Sumerian Lyres Are Buried with the Dead at Ur

During excavations begun in the 1920s at the Royal Cemetery in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, archaeologists uncovered the remains of several elaborate stringed instruments, four of which are now known as the Lyres of Ur. Found in graves dating to the Early Dynastic III period, between roughly 2550 and 2450 BC, these artifacts are among the oldest surviving stringed instruments known. The expedition was conducted jointly by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology under the direction of Leonard Woolley. The instruments consisted technically of three box lyres and one harp, though they are frequently categorized together as lyres.

The instruments were buried in elaborate communal interments, positioned among the skeletal remains of attendant women. One attendant was found resting against an instrument with her hand placed where the strings once ran. Because the original wooden frames had completely decayed over more than four millennia, excavators preserved their silhouettes by pouring liquid plaster into the hollows left in the soil. Nonperishable components made of precious metals, stone, and shell survived in place, allowing researchers to reconstruct the original forms of the instruments.