Hittite music is the music of the Hittites of the 17th–12th century BC and of the Syro-Hittite successor states of the 12th–7th century BC.
Understanding of Hittite music is based on archaeological finds and literary source material. Hittite texts mainly describe the use of music in religious contexts. The basic musical elements were instrumental music and singing, as well as shouting and other noises, like clapping. Because of the small amount of evidence, Hittite music is poorly understood compared to Mesopotamian and Egyptian music of the same period.
Cultural and chronological variation The inhabitants of the Hittite empire did not belong to a single ethnicity. The north, up to the Black Sea, was inhabited by the Hatti, which had a large influence on Hittite culture. Their language, Hattian, was regularly used in Hittite religious rituals. The Luwians, who were closely related to the Hittites, lived in southern Anatolia, and it seems that the horn played a particularly important role in their religious rituals. Several song introductions in the Luwian language are transmitted in Hittite texts. Influence from the Hurrians who lived to the east of the Hittites only came relatively late. In the later period of the Hittite empire, they had a great influence on the Hittite mythology. The oldest complete piece of musical notation is a Hurrian hymn from Ugarit.Anne Draffkorn Kilmer: "The Cult Song with Music from Ancient Ugarit: Another Interpretation." Revue d’Assyriologique. Vol. 68, 1974, pp. 69–82, at p. 69.
Hittite musical history can be divided into three periods. The oldest evidence from Anatolia is archaeological finds of noise-makers which are classified as pre-Hittite. The best understood period is the music of the Hittite empire. After the fall of the empire around 1180 BC, there were several small Syro-Hittite principalities in southeastern Anatolia and Syria. The Luwian texts from this period provide no information about music, but several sculpted relief scenes contain detailed depictions of musicians, alongside various other scenes of daily life. With the final conquest of these states by the Assyrians in the 7th century BC, evidence for Hittite culture and thus Hittite music disappears.
Evidence
The textual evidence for Hittite music comes mainly from Bronze Age archives of the Hittite capital Hattusa. These texts in Hittite cuneiform deal mainly with music for religious contexts. The texts provide detailed information on when singing, recitation, or dancing should occur in a ritual, which musical instruments should be used and who should play them, as well as when no music should be played. Unlike Mesopotamia and Egypt, there are no known texts on music theory.
The little archaeological evidence that there is consists largely of depictions on ritual vessels and on stone reliefs. Musical instruments or their components are rarely recovered, in comparison with the situation in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Some relatively well-preserved noise-makers, such as rattles, clash cymbalsPaar bronzene Zimbeln. Zentralanatolien, um 2000 v. Chr. ø 11,5cm. Kreisrunde Scheiben mit stabförmigem, konischem, hohl gearbeitetem Griff, der am oberen Ende fünf breitgeschlagene Spitzen aufweist, die wahrscheinlich einen Knauf aus Holz(?) hielten. Image and sistrums have been recovered from pre-Hittite times. Cult vases from the early Hittite period, such as the , the , and the Hüseyindede vases have depictions of people playing music, often accompanied by acrobats and sacrifices.
From the late Hittite period there are several stone reliefs with musical groups, often accompanied by jugglers, such as those from Carchemish, Kahramanmaraş, Sam'al, and Karatepe. They show Mesopotamian influences. At Karatepe, Greek elements have also been detected. An 8th century orthostat from that site is the oldest known depiction of an aulos player with a ().Schuol, Hethitische Kultmusik, p. 131
Instruments Hittite texts mention many musical instruments, not all of which can be certainly identified. A problem for understanding the Hittite names for musical instruments lies in the fact that no bilingual texts or word lists which deal with music are known to us. Even many of the Akkadian terms for musical instruments are not yet entirely certainly understood. Names of Hittite musical instruments may be transmitted to us in Hittite, Luwian or Hattian languages. Yet others are recorded in Sumerograms, so their actual Hittite names are not known to us.
For understanding how instruments it can be helpful to know whether an instrument was blown (Hitt. paripariya-), plucked (Hitt. ḫazzikk- or ḫazzišk-), or drummed (Hitt. walḫ-) – the last two terms were used for noisemakers, percussion instruments, and string instruments; the first term only for wind instruments.de Martino. "Musik. Bei den Hethitern," RdA, p. 484. Rarely there is other information on the construction of the instrument which can enable a clearer identification. A final method of identifying named instruments is the relative frequency of references to the instrument in texts and imagery.
Lyre The lyre (Hittite: zinar; Summerogram: GIŠ.dINANNA 'Ishtar-Instrument' after the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar) is the best attested musical instrument. The textual and archaeological evidence distinguishes between small and large lyres. The two kinds of lyre could be played one after the other, but probably never at the same time. Lyres were played by musicians and cult-singers – in texts, the only named lyre players are women.
The large standing lyre (Hittite: ḫunzinar; Sumerogramm: GIŠ.dINANNA.GAL 'large Ishtar instrument') was about two metres high and is shown in art as being played by two men simultaneously.Rainer Michael Boehmer: "Von zwei Musikanten gespielte Leiern." in Heinrich Otten et al. (ed.): Hittite and other Anatolian and Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Sedat Alp. Sedat Alp’a armağan. Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara 1992, pp. 67 f. The number of strings is not certain. They often appear in cult texts, usually accompanied by singing or played along with a drum or other instruments. It is possible that the sound box was also used as a percussion instrument.
