SUMERIAN TECHNOLOGY—BOBULA 665 
Kiengira, the “Holy Land of Reeds,” was the original name of 
Sumer. A reedland would be the natural home of the reed pipe. We 
do not know of any reed pipes which could have survived the ordeal 
of entombment for thousands of years, but the University of Penn- 
sylvania possesses a fine pair of silver pipes, called sometimes “a 
double oboe” (pl. 11, fig. 3). 
The same museum is the proud owner of two wonderful Sumerian 
harps, lyres, and crosses of these two types. Woolley (1950), who 
found many of them at Ur, describes them thus: 
One of these harps was the most magnificent that we have yet found; its 
sounding box was bordered with a broad edging of mosaic in red and white 
and blue, the two uprights were encrusted with shell and lapis lazuli and red 
stone arranged in zones separated by wide gold bands, the cross-bar was half 
of plain wood, half plated with silver, shell plaques engraved with animal 
scenes adorned the front and above these projected a splendid head of a 
bearded bull wrought in heavy gold. [PI. 10, fig. 1.] 
A second lyre in the same place was all of silver, with a cow’s head, 
a third with a stag, and a fourth with two stags. Woolley wonders, 
Ficure 41.—Scorpion-man and kid dancing. 
were the instruments of “different sorts, the bull denoting the bass, 
the cow the tenor and the stag perhaps the alto? Then the finding 
of four lyres together in one grave might imply a system of harmony, 
which, at this early date, would be of a very great interest for the 
history of music.” 
Musical instruments are depicted on Sumerian steles and other stone 
fragments, shown in table 426 of Christian’s (1940) Altertumskunde. 
There were bells, rattles, sistrums, and a great variety of primitive 
and sophisticated instruments. 
