8. David and the Divine Lyre The importance of the kinnōr in early Jewish tradition, and royal ideology specifically, is most fully embodied by David. The Bible and Josephus offer detailed descriptions of musical organization under David (ca. 1005–965) and Solomon (ca. 965–930). [1] Some consider these to be retrojections of the Second Temple’s sophisticated musical arrangements back into an imagined Golden… Read more
7. Kinnaru of Ugarit Having now surveyed the lyre-culture of the wider Syro-Levantine sphere, we may now turn to Ugarit, home of the Divine Kinnaru itself. Since Kinnaru does not certainly appear in personified form in any of the city’s narrative texts—although I shall suggest several possible cases [1] —we must approach him first through the evidence for the kinnāru itself. Not… Read more
6. Peripherals, Hybrids, Cognates This chapter presents a selective survey of mainly LBA texts and iconography from cultural areas peripheral to, and closely engaged with, the Syro-Levantine linguistic and cultural sphere in which kinnāru was at home. From a vast body of more general evidence, I have assembled the material bearing most closely on the Kinnaru-Kinyras question. This investigation helps flesh out a larger background for both… Read more
5. Mari and the Amorite Age: The City and Its Music The kinnāru is next attested in the eighteenth century at Mari (Tell Harīri) on the middle Euphrates. The city’s massive archive makes it a type-site for the political dynamics and economic complexities of the period. There is rich evidence for an ‘international’ music-culture, much like that of Ebla or Ur under Shulgi, but currently known in… Read more
4. Starting at Ebla: The City and Its Music The cuneiform texts of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) have now yielded the word kinnārum, nearly a millennium and a half before King David. By ca. 2400, Ebla controlled a sizeable area of upper inland Syria; its dependencies included Karkemish, Alalakh, Hamath, Emar, and Harran. [1] Ebla’s political and commercial interests were quite wide-ranging, extending… Read more
3. The Knr The Mesopotamian material, together with the Divine Kinnaru of Ugarit and further evidence from the Hurro-Hittite world, indicates that the divinization of instruments was one facet of an ‘international’ music culture operative in the BA Near East. Fortunately, the latter enormous subject need not be exhausted here. We may simply focus on the knr, for which there is relatively abundant textual evidence and associated… Read more
Part I: The Cult of Kinnaru 2. Instrument Gods and Musician Kings in Early Mesopotamia: Divinized Instruments Already in the late Uruk period (ca. 3300–2900), reverence for cult-objects is implied by the ritual deposition of ‘retired’ tools from an old temple when a new one was built over it (for example, the Eanna complex at Uruk); the burial of objects including musical instruments and weapons… Read more
Introduction 1. Kinyras and Kinnaru Kinyras of Cyprus Already for Homer, Kinyras loomed on the eastern horizon, a Great King who treated on equal terms with Agamemnon, sending him a marvelous daedalic breastplate as a friendship-gift: Next in turn he donned the corselet round his chestWhich once Kinyras gave him as a friendship-gift.For he had heard a great report on Cyprus—the Achaeans… Read more
Conventions and Abbreviations To keep the main text as accessible as possible, I have presented all Greek in transliteration (retaining accentuation as several key points depend on this); more specialized philological issues are dealt with in the footnotes, where I have not always translated Greek and Latin. Following Assyriological convention, Akkadian words are given in italics, Sumerian in expanded spacing, logograms in capital letters, and determinatives… Read more
Preface Κυπρογενῆ Κυθέρειαν ἀείσομαι ἥ τε βροτοῖσι μείλιχα δῶρα δίδωσιν, ἐφ’ ἱμερτῷ δὲ προσώπῳ αἰεὶ μειδιάει καὶ ἐφ’ ἱμερτὸν θέει ἄνθος —with eternal gratitude for Glynnis, Sylvan, and Helen Kinyras has deep roots on Cyprus. He came to the island, I argue, in the Late Bronze Age, when he had already begun to outgrow his musical roots as a Divine Lyre. Already… Read more
