Lilissu
The lilissu , lilisu ( Akkadian ), Sumerian liliiz, lilís, was a large kettle drum in Mesopotamia . Since the ancient Babylonian period from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC Until around 300 BC The sacred drum , which had an important function in the sacrificial cult , was only allowed to be played by a certain priesthood. The instrument consisted of a bronze corpus , which was covered during the ritual with the skin of the sacrificed black bull. The "divine lilissu" is the oldest known kettle drum.
Babylonian drums
Today's knowledge of the music of ancient Mesopotamia is based on a few references in the Old Testament on reliefs, clay tablets and cylinder seals showing musical instruments and cult scenes. Numerous names of musical instruments can be read in cuneiform texts , which consist of instructions for cult activities, temple inscriptions, texts on economy and word lists. In contrast to the tomb paintings in ancient Egypt , which mostly mention the corresponding linguistic expression in the illustrations, the Mesopotamian names can rarely be directly assigned to a depicted instrument. The only exception is the visually identifiable drum lilissu . There are many more names than distinguishable types of instruments.
The Sumerian-Babylonian music served almost exclusively religious cults; through them a god should be worshiped or asked for something. The long period of time from which texts about the cult of the sacred drum lilissu have been handed down and during which the same gods were worshiped suggests that the idea of music remained constant for a correspondingly long time. Regardless of the constant function of the music, the range of instruments has expanded considerably over time.
The earliest known musical instruments in Mesopotamia are round harps and lyres , which are depicted on clay tablets from the late Uruk period at the end of the 4th millennium. The first rattles , believed to have been played in fertility dances, and membranophones date from the same period . In addition to the oldest name for musical instruments, Sumerian balag (balaggu) , there is the image of a three-stringed bow harp. Balag was obviously the expression for musical instruments in general and also applied to lyres, limiting balag probably meant the most important instrument used in the cult at all times. At least since ancient Babylonian times, balag also or in particular referred to a drum, because drums now came to the fore over stringed instruments. To distinguish between drum and string instrument, the Babylonians added the word for string instrument to giš.balag ( giš means "wood") and the drum to mašak balaggu , corresponding to the earlier name kuš.balag . One name that could refer to a small round rattle drum is kuš.balag.di . Synonymous with this are mašak timbutu and mašak telitu . This would fit the fact that “cricket” was called timbut eqli , literally “drum of the field”.
A clay vessel from the Jemdet Nasr period (around 3000 BC) found in Tell Agrab shows three naked women who may be holding a frame drum in the air with their left hand and beating it with a stick in their right. The depiction could be the oldest depiction of a percussion instrument called the “ shaman's drum ” after its later cultic use , but it cannot be clearly interpreted. In other early depictions, naked women always hold circular frame drums with both hands in the middle in front of their chests. The purpose for which these terracotta figures were made is not entirely clear; an association with fertility cults is considered likely. The position of the hands suggests that there were rattles covered with skin and filled with grains on both sides , which the women did not hit but shook. Until the first half of the 2nd millennium BC Instead of the double-headed rattle, the single-headed small frame drum had become the most important rhythm instrument. The dancers held the instrument in a strict playing position on the left shoulder and probably practiced the way of playing with the fingers of both hands, which is still common today for Arabic frame drums ( Arabic generally tabl ).
In ancient Babylonian times, an hourglass-shaped drum type can also be seen on cylinder seals, the name of which also goes back to the Sumerian word balag . With some hourglass drums standing on the floor, a ring hangs at the top, as if they could be carried with it. They are represented together with bulls' voices and sistras or small cymbals .
A frame drum almost as high as a man can be seen on several steles of the Sumerian rulers Ur-Nammu and Gudea (around 2100 BC) from Girsu . Both of their skins were hit with their hands by a player standing on their side. Such large drums disappeared in Mesopotamia after the Ur III period. Medium-sized frame drums had no tension cords, the skins seem to have been glued to the side of the body.
Boiler drums
From the Old Babylonian period, metal kettle drums were named halhalattu (Sumerian equivalent šèm, generally for “drum” or specifically frame drum), uppu (Sumerian ub ), manzu, samsamu (Sumerian samsam, zamzam ) and lilissu . A corresponding Sumerian word for drum instruments is šen.ḫur.sag.ga. The membrane of the drum was called ḫu-uppu or mašku ša lilisi . The shape of the lilissu is known from a text illustration in a late Babylonian priestly instruction (around 300 BC); the other names are likely to have been the same or at least a similar boiler drum. The lilissu stood with one foot on the floor. How the older Sumerian kettle drums were set up is not known from illustrations. Another name for a big drum was gugallu (neo-Babylonian gugallum ), "big bull".
