Music: Mash Mash Mash

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An earthenware tablet, long buried in the Middle Eastern section of the Prussian State Museum, has been found to contain the musical notation for a religious hymn. This notation has been deciphered by Dr. Kurt Sachs, Curator of the Collection of Instruments at the Berlin High School for Music. The tablet comes from ancient Assur, capital of Assyria, and was inscribed in cuneiform characters about the year 800 B. C. It contains three columns: The first is the mysterious music; the second, in archaic Sumerian, an account of the creation of Man from the blood of the gods; the third, a translation of this into Assyrian.

Prof. Sachs first figured out what the ancient notes were called. Here are the first four lines he deciphered: ME ME KUR KUR A A A A A KU KU LU LU MASH MASH MASH MASH

Finally, he discovered the modern musical equivalent of each of these syllables. He concluded that the Assyrians, like the Chinese, had a scale consisting of five different notes, giving much the same effect as that which is produced when one plays on only the black keys of a piano. The tune of this particular hymn turned out to be rather "Chinese" in character, monotonous and plaintive. It was played on a harp which had 21 strings and was probably very popular with the old priests and cutthroats of Assyria.