The gu-di instrument
The pictures, above, are of Mesopotamian terracotta reliefs showing lute type instruments from the second millenium BC. From D.Collon and A.D.Kilmer: The Lute in Ancient Mesopotamia, published by the British Museum in Music and Civilization, 1980.
The earliest written reference to an instrument of the lute family appears in a Sumerian cuneiform text known as Shulgi Hymn B.
- I, Shulgi, the king of Ur,
Dedicated myself also to music;
Nothing related to it was too complex for me...
.........
.........
The gu-di instrument that had never been played (before by me),
when it was... brought to me
Of that very instrument I divined its secret,
I was able to set in order as something that had ever been in my hand; Whether to loosen or to fix the strings on it did not escape my hand.
Translation taken from the edition of G.R.Castellino, Two Shulgi Hymns (B,C), Studi Semitici, vol.42 (Rome, 1972).
Thus it appears that lutes could be as old as civilization intself. But more to the point, these instruments, crudely depicted as they are, clearly have three strings. That indicates that there was an underlying musical theory - and many of the names of similar lute-type instruments, in varied cultures, are derived from the meaning three-stringed.
