3. The Knr

The Mesopotamian material, together with the Divine Kinnaru of Ugarit and further evidence from the Hurro-Hittite world, indicates that the divinization of instruments was one facet of an ‘international’ music culture operative in the BA Near East. Fortunately, the latter enormous subject need not be exhausted here. We may simply focus on the knr, for which there is relatively abundant textual evidence and associated iconography. To be sure, this multiform word/instrument does offer an instructive sample of a ‘global economy’ of music. But it is also the very soul of Kinnaru. So a detailed examination of the instrument’s geographical diffusion and cultural position, both practical and symbolic, will illuminate the larger environment from which, I shall argue, Kinyras sailed for Cyprus.

The knr was long known best from Heb. kinnōr, the famous ‘harp’—actually lyre (see below)—of David, with more than forty occurrences in the canonical Old Testament, and many further mentions in the apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Rabbinic literature. [1] The prestigious position which this suggests is paralleled by a wide range of performance contexts, often exalted: sacred psalms, royal praise poetry, triumphal processions and other revelry, musical exorcism, ecstatic prophecy, and even lyric plaints. [2]

The Bible itself, however, is well aware that its kinnōr had had a much more ancient past outside of Israel and Judah. The instrument is mentioned in Canaanite/Phoenician contexts, and among the Aramaeans of the patriarchal age. [3] Its invention is appropriately placed in the antediluvian chapters of Genesis, where it is attributed to Jubal—a seventh-generation descendant of Cain—as part of a larger family of culture-heroes: [4] According to this chronology, the ‘kinnōr’ had existed from time out of mind, long before the emergence of ‘Israel’—symbolized by Jacob—from the larger popular matrix descended from Noah. The passage incorporates a further chronological indicator: the kinnōr arises within a nomadic way of life such as was believed to have characterized the age of the patriarchs. [6] An equally important component of this ancient lifestyle, according to the inclusion of Tubal-Cain, was the working of metals.

This portrait of Lamech’s family has often been connected with an Egyptian tomb-painting from Beni-Hassan, dating to the Twelfth Dynasty in the early second millennium (Figure 3 = 4.1j). [7] It shows a seemingly nomadic troupe—men, women, and herd animals—prominent among whom is a man towards the back who carries and plays the lyre. One obvious explanation for his presence is that music is “the provision of the traveller.” [8] But there is more. The accompanying text identifies the troupe as thirty-seven “Asiatics of Šwt” (‘3mw n šwt), led by a ruler with the Canaanite name of Abî-shar, who were bringing a load of the cosmetic stibium (antimony) to the owner of the grave, a high-ranking noble named Chnumhotep, in the service of Amenemhet II. Here is early evidence for the circulation of Syro-Levantine lyres beyond their home range. That the instrument is found in a kind of royal context—‘accompanying’ a king or chieftain—will find parallels at Ebla, Mari, Ugarit, and elsewhere in the Bible. The group is equally prepared for metalworking: they pack anvil, bellows, and tongs. The parallel to Lamech’s family is certainly striking—although we shall see that the Biblical portrait is but one example of a more widespread association of music and craftsmanship, which remained a productive mytheme in the Syro-Levantine sphere down into the Byzantine period. [9]

Returning to Jubal himself, it seems significant that he has been lodged in a genealogical context. This device is of course natural for representing the development of civilization; it was equally exploited by Philo of Byblos for his comparable Phoenician history. [10] Yet it probably also acknowledges the early existence of musical ‘tribes’ or ‘guilds’ of some sort, with membership at least quasi-hereditary, long before the organization of the First Temple. [11] The evidence for various forms of official musical management in the BA, from Ebla, Mari, and Ugarit—to mention only those that bear most directly on the ‘Bible lands’—lets us appreciate the ‘accuracy’ of Jubal as an ultimate musical ancestor.

We must remember finally the last member of Lamech’s family, Naamah. Although she lacks detail here, her siblings entitle us to expect that she too was regarded as some sort of culture-hero. In fact, extra-Biblical sources show that Naamah was the subject of a lively popular tradition, being associated with songs, laments, and an ancient women’s practice of frame-drumming—before developing a Rabbinic afterlife as a demonic seductrix. [12] As such, she complements the ‘lyre’ and ‘pipe’, which are credited here to Jubal. Together they constitute a full musical range of strings, winds, and percussion, and embrace both male and female musical activity. The overall instrumentation is very close both to the situation at Ugarit and the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls. [13]

The Bible’s memory of an ancient kinnōr is confirmed by relatively abundant lexical and iconographic evidence from the wider NE.

