of ancient Sumer might have sounded like.

Hope this helps, but you gotta say its some nice music.

As Teal'c would say.... Indeed.

Coomba98

Edit

"The gods heard their lament, the gods of
heaven cried to the Lord of Uruk, to Anu the god of
Uruk: ‘A goddess made him, strong as a savage bull,
none can withstand his arms. No son is left with his
father, for Gilgamesh takes them all; and is this the
king, the shepherd of his people? His lust leaves no
virgin to her lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor
the wife of the noble. "


No virgin left untouched!

a reply to: coomba98

Already posted last year

www.abovetopsecret.com...

to which I responded...

Nice however sounds very "western" I dont think there is any evidence of what Sumerian music would sound like...

a reply to: coomba98

Cool video

a reply to: coomba98


I would love to Tenacious D sing this song and rock that guitar with the pick of destiny.

a reply to: coomba98

OK After some checking, it does appear that there are some tablets that have been grouped together with the epic which include these words.