Cosmic Music Order in Ancient Mesopotamia

Virtually all known ancient civilizations incorporated musicomythological beliefs and imagery into the daily fabric of their lives. Those beliefs and images almost certainly were directly or indirectly influenced by the cosmic music system of what may have been the first major civilization-Mesopotamia.

Origin of Mesopotamia
The region in southwestern Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was a cradle of civilization from c. 4000 B.C.E. to the sixth century B.C.E. In 538 B.C.E. it became part of the Persian Empire, in which the region remained till it was conquered c. 331 B.C.E. by Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Since then the region has been called Mesopotamia (Greek, "between rivers").

The earliest civilization in the region, and perhaps in the world, developed in the southern part of the area, called Sumer. In Sumer the world's first true cities, such as Ur, evolved in the fourth millennium B.C.E. Sumerians also created the earliest known system of writing (cuneiform).

Just north of Sumer lay the land of Akkad. Sumer and Akkad together formed Babylonia.

Another power in the region was Assyria, which may have originated as a Sumerian settlement but became part of Akkad before growing into a great empire itself. When, c. 625 B.C.E., the southern part of Babylonia (by then Sumer as a separate entity had disappeared) was conquered by invaders called Chaldeans, that area became known as Chaldea.

Each of these nations held power over all or part of Mesopotamia at one time or another. Because the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans inherited the main features of the seminal Sumerian culture, the entire region of Mesopotamia shared a similar belief system.

Cosmic Music Order in Mesopotamia
The Mesopotamians did not leave a complete, systematic written record of their music theories. However, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.E.) apparently studied in Mesopotamia and took its system back to Greece, and it was the Greeks who left written records about Mesopotamian music.

According to those records, the Mesopotamians organized a cosmic music order based on a spiritual interrelatedness between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The Sumerians, c. 3000 B.C.E., developed cuneiform writing and a base-60 number system, both of which they utilized to describe their gods, the universe, and human life. (McClain)

Their gods were assigned numbers that encoded the primary ratios of music, with each god's number (or ratio) corresponding to the number (or ratio) that supposedly produced the god's function in the Sumerians' acoustic theory of nature. (McClain)

An (or Anu), the "father" and the original head of the pantheon, was associated with the number 60. His ratio to the base number, then, was 60/60, or 1:1 (in terms of string-length or tube-length ratios that produce the basic intervals of music), representing the music interval of a unison.

Enlil, the earth god, who became head of the pantheon c. 2500 B.C.E., was assigned 50. His ratio was 50/60, or 5:6, a minor third, and he was also believed to generate the major third (4:5).

Ea (or Enki), the god of waters and the organizer of the earth, was 40. His ratio was 40/60, or 2:3, a perfect fifth.

Sin, the moon god, was 30 and defined the octave as 30/60, or 1:2.

Other gods were assigned other numbers and functions.

The Sumerians thus created an extensive tonal-arithmetic model for the cosmos, in which the physical world was understood by analogy with the spirit world of the gods. Music, mathematics, science, religion, art, and poetry were all fused in this belief system. (McClain)

Influence of Mesopotamian Cosmic Music Order
The Mesopotamian system gave birth, in particular, to three ideas that later came to be called the music of the spheres, the doctrine of ethos, and the theory of numbers.

The music (or harmony) of the spheres developed from the Mesopotamian idea that the universe was constructed according to music ratios and that heavenly bodies produced music as they revolved.

The seeds of the doctrine of ethos lay in the Mesopotamian belief that various qualities of music-a cosmic force-could evoke like qualities in people. For example, appropriate music could banish grief or fear.

The theory (or efficacy) of numbers was that number itself possessed an active force and had properties that were sacred attributes. Such sacred numbers, especially 3 and 4, were integral to the structure of both music and the universe. Those numbers lay behind the ratios producing the basic intervals of music: 1:2 (1+2=3) for the octave, 2 (half of 4):3 for the fifth, and 3:4 for the fourth. Among the basic structures in the world were the triangle (with 3 sides) and the quadrangle (with 4 sides), and there were 7 (3+4) recognized planets at that time (in ancient astronomy the term planets was applied to all of the known heavenly bodies that moved against the stars in the sky-the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).

The Mesopotamians made cosmic correspondences between music intervals and the seasons: the unison for spring, the octave for summer, the fourth for autumn, and the fifth for winter. In other words, spring stood to summer in the interval of an octave, to autumn in the interval of a fourth, and to winter in the interval of a fifth.

The Mesopotamians imagined that a perfect harmony existed in the universe and that humans, by creating music whose principles reflected cosmic order, could attune themselves and their society to that perfect harmony.

Ancient Egypt, China, India, and Greece were among the civilizations that later adopted musicomythological ideas similar to those of Mesopotamia.
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