Antiquities Exhibits

Orpheus is best known as a musician that could play so beautifully he charmed even the most violent animals.  As such he is portrayed in numerous mosaics, paintings, and on ceramics.  So I was surprised to see a red-figure calyx krater attributed to the Villa Giulia Painter and dated to 460-450 BCE depicting Orpheus being violently attacked by Thracian women, one with a spear and one with an axe. I realize taste in music is quite personal but this extreme response is so antithetical to all of those peaceful images I have seen of Orpheus surrounded by mesmerized animals that I had to research this event further. According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus' lost play Bassarids , Orpheus, towards the end of his life, disdained the worship of all gods except the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus at Mount Pangaion to salute his god at dawn, but, like Pentheus, was ripped to shreds by Thracian maenads for not honoring his previous p...

This morning while browsing artifacts in the collections of the Getty Villa, I came across this exquisite gilded silver sculpture of a Triton forming the handle of an oinochoe.  As I described in a post a couple of years ago, the original sea god, Triton, was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite according to Hesiod's Theogony. Triton is usually represented as a merman, with the upper body of a human and the tailed lower body of a fish. At some time during the Greek and Roman era, Tritons became a generic term for mermen in art and literature. A female version (tritoness) was eventually introduced as well. Triton was said to dwell with his parents in  a golden palace claimed to be located at Aegae on the island of Euboea in a passage from book 5 of Homer's Iliad. It describes how  Poseidon "lashed his long-maned horses and drove to Aegae, where he had his famous palace" after having destroyed Odysseus' raft with a storm. Later in Book 13 of the Iliad, Poseidon "...

An aulos or tibia (Latin) was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology. Though aulos is often translated as "flute" or "double flute", it was usually a double-reeded instrument like the modern oboe, but with a larger mouthpiece, and its sound—described as "penetrating, insisting and exciting"was more akin to that of the bagpipes. Although used for martial music, the aulos is more frequently depicted in other social settings. It was the standard accompaniment of the passionate elegiac poetry. It also accompanied physical activities such as wrestling matches, the broad jump, the discus throw and to mark the rowing cadence on triremes, as well as sacrifices and dramas. Plato also associates it with the ecstatic cults of Dionysus and the Korybantes. Although aristocrats with sufficient leisure sometimes practiced aulos-playing as they did the lyre, after the later fifth century BCE the aulos became chiefly associ...

The ancient Olympic Games in Greece included contests of trumpet playing in 396 B.C.E. These contests were judged not by musicality but by volume of sound. The instrument used by the Greek trumpeters was the Salpinx, a reported copy of which is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This Salpinx measures 157 cm. and is made of thirteen cylindrical parts made of ivory with a bell made of bronze, as is the mouthpiece. But, signal musicians used as an integral part of a military organization appear first in the Roman Legion. These musicians, called aenatores, utilized a wide variety of trumpets, and signals were sounded on these instruments which the Romans inherited from the Etruscans. The Etruscans were superb metallurgists and smiths, and must have been skilled in the making of bronze or silver trumpets. A collection of forty-three signals were used in the Roman Army. Instruments in the Roman Legion included trumpets such as the Tuba which was conical shaped and about 117 cm. ...

In Greek mythology, Syrinx was a forest Nymph. In her attempt to escape the affection of the god Pan (god of the wild, shephers, and flocks with the hindquarters, legs and horns of a goat), she was transformed into a water-reed or calamos (cane-reed). Then, Pan cut several reeds, placed them in parallel one next to the other, and bound them together to make a melodic musical instrument. Ancient Greeks called this instrument Syrinx, in honour of the Muse, and Pandean, or Pan-pipes or Pan-flute, after Pan. The Syrinx, a predominantly pastoral instrument for the Greeks, was adopted by the Etruscans who played it at their festivals and banquets called it a fistula. The Romans adopted both Pan, whose Roman counterpart was Faunus, father or Bona Dea, and the Syrinx from the Greeks and the Etruscans, and they too played it at their banquets, festivals, as well as in religious and funeral processions. Despite Homer's account of the chaste nature of Odysseus' wife Penelope in "The ...

 The origin of the tympanum (tambourine) is unknown, but it appears in historical writings as early as 1700 BCE and was used by ancient musicians in West Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Greece and India. The tambourine passed to Europe by way of merchants or musicians. Tambourines were used in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome where they were known as a tympanum. Worshipers used the instrument during the rites of Dionysus, Cybele, and Sabazius. The instrument came to Rome from Greece and the Near East, probably in association with the cult of Cybele. The first depiction in Greek art appears in the 8th century BCE, on a bronze votive disc found in a cave on Crete that was a cult site for Zeus. The tympanum is one of the objects often carried in the thiasos, the retinue of Dionysus. The instrument is typically played by a maenad, while wind instruments such as pipes or the aulos are played by satyrs to produce frenzied music to induce an ecstatic state. The tympanum was the most common...

The earliest reference to the word lyre is in Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script.  In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family of stringed instruments. A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest which, in ancient Greek tradition, was made out of turtle shell. Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, makes the bridge, which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; since the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper no...

The harp, the Egyptians' favorite musical instrument, was used as early as the Old Kingdom. The harp depicted on many mastabas is an arched instrument with a long curved handle and few strings. The angle harp, also called a trigon, invented in the East during the second millennium BC, first appeared in Egypt during the New Kingdom. The two types of harps resulted in a wide variety of shapes and decoration. The instrument grew in popularity throughout the Greek-Roman period. It was used both for private purposes, where it accompanied songs and dances, as illustrated in tomb decors, and for religious purposes, to accompany prayers to the gods.  The musician held the harp upright, the wood frame against his chest, and plucked the strings with his fingers. These strings, a modern addition, were probably originally made of gut. The lack of musical notation system in Egypt and the fact that we do not know the diameter or tension of the original strings means that we cannot have an...

"Rhythm and Ritual: Music of the Ancient Americas" March 26 - August 15, 2020 at the Museo de las Americas in Denver, Colorado. This exhibit includes 60 objects from the Denver Art Museum's ancient Americas collection dating from 1000 BCE to 1530 CE. It will also include 3D-printed versions of ancient instruments that visitors will be able to touch and play to provide a closer look at the musical cultural experiences of ancient  Mesoamericans. If you attend after June 6, you can also explore the ReVisión: Art in the Americas exhibit in the newly renovated Martin Building of the Denver Art Museum, too. This exhibit presents 180 objects from ancient America dating from 100 BCE to today. Image: Ancient Mesoamerican musical instrument on display at the Museo de las Americas in Denver, Colorado courtesy of the museum.