The oldest surviving melody in the world

Hurrian Hymn N.6, also called the “Hymn to Nikkal” is the most ancient piece of music in the world to have reached us, dating from 3,400 years ago. Nikkal was a Canaanite goddess of fertility (of the soil and of humans).

French archaeologists discovered the melody in 1955 on a clay tablet in the ancient Canaanite site of Ugarit, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast (not far from my mother’s town). I was reminded of it yesterday while listening to Ibrahim Maalouf’s “Levantine Symphony N.1” (extract here).