The World’s Oldest Song is a Sumerian Hymn

In the early 1950s, archaeologists discovered clay tablets dating back to 1400 BCE. These tablets were found in the ancient city of “Ugarit,” which is located in present-day Syria, and are written in cuneiform in the Hurrian language. After investigation, it was determined that this is the first piece of music ever discovered and tells of a 3,400-year-old religious hymn.
Anna Kilmer, a professor of Assyriology at the University of California, obtained a translation of this text in 1972 and applied musical notation to it.

Richard Fink claimed in a 1988 article that the current 7-note scale has a history dating back to this Sumerian hymn. This research contradicts the prevailing belief that attributes the current 7-note scale to ancient Greece.

Richard Crocker, Kilmer’s colleague, says that this new discovery “transforms all beliefs about the origins of Western music.”