The so-called instruments were played according to the cult texts by the priest (kalû), among other things in the rituals at the new moon. The halhalattu also accompanied the poem form ersema performed in a certain genre of songs . For large kettle drums that were sacred and pure, they served as portable altars in accordance with the sacrificial scenes depicted on some cylinder seals. According to other illustrations, the drums could also accompany fist fights.
Sacrificial ritual
According to the late Babylonian tablet with priestly instructions, the making or renewal of the lilissu was part of a long sacrificial ritual. The drum body had to be re-covered at certain intervals. A fortune telling priest chose the appropriate day on which a black bull that had not yet been whipped or struck with a whip or stick was allowed to be brought in front of the temple. There, the priest responsible for music and service to Ea ( kalû, for other cults there were differently named priests) first handed over some offerings for Ea and other gods. Ea was the god of human order, wisdom and artistry including music. For the kalû priesthood he was the patron god (kalûtu) .
More offerings and chants followed. Meanwhile the bull was brought in and led onto a sand-strewn red mat. Twelve bronze figures of gods were placed on other documents on the floor. Then the bronze body of the drum was brought in. A priest spoke incantations in Akkadian and Sumerian languages into the ears of the now deified bull. Sumerian had already disappeared from everyday life and was only used as a cult language. After the bull was killed, the priest knelt down in front of his head and spoke three times an incantation, which is to be understood as penance and with which the priest tried to get rid of his responsibility in killing the sacred animal. Then the fur was removed and the heart was burned. The skin was cleaned and treated with various substances, then temporarily stretched over the drum body with a cord running around the edge. The twelve images of gods had previously been placed in the drum for safe keeping. Wooden pegs driven through the skin into pre-made holes all around below the edge of the drum then fixed the skin, which could now be stretched with a bull tendon that ran around the edge in a throat above. On the 15th day after the ritual, the deified drum was positioned in front of the temple, where it was only allowed to be played by certain priests.
With other kettle drums, too, the replacement of the membrane skin was tied to a ritual. A smaller drum with a sheepskin should be strung on the last day of the new moon according to a priest's instruction.
In addition to this sacrificial cult, the bull was revered as a sacred animal and symbol of fertility. For example, the resonance body of the Sumerian bull's lions , which had a greater meaning than the harps, represented a bull's body with its head. The Akkadian word alû could mean “celestial bull” and possibly also the small rattle drum of women, alimbû denoted a mythical type of cattle and at the same time the Animal head on the lyre.
The two archaeologists William Foxwell Albright and PE Dumont drew a parallel between the Mesopotamian bull sacrifice and the great horse sacrifice Ashvamedha of the Vedic religion in India.
The philosophers of science Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend assumed that the Babylonian myths were based on astronomical observations at the time and saw in the drum skin a representation of the constellation Taurus . They compared the function of the bull drum as an instrument for establishing contact with the gods to the shaman's journey to heaven .
literature
- Richard J. Dumbrill: The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. Trafford Publishing (Ebookslib), 2005, ISBN 978-1412055383
- Wilhelm Stauder: The music of the Sumer, Babylonians and Assyrians. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1. Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary Volume IV. Oriental Music. EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stauder, pp. 212, 220f
- ↑ Stauder, pp. 214-216
- ↑ Dumbrill, illustrations pp. 373–381
- ↑ Stauder, pp. 184f, 197f
- ↑ Stauder, p. 185
- ↑ Stauder, p. 218f
- ↑ Dumbrill, pp. 412f
- ↑ Alan Lenzi: SIPTU ul Yuttun. Some Reflections on a Closing Formula in Akkadian Incantations. In: Jeffrey Stackert, Barbara Nevling Porter, David P. Wright (Eds.): Gazing on the Deep: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Jewish Studies in Honor of Tzvi Abusch. CDL Press, Bethesda 2010, p. 162
- ↑ Stauder, pp. 199f
- ↑ Stauder, p. 216
- ^ William Foxwell Albright , PE Dumont: A parallel between Indian and Babylonian sacrificial ritual. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society, No. 54, 1934, pp. 107-128.
- ↑ Giorgio de Santillana , Hertha von Dechend : Hamlet's Mill. An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 1969. Chap. 8: Shamans and Smiths. P. 124f