* Astronomy

Syrian tablet fragment shatters long-held beliefs about origin of music

The tablet sits in a quiet corner of the National Museum of Damascus. To the casual visitor it could be nothing more than another artefact housed in an institution brimming with such relics. Indeed, at the time of my visit, the ancient tablet of the Hurrian Hymn barely distracts any of the trickle of tourists who journey through the institution's west wing.
It is, nevertheless, a deeply significant fragment from Syria's past. Possibly even the most important point on the trail that leads from the earliest and most primitive forms of musical notation to today's sheet music.
Thought to be 3,400 years old, this relic has been in Damascus since 1955, following its discovery by a group of French archaeologists in the coastal town of Ugarit.
The artefact records the Hurrian Hymn, a song directed to the goddess Nikkal. Ugaritans worshipped a number of deities, each one specific to the various parts of their lives. Nikkal, meaning "Great Lady and Fruitful", was the goddess of the orchards.

Source

The exact lyrical content of the Hurrian Hymn remains partly concealed, although a translation undertaken by Hans-Jochen Thiel in 1977 is considered closest to the original's spirit:

(Once I have) endeared (the deity), she will love me in her heart,
the offer I bring may wholly cover my sin,
bringing sesame oil may work on my behalf in awe may I ...
The sterile may they make fertile.
Grain may they bring forth.
She, the wife, will bear (children) to the father.
May she who has not yet borne children bear them.