Lyres of Ur

A lyre player from "The Standard of Ur", a Sumerian artefact found in one of the largest royal tombs in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, associated with Ur-Pabilsag, a king who died around 2550 BC. Now in the British Museum...

4 lyres of this type were actually found in royal graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur.

These instruments were not ordinary instruments. They were ceremonial instruments. 

Stele representing a bull-lyre player and singer on the lower register and a priest with a plumb-bob on the upper register. Limestone, period of Gudea, ruler of Lagash, ca. 2120 BC, found in Telloh (ancient city of Girsu). From 1910 History of Sumer and Akkad...

This is obvious from the fact that the Sumerian sign for lyre also means "to praise." You can read about this here. But praise who?

All the lyres have a sound box topped by a bull head, three with a bearded bull head and one with a normal bull head. And no one knows what the meaning of the (bearded) bull head is...Well...

Well, we kind of know that the bearded bull is the symbolic depiction of the sun god Utu/Shamash. Why? Cause in "Enki and the world order" we read  "Utu/Shamash...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..."

But why (lapis lazuli) beard? No one knows...Well...Over 70% of all the water flowing down Tigris and Euphrates comes from the snowmelt in the mountains where these two rivers originate. 

Snowmelt caused by Utu/Shamash, which peaks at the beginning of summer, Apr/May, in Taurus...

Which is why the water level in Tigris and Euphrates also reaches its peak in Apr/May, in Taurus. Which causes the annual flood, the source of life in lower Mesopotamia...

Which is why Utu/Shamash was depicted as a golden bull (Sun in Taurus) with flowing lapis lazuli beard (flowing water)...I talked about this in many of my posts. Like: "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Butt chewing", "Maran"...

BTW, Taurus here is The Old Taurus, the animal calendar marker for the beginning of the calving season of wild eurasian cattle...I talked about this in my post "Cow and calf ivory", "Calydonian boar", "Bull carrying grannary", "Cypriot stamp seal with cow and calf"… 

Seal from Tell Brak

So I think that these harps were used to praise Utu/Shamash, the sun god...

Now interestingly, two of the harps have golden bull head with lapis lazuli beard, on has a golden bull head with golden beard, and one has silver bull head with no beard. Is this significant? I think so. Of course this could all be just me seeing thing again. What do you think?

Anyway, why am I talking about this? Cause of Apollo and his Lyre...Remember that in one of my recent posts about the Apollo I said that I finally realised why he is constantly dragging his lyre with him and insisting to play it weather anyone liked it or not?

In my post "Lyre of Apollo" I already explained that Apollo's lyre was a complex animal calendar marker for Apr/May, Taurus, beginning of the hot, dry half of the year ruled by the (sun) god Apollo...

But I wrote this article in 2022, and I it was only recently that I realised that Apollo is basically Shamash/Nergal. And that all his main attributes are found in Shamash/Nergal mythology of Mesopotamia...Including...the bull lyre...

Remember, Shamash, Sun, can be both life bringing (Apr/May, Taurus) and life taking (Jul/Aug, Leo)...

With Apollo, this is depicted through his two main attributes: bow and arrow and the lyre...

Let me explain what I mean...

As I showed in my two articles "Marble throne of Apollo", "Apollo the great archer" and "Apollo Sminthius", bow and arrow are the symbols of destructive Shamash, in Jul/Aug...Shamash the lion/serpent/dragon...

A Coin depicting Apollo Sminthius (Apollo lord of the mice) with his plague causing bow and a mouse/rat at his feet. 

And I think that the lyre is the symbol of the other, life giving side of sun god Shamash...

But then, I heard that lyre is a great instrument to play while watching the world burn...🙂

That's it. I will write about Ur lyres comics 🙂 at some stage, hopefully soon...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...