Hurrian songs

en.wikipedia.org

54 points·tintinnabula··10 comments

Tolkien's "Black Speech" may have been inspired by Hurrian. I prefer the original in this case, I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZatnTPhYWc

Fascinating. I speak a language from the area that still uses some Hurrian vocabulary, I always imagined these guys are my distant ancestors. Would be cool to actually hear the songs...

There's a link on the bottom of the Wikipedia article - A Hurrian Cult Song from Ancient Ugarit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZatnTPhYWc

That is beyond cool :) Thanks

Turkish I suppose? What are some surviving Hurrian words?

Armenian. Mostly agricultural terms AFAIK. The word for apple (xnzor) is one that I remember.

> The tablet is in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus.

Shit, I hope IS doesn't blow the museum up or something . . .

"Astonishingly, there are no known terms corresponding to a single note"

While perhaps counter-intuitive, that actually makes a lot of sense, tell the person the interval to play not the note itself. I think people new to music would pick up music much more quickly if we switched to a system like this. In my limited experience, one of the biggest early hurdles in learning music is making terms with intervals > notes.

Does anybody know what instruments they used back then to accompany these songs, or was it just singing? Perhaps a type of flute?

Apparently a harp like instrument:

> The tablet h.6 contains the lyrics for a hymn to Nikkal, a Semitic goddess of orchards, and instructions for a singer accompanied by a nine-stringed sammûm, a type of harp or, much more likely, a lyre. One or more of the tablets also contains instructions for tuning the harp.

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