Harp - Origins

Origins

The origin of the harp goes back to Mesopotamia, The earliest harps and lyres were found in Sumer c, 3500 BCE Several harps were found in burial pits and royal tombs in Ur. The oldest depictions of harps without a forepillar are from 500 BCE, which was the Persian harp of Perspolis/Persia in Iran and from 400 BCE in Egypt. The Harp (Persian: چنگ Chang) flourished in Persia in many forms from its introduction, about 3000 BCE, until the 17th century. The original type was the arched harp as seen at Choghâ Miš and on later third millennium seals (fig. 1a-c). Around 1900 BCE they were replaced by angular harps with verti-cal (fig. 2) or horizontal (fig. 3) sound boxes. By the start of the Common Era, "robust, vertical, angular harps" (fig. 2), which had become predominant in the Hellenistic world, were cherished in the Sasanian court. In the last century of the Sasanian period, angular harps were redesigned to make them as light as possible ("light, vertical, angular harps," fig. 4); while they became more elegant, they lost their structural rigidity. At the height of the Persian tradition of illustrated book production (1300 to 1600 C.E.), such light harps were still frequently depicted, although their use as musical instruments was reaching its end.

• Ancient Persian harps carved in stone

• An ancient Egyptian harp on display in the British Museum