Museum identity: Not known

Location: The Henan Museum or Henan Provincial Museum (Chinese: 河南博物院; Pinyin: Hénán Bówùyuàn), located in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China, is a history and art museum. It has a collection of more than 130,000 pieces of cultural relics through the ages. In addition to its collection of human history the museum is also home to many relics of natural history including dinosaur bones and fossils. Henan Museum’s present building, which opened in 1997, occupies an area of more than 100,000 square meters, with a total floor space of 78,000 square meters.

Origin: Jiahu (賈湖 pinyin: Jiǎhú) was the site of a neolithic Yellow River settlement based in the central plains of ancient China, modern Wuyang, Henan Province.

Period: 7000 to 5800 BC

Culture: Peiligang culture.

Description: Over 300 burials have been unearthed at Jiahu, accompanied by burial offerings. Burial objects range from pottery to tortoise shells. One of the most significant offerings discovered were playable tonalflutes. The flutes were made from red-crowned crane wing bones. The oldest phase at Jiahu only contains two flutes, which are tetratonic and pentatonic. The middle phase at Jiahu contains several flutes, including an interesting pair of hexatonic flutes. One of the flutes was broken, and the other flute seems to be a replica of the first flute. The second flute shows evidence of adjustments made to match the pitch of the first flute. Innovations in the last phase include the use of heptatonic flutes.

The Jiahu gudi (贾湖骨笛) is the oldest known musical instrument from China, dating back to around 6000 BC. Gudi literally means “bone flute“. These bone flutes were excavated in 1986 from an early neolithic tomb in Jiahu, Wuyan County, Henan Province, in Central China. They have been dated to 6000 BC.

Measurements: These bone flutes have average dimensions of approximately 20 × 1.1 cm (7.9 × 0.4 in), and are made from the wings of the red-crowned crane. They are open-ended and vary in the number of their finger holes, from one to eight; the 8-holed version has seven holes in front and one thumb hole in back. Jiahu bone whistles are much shorter than the flutes, with lengths of 5.7 to 10.5 cm (2 to 4 in), and having only a couple of holes. The number of holes and the spacing between the holes determined the musical range and scale or mode in which the flute was intended to function. Lee and Shen believed that the Chinese understood the “resonance of an air column” (see open tube and closed tube) and were able to create an instrument that contained their “complete interval preference of Chinese music”. Blowing across the open end of an end-blown bone flute to produce a musical sound, is accomplished in the same way, and produces a similar effect, as blowing across the open top of a bottle. The eight-holed flute can play “all harmonic intervals and two registers.” These harmonic intervals are said to be a “function of culture” and were of a larger set compared to that now familiar in the West. Bone flutes were apparently also played as part of sacrificial rites, and employed in bird hunting. Gudi are not very common now, but there are some musicians today who play them.

Bibliography: Lee Yuan-Yuan and Shen, Sinyan. Chinese Musical Instruments (Chinese Music Monograph Series). 1999. Chinese Music Society of North America Press; Liu, Li. The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States; Zhang, J., Xinghua Xiao, and Yun Kuen Lee, 2004, The early development of music. Analysis of the Jiahu bone flutes. Antiquity 78(302): 769-779; Xueqin, L., Harbottle, G., Zhang, J. and Wang, C., 2003, The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China. Antiquity 77(295): 31-45; Chang, Lulu Huang. From Confucius to Kublai Khan. Canada: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1993. (2-7); Shen, Sin-Yan. China: A Journey into Its Musical Art. Chicago: Chinese Music Society of North America, 2000. (107-108); So, Jenny F. ed. Music in the Age of Confucius. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M Sackler Gallery, 2000. (88-90); Wu, Ben. “Archaeology and History of Musical Instruments in China”. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. Vol. 7. Ed Robert C. Provine, Yosihiko Tokumaru, and J Laurence Witzleban. New York: Routledge, 2002. (105-6); Zhang, JuZhong, Garman Harboolt, Changsui Wