The spread of the harp (1)

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The harp is among the most ancient of stringed instruments, being derived directly from the primitive musical bow. The oldest type, the arched harp, retained something of the bow’s basic form: the soundbox was prolonged into a curved neck that formed an arch with it, and the strings were strung across this arch. Arched harps were in use among the Sumerians from 3400 BCE or earlier, and among the Egyptians by the twenty-sixth century. After about 2000 BCE they were displaced in Mesopotamia by the angular harp, in which the neck was jointed to the soundbox at a right angle or (later) an acute angle. This type too reached Egypt after a few centuries. It is depicted in a Cypriote representation of the mid-second millennium, and two more of the twelfth century.

Bibliography

Erik van Dongen

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