Music of the Gods in Ancient Mesopotamia

In ancient Mesopotamia, music did not just accompany religious ceremonies. It served as the main vehicle for understanding and communicating with the gods, who were conceived as being musical in their basic nature.

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.

Music of the Gods
Early Mesopotamian beliefs and music practices retained prehistoric associations between music and the voices of spirit-animals.

That association was reflected, for example, in Mesopotamian art, where animals were portrayed playing musical instruments and where gods, kings, and priests were illustrated wearing animal body parts to symbolize that the great men's powers-effected through their vocal pronouncements-were analogous to the powers of the sonically conceived spirit-animals.

As late as 312 B.C.E. elaborate ceremonies were held to fix bull hide to the head of a sacred Babylonian drum.

Eventually, the voices of spirit-animals became the voices of gods. The gods, in fact, were differentiated in terms of their voices. Ea (or Enki), the god of the deep sea, was associated with the drum, the sound of which personified his essence. Ramman, who commanded the thunder and the winds, was the "spirit of sonorous voice." The goddess Ishtar was known as "the soft reed-pipe." (Farmer, 231)

It was such associations, "in which sound, as the anima of all phenomena, was used to adjure and conjure benevolent and malevolent nature, that were the foundation upon which the later elaborate temple services of Mesopotamia were built" (Farmer, 231).

Temple Music
Mesopotamian music-based temple rituals were extensions of the Neolithic ceremonies held at celestial-related megaliths. "The monumental temples of the Sumerians were images of the cosmos....Inner connections between divine house and divine service, and hence between temple and music, were here expressed" (Wiora, 48).

Mesopotamians worshiped many gods, who, it was believed, actually lived in the great temples. Religious rituals included music performed by large ensembles of singers and instrumentalists playing harps, flutes, reed pipes, and other instruments.

The most prominent citizen in every temple city was the precentor, who knew the secret formulas for reaching the gods through cantillation. Each chant had a special quality that "fitted it for communion with a chosen deity or caused it to have a definite magical effect" (Crossley-Holland, 14).
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