The small lyre (Hittite: ippizinar; Sumerogramm: GIŠ.dINANNA.TUR 'small Ishtar-instrument) had around ten strings and was played during drinking ceremonies by cult-singers, usually on its own, without any accompaniment. It was seldom held or played by a man.
Like other cult and temple equipment, lyres could be worshipped as divine. Sacred lyres were anointed and given offerings of drink and food. Since some texts refer to the "sweet news of the lyre", it is possible that the lyre was considered to be an intermediary between the offers of a sacrifice and the deity receiving the offering.
The oldest depictions of lyres in Anatolia and North Syria come from the first half of the third millennium BC (, Carchemesh, Urkesh). There are images from the second millennium BC from Kültepe, Tarsus, and Mardin.Åke Norborg: Ancient Middle East Lyres (= Musikmuseets Skrifter. Volume 25). Musikmuseet, Stockholm 1995. All of these early depictions come from cylinder seals, whose small size means that few details can be made out beyond their five or six strings.
The lyres on the İnandık vase are asymmetrical. They have a square sound box and two arms shaped like a swan's neck which terminate in the heads of an unidentifiable animal. The cross-bar is attached to the arms and itself terminates in animal heads at both ends. The seven strings were fastened to the sound box with a tailpiece. It is not clear how the strings were tuned. The Boston Fist, a Hittite drinking vessel in the shape of a fist, with a depiction of an offering scene for the weather god has two asymmetrical box lyres, which are not decorated.
Bird and animal head decoration are also found on lyres from the Aegean, like the lyre-players in the Mycenaean palace at Pylos and in Ancient Egypt, where the lyre first appeared around 2000 BC.Schuol: Hethitische Kultmusik, pp. 57f., 104f; Hans Hickmann: Ägypten (= Musikgeschichte in Bildern. Series 2, Volume 1). Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1961. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the sound boxes of lyres were often depicted as reclining bulls or with the protome of a bull.Schuol, Hethitische Kultmusik, pp. 104f.
In Late Hittite reliefs, only hand lyres are depicted, which take various forms and are different from the Old Hittite lyres. At Karatepe there is a depiction of a lyre which bears a striking resemblance to the ancient Greek phorminx.Schuol, Hethitische Kultmusik, p. 73
Lute
The long-necked lute (Sumerogram: GIŠTIBULA – the traditional Hittological transcription of the Akkadian tigidlûMiguel Civil, "The Tigidlu Bird and a Musical Instrument." Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires (NABU). 1987, p. 27.) is also well-attested and could be played alone or accompanied by singing or dancing. In Hittite rituals, the lute played an important role along with the lyre, which was very much unlike the situation in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the lute only appeared at the beginning of the 18th dynasty.Schuol, Hethitische Kultmusik, p. 110
The meaning of the Akkadian word tigidlû used to be unknown, but it was revealed by a word list from Emar that there was a three-stringed tigidlû instrument, which suggests a lute, and the reference to a "traveling tigidlû" in this list fits well with a lute.Theo Krispijn: "Musical ensembles in Ancient Mesopotamia." in Richard Dumbrill, Irving Finkel (ed.): Proceedings of the International Conference of Near Eastern Archaeomusicology Held at the British Museum, December 4, 5 and 6, 2008. ICONEA Publications, London 2010, pp. 135–150 (PDF).
Based on artistic depictions, the Hittites used lutes with relatively small sound boxes and long fingerboards, which resemble the Pandura later used by the Greeks and Romans. Lutes were also known in Mesopotamia and Egypt. There, a pumpkin or other gourd was covered with a resonance board, with a long rod which served as the fingerboard. This fingerboard might be fretted and have two or three strings.
The earliest depiction of a long-necked lute in Anatolia is on a cup from Samsat (Layer XIII, 17th century BC), which shows a man with a particularly broad triangular torso, holding a long-necked lute with a round soundbox. No details can be discerned.Nimet Özgüç: "A Lute Player of Samsat." In Heinrich Otten u. a. (Hrsg.): Hittite and other Anatolian and Near Eastern studies in honour of Sedat Alp. Sedat Alp’a armağan. Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara 1992, pp. 419–423; Schuol: Hethitische Kultmusik, p. 110.
In Hittite depictions, the lutist hold the relatively small soundbox in the curve of their right elbow. The strings were strummed with the right hand or with a plectrum that was tied to the instrument with a string. The fretted fingerboard was held up with the left hand. The number of strings is not absolutely clear, but may have been either two or three.
The lutes in artistic depictions are built in a number of different ways. The clearly recognisable lutes on the İnandık vase have an oval soundbox with six sound holes. The lute on the Sphinx Gate at Alaca Höyük on the other hand has an octagonal soundbox with ten small sound holes, which is often referred to in general works as the earliest image of a guitar. While the strings with which the strings were tied to the head of the fingerboard were often left hanging loose in the Bronze Age, in Late Hittite times, they were tied to long cords which hung down and were tied to a knot underneath, as was also the case in contemporary Mesopotamian lutes.
Harps