The desire to match ancient instrument names with iconographic representations and physical remains goes back to the earliest phases of historical musicology, when the N-A reliefs offered material for speculation well before enough reliable textual evidence had been amassed to support a broader approach. [14] Yet even now, with dozens of instrument finds and scores of representations, secure correlations are often elusive. When one considers the cultural complexity and chronological immensity of the ANE, it becomes clear that the visual evidence, rich as it is, is but a fragmentary sample.

The knr, however, is a partial exception to this rule. The word itself, like most ancient instrument names, is of obscure origin. [15] Nevertheless, the Jewish kinnōr was clearly not a harp—as rendered in the King James Version—but a kind of lyre. [16] This is seen first in its common translation as kithára in the Septuagint. [17] It is also so glossed in several Greek lexical collections. [18] There is no reason to doubt these equations: the basic similarity of the kithára to various Syro-Levantine lyres must have been obvious to all educated inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean, Hellene or otherwise. [19]

This evidence is corroborated by lyres being the most commonly represented stringed instrument in Levantine and North Syrian art, from the third millennium through the first. [20] In the Levant alone, more than thirty representations are known. [21] Most of the evidence was assembled and discussed by A. Norborg in 1995. Soon afterwards, B. Lawergren compared these with examples from the Aegean, analyzing the whole for regional patterns. [22] My Figures 4 and 5 draw upon their work, incorporating Lawergren’s drawings (and a few others). [23] I have separated Bronze and Iron Age specimens between the two diagrams, as this best reflects historical patterns in which we are interested, especially the EIA Aegean migrations eastward. Such distribution maps should naturally be used with care. One must allow for some variability in how instruments were depicted, and the randomness of finds. Where an object was made is often not where it was found; and foreign instruments may have been depicted locally for various reasons. Nevertheless, some broad patterns can be detected.

Lawergren proposed a basic dichotomy (down to about ca. 700) between ‘eastern’ lyres with flat-based resonators, and round-based ‘western’ lyres typical of the Aegean. [24] We shall see that this division between East and West, and just where the line should be drawn, concerns Cyprus closely (Chapter 11, with further specimens). For now we shall focus on the ‘eastern’ lyres, as being most obviously relevant to Kinnaru.

Lawergren divided his eastern lyres into ‘thin’ (with a substantial ‘rectangular’ subset) and ‘thick’, although ‘large’ and ‘small’ might be more satisfactory, having a basis in ancient usage. [25] Thick/large lyres are attested both in NK Egypt and the Hittite world, leading Lawergren to posit an unattested Levantine analog, which he would identify with Heb. nēbel, often grouped with the kinnōr in the Bible (and having an Ugaritic cognate). [26] But perhaps the Egyptian examples are modifications of imported Anatolian specimens, given the ‘collecting impulse’ otherwise documented for the NK. [27] In terms of scale, the thick/large lyres may be compared with the large bull-lyres of southern Mesopotamia; but despite the third-millennium date of the latter, it is hardly certain that the Anatolian/Egyptian examples derive directly thence. [28]

Thin/small lyres are by far the more numerous, either with outwardly curving arms (often asymmetrical) or a more box-like structure (‘rectangular’), and usually held more or less obliquely. [29] Since the earliest representations (third millennium) are concentrated in North Syria, some now see this as a plausible point of origin not only for the Levantine instruments, but even those going back to roughly the same time in Mesopotamia, where they are found alongside harps. [30] Naturally new discoveries could reconfigure the picture. But we should certainly be cautious about the older tendency to see the history of lyres as part of a more general east-to-west ‘culture drift’ out of Mesopotamia. [31]

Lawergren rightly noted that the earliest attestations of the word knr (see below) are roughly coterminous with the distribution of thin/small lyres. Linguistic and organological evidence thus unite for a secure identification of knr as ‘lyre.’

But we must not be too categorical in our definitions. Given the iconographical fluctuations, which span such a wide geographical and chronological range, knr cannot have been the only name ever applied to all of these instruments. A case in point is the nbl/nēbel. Conversely, the name knr may have been applied to other instruments that do not appear in Lawergren’s chart, perhaps even what modern musicologists would distinguish as harps. (Recall the debate over the identity of the early Megiddo etching, ca. 3200–3000. [32] ) Such modulations might happen at points of cultural interface, where juxtaposition of traditions could be musically fruitful. This point will be important when we come to consider the situation on Cyprus, especially from the twelfth century onwards, when Aegean and Syro-Levantine traditions interacted within an older insular sphere having its own distinct cultural, and hence musical, identity. The result was a rich range of hybrid phenomena that invite analysis into separate original components, but which are ultimately transcendent and distinctively Cypriot. At the heart of this insular tradition is the Greek-Cypriot word kinýra, the interpretation of which, we shall see, calls for some morphological flexibility (Chapter 11).

