What is the ‘oldest’ song?
Some songs stand the test of time better than other, and such is certainly the case for Hurrian Hymn no. 6 (we’re not sure about the other five) a song so old it pre-dates the existence of the Gregorian Calendar.
In this recent piece from MusicThinkTank, contributor Dan Reifsnyder breaks down what we know about the lyrics and composition of what might be one of the oldest songs known to humankind.
“The tablet was discovered in the 1950s in what is now modern day Syria, written in Hurrian — the language of an ancient and now-extinct culture. This presented quite a few difficulties in translation, namely the fact that the Hurrian language was essentially dead and has no obvious modern corollary. Although that it was written in a form of Cuneiform made it eventually possible to decipher to some manageable degree.”
