HURRYIN' TO THE MOON: AKKADIAN MUSIC 101

Clear as mud.

Still thoroughly enjoying Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music (Vol. I): Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. Today, just a bit about the Hurrian "hymn to Nikkal" (= wife of the (Ugaritic) moon god Yarikh, cf. Sumerian Ningal/Nanna couple), also known as Hurrian Hymn 6.

This nice little chunk of over-cooked mud is the oldest substantially complete work of notated music we can lay claim to. It theoretically dates from as early as 1400 B.C. Some sunburned European archeologists discovered the tablet at the site of the Royal Palace at Ugarit.

Of course, there are about one hundred thousand competing interpretations of how the thing actually sounds. This link seems (not exactly an expert judge here) to do a decent job presenting some of the problems and some of the would-be problem-solvers.