Within the limitations sketched above, however, it is clear that the word knr will have been known with at least generic force throughout most of North Syria, the Levant, and adjacent areas variously from the third or second millennium onwards. [33] This makes it methodologically sound to examine the textual sources as a coherent body of evidence. One must obviously allow for semantic and ideological variations, which will naturally increase with geographical and temporal distance. It is therefore best to privilege the oldest material, as being most relevant for illuminating divinized instruments generally and Kinnaru/Kinyras specifically. Even so, we shall see that important information is sometimes found in quite late sources.

The earliest certain lexical evidence comes from Syria, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and Anatolia; it includes administrative documents, ancient lexica, mythological and quasi-ritual texts, and more literary narratives. I present here a preliminary survey in chronological order, thereby sketching the terrain to be covered in the following chapters. [34]

The oldest known form of the word is kinnārum, found at the important North Syrian site of Ebla (ca. 2400), written variously as gi-na-ru12-um, gi-na-rúm, gi-na-lum. [35] It was glossed there as Sum. BALAĜ, an important identification given the abundant evidence for the divinization of the balang in early Mesopotamia. [36] Around the same time kinnārum found its way, represented as gi-na-ru12, into at least one southern Mesopotamian lexical tradition, presumably as a loanword from the west; it appears there alongside the balang and another instrument written with a modified BALAĜ sign. [37] The Eblaite forms still show the mimation (final -m), which was largely lost in Northwest Semitic languages during the first half of the second millennium. [38] Eblaite orthography does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants, [39] but the agreement of later forms shows that the unvoiced k- was probably intended. Representation of doubled consonants was also not mandatory by cuneiform convention: [40] at Ugarit (ca. 1250) the word was rendered knr in the city’s alphabetic cuneiform, and as ki-na-rù in the Akkadian practiced by its scribes. But fuller spellings from Mari (ca. 1800), the LBA archives of Alalakh and Emar, and an Egyptian papyrus from the late NK establish geminate -nn- as the usual pronunciation. [41]

The early distribution of kinnāru(m) has induced many scholars to classify knr as a WS word. [42] The situation is complicated, however, by the example from Ebla, since that city’s position between East and West Semitic continues to be debated. [43] Some have therefore supposed that kinnārum was a P-S word, which in Akkadian was displaced by balang or other Sumerian instrument names. [44] And while the trisyllabic structure of knr would certainly accord with a Semitic origin, it remains equally possible that this was an adaptation of an older culture-word. [45]

Related to this linguistic puzzle is the inevitable kinship of kinnārum with both the zinar of Hattian/Hittite tradition, and the zanaru/zannāru of Sumerian and Akkadian. [46] This justifies expanding our scope somewhat beyond knr itself to include further contextual evidence, especially from the Hittite world, whose ritual texts provide valuable detail on the lyre’s use in the royal cult of a LBA society. [47]

That the second syllable of kinnārum normally had long ā is established by Heb. kinnōr—the vocalization of which is provided by the MT [48] —since the specific divergence of the two forms must be explained by the so-called Canaanite Shift, whereby P-S ā developed unconditionally to ō in both Hebrew and the Canaanite/Phoenician dialects. [49] (Despite the disruptions at the end of the LBA, there is no real cultural break between ‘Canaanite’ and ‘Phoenician’: the latter term, reflecting Greek usage, conventionally denotes Canaanite dialects and populations of the first millennium. [50] ) It was long known, on the basis of Canaanite words represented in the syllabic Akkadian of the Amarna letters, that the sound change was generally in place by the fourteenth century. Byblos may be taken as the approximate northern limit of this dialect zone, which thus includes the core Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. [51] The OB tablets from Hazor, however, now show that the Shift was already underway, at least in places, some four centuries earlier. [52] Ugarit, while sharing some innovations with the Canaanite dialects, resisted this particular development—one of the features that give Ugaritic an archaic appearance [53] —whence we find Kinnaru there.

