During the 1928-29 season at Ur, in the Great Death Pit of the Royal Cemetery excavated by the joint University Museum-British Museum expedition headed by C. Leonard Woolley, two spectacular musical instruments were discovered--a silver boat-shaped lyre and a magnificent gold and lapis Great Bull lyre. This book chronicles their history, conservation, and reconservation.
Although little was known about mid-third millennium Mesopotamian archaeology early last century, it was clear that the Sumerians had developed a vigorous trade in luxury goods, with an economy that necessitated a highly structured government whose leaders could command rich and elaborate graves that included a full panoply of musical instruments.
In meticulous detail, using both traditional and new X-ray and electronic imaging techniques, Maude de Schauensee examines and analyzes the construction of the two lyres held by the Museum while providing an economic, historical, and sociological context in which to better understand them. She examines the decorative motifs, consulting ancient texts, along with the materials and the techniques of the builders of these instruments. New information and new conservation descriptions are published here for the first time.
Two conservators--Virginia Greene, the Museum's Senior Conservator, examined the gold lyre, and Tamsen Fuller, an objects conservator, the silver lyre--provide detailed descriptions of how they went about undoing the faulty initial work and restored the lyres as close to their original state as possible.
Musicologists, art historians, Near East scholars and archaeologists, and general readers will find this book's new analysis of the instruments of an ancient culture of significant interest.
(0 Comentarios)