The comparative evidence thus requires us to assume an early Canaanite form ancestral to Heb. kinnōr. Given the present state of excavation in Phoenicia, the evidence for these dialects is largely limited to the representation of Canaanite words in Egyptian sources. [54] But as it happens, Levantine lyres enjoyed a vogue in the NK, following imperial expansion into the region (see Chapter 6). Thus we find a knr alongside two otherwise unattested instruments, perhaps exotic, in the Anastasi Papyrus (ca. 1200)—a satirical portrait of a libertine scribe given to wild women and music. [55] Although Egyptian writing typically did not indicate vowels, scribes of the MK and especially NK developed a quasi-syllabic system, perhaps under the influence of cuneiform, with supplementary letters serving as phonetic complements (matres lectionis) to help represent “foreign names and words, as well as rare or ambiguous Egyptian words and names.” [56] Since this system is employed in the papyrus, it is clear that we are dealing with a Canaanite version of knr. It is represented in transcription as kn-nù-rú—that is, /kinnōru/, /kinnūru/, or somewhere in between. [57]

No certain example of the word has so far emerged from Phoenician inscriptions, neither in the heartland itself, nor in areas of Phoenician/Punic expansion. [58] Yet given the numerous Levantine lyres shown on the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls (ca. 900–600), one cannot doubt the existence of Phoenician dialect forms like *kinnūr or *kennūr. [59]

I emphasize the Canaanite Shift because such a dialectal form must be the source of ‘Greek’ kinýra. [60] I will analyze the abundant lexical and linguistic evidence for this word in due course (Chapters 9 and 11). The question is vital because, despite Ugarit’s importance for producing a Divine Kinnaru and rich material for the practical and ideological status of the instrument itself (Chapter 7), the ‘shifted’ form ‘Kinyras’ indicates that Ugarit was not the immediate and/or only origin of the legendary Cypriot king. One must give serious consideration to traditions that locate ‘Kinyras’ at the Canaanite/Phoenician sites of Byblos and possibly Sidon. [61]

The foregoing survey outlines the main historical and cultural milieux to be examined. The relevant sources provide generous information about the musical and ritual contexts in which the knr was used, as well as its symbolic potency. It is a likely guess that the Divine Knr embodied this total environment, in various regional incarnations potentially coterminous with the instrument itself. This I believe is reflected in the multiformity of traditions connecting Kinyras with Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, and Cyprus. The BA especially will emerge as the time of the Divine Lyre’s greatest potency, thanks to the palace and temple systems that supported the divinization of instruments and other cultic tools.

The stringing and tuning of the knr, like that of other ancient instruments, is a thorny issue. It probably differed regionally and even from musician to musician. One may compare the large variation in string numbers and tuning practices in the local traditions of East Africa, where personal preference plays an important role. [62] This is also suggested by iconographic variety, although one must equally beware the limited reliability of such images: they are not photographs. Nor need regional variations in stringing and tuning be incompatible with shared harmonic conceptions at a deeper level. Consider, for example, the variety of stringing and tuning in modern western instruments, where players nevertheless assume a common tonal apparatus. The same was true of art-music in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, where a single notation and key-system was used by a wide range of professional musicians. [63]

The detailed textual evidence of the Jewish tradition is ambiguous and conflicting. Josephus asserts that the “kinýra, fitted out with ten strings, is struck with a pick, while the nábla, with twelve tones, is plucked with the fingers.” [64] His distinctions are probably too rigid. [65] The Bible itself gives evidence that the kinnōr too could be plucked. [66] In one psalm, it is apparently the nēbel that is given ten strings, although in another, either or both the kinnōr and nēbel could be so understood. [67] In the War Scroll from Qumran, the nēbel apparently has ten strings, since it is to emblazon the standards of ten-men tactical groups. [68]

On these points there arose a tradition of Rabbinic speculation, charting an evolution from the seven strings of David’s kinnōr, to the eight strings the instrument would assume at the coming of the messiah, to the ten strings of a still more distant future (the aforementioned psalms being interpreted as visions). [69] This must depend in part upon imaginative exegesis and dubious textual readings of known Biblical passages, combined with constructions typical of Hellenistic music historiography. [70] The agreement of the Psalms and the War Scroll do give some confidence in the idea of a ten-stringed nēbel (if not the kinnōr). Yet these texts can hardly be taken as sure evidence for the time of David himself (ca. 1000), much less the earlier knr-culture. It is likely enough that further strings were added to Jewish instruments during the life of the Second Temple: such an expansion is well attested for Greek lyres from the later Classical period onwards, and increasing musical sophistication must have characterized much of the Hellenistic world. [71] Relevant here is the Greco-Roman morphological influence on the lyres of the Bar Kokhba coins and in other musical imagery of the period. [72]

It is quite possible, however, that the Rabbinic attribution of seven strings to David’s kinnōr reflects a genuine tradition. The number seven enjoys some a priori plausibility in the context of ANE chordophone music given the heptatonic-­diatonic tunings that are found in the small collection of ‘theoretical’ texts from Mesopotamia. [73] It is true that the Mesopotamian musical texts per se are products of scribal tradition, being used primarily for educational purposes. [74] Yet there is no reason they should not reflect, at a literate remove, a living tradition of musical practice; after all, the Akkadian terminology found practical application in the Hurrian hymns from Ugarit. [75] When this is taken together with the considerable evidence for musical mobility throughout the ANE in many periods (to be encountered in the following chapters), one has a strong case for supposing that heptatonic-diatonic tunings were also known beyond Mesopotamia and Ugarit. I shall devote a separate study to this problem. [76] Here I raise the issue only occasionally, especially in connection with the appearance of seven-numerology in ritual contexts where music is also involved; and also when considering the appearance of divinized instruments outside of Mesopotamia, since this may well have gone hand-in-hand with the diffusion of musical practice in cult contexts.

Unfortunately, little certain support for a ‘heptatonic koine’ [77] can be drawn from iconographic evidence. The very low string-counts of the Bar Kokhba coins, for instance, are clearly due to the limited space of the medium. [78] True, where an image is otherwise detailed and apparently precise, one’s confidence grows. A good example is the nine-stringed instrument shown on the thirteenth- or early twelfth-century ivory plaque from Megiddo. [79] Here one is tempted to look to the nine-stringed expression of the heptatonic tuning-cycle in Mesopotamia and its adaptation to a kind of schematic harmonic notation in the Hurrian hymns of nearby Ugarit. [80] Yet ANE music-iconography is otherwise so variable that one cannot be certain that the Megiddo plaque’s nine-strings are not fortuitous. In any case, one should not expect strict patterns in the iconography. The Mesopotamian tuning system, whatever its diachronic changes, attests an ongoing conceptual resource that could be held in musicians’ minds without being strictly deployed on every instrument—just as in our own times the knowledge of intervals, scales, and chords finds many different applications.

All in all, though the question is anything but irrelevant, we may remain agnostic as to the stringing of Jewish and other early lyres, since the knr’s attested performance contexts and related ideology are the more urgent evidence for understanding the Divine Kinnaru and Kinyras.

I have had to abandon many intriguing byways. The decoration of Egyptian instruments with the heads of gods, pharaohs, and animals demands comparison with other ANE material for divinized instruments; but the evidence is so abundant across three millennia, and opens so many philological and conceptual vistas, that even a cursory sketch has proven impractical here. [81]

I closely examine only part of the available iconography, although many specimens would reward further detailed study—for example the fascinating jar from EIA Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, which shows a seated female lyrist who may be Asherah, Yahweh’s evanescent consort (Figure 5.1y). [82] There is also a remarkable grave-stele from the Neo-Hittite site of Marash, with a goddess holding a lyre on which perches a falcon, possibly symbolizing Ishtar; a small figure, perhaps representing the soul of the deceased, sits on the goddess’s lap (Figure 5.1gg). [83]

Knr has further lexical and contextual ramifications in Coptic, [84] Aramaic dialects (Syriac, [85] Palmyrene, [86] Mandaic [87] , and perhaps Nabataean [88] ), Middle Persian (Pahlavi), [89] Arabic, [90] Old Armenian, [91] Ethiopic, [92] and several Indic and Dravidian dialects. [93] There are, besides, apparent cognates in Caucasian languages, perhaps more directly connected with Hatt./Hitt. zinar. [94] The later Aramaic dialects in particular offer fruitful areas for further research. In Syriac, the theological riddles of St. Ephraim (ca. 306–373 CE) about the “lyres of God” seem to ‘convert’ earlier Aramaean ideas of the knr; this transition must also pass through Bardaisan (ca. 154–222), whose biography suggests that he brought together the Aramaean and Hellenistic traditions in the service of early Christian songs later regarded as heretical by Ephraim. [95] In Mandaic texts, one finds a “lyre of lust” paired with pipes and frame-drum, clearly recalling both the ancient ensembles of the Syro-Levantine world, and a recurring pattern of knr-playing women—from the scantily-clad musiciennes of NK Egypt (Figures 9 and 10) to the kinnōr-playing ‘harlot’ of Isaiah 23:16 and beyond. [96]

There are also the Arabic traditions about djinn who could be conjured by means of music or inspire the songs of musicians; and an instrument’s sound could be likened to the voice of the djinn. [97] Such pagan ideas, and related concepts of musical ‘enthusiasm,’ fueled the Muslim legists in their condemnation of the art. [98]

Of special interest are the legends and cognitive conceptions of the living lyre cultures of south-coastal Saudi Arabia, [99] Egypt, and East Africa, [100] with the professed connections to Davidic tradition in Ethiopia. [101]

I hope that the present study will provide a useful foundation for the pursuit of all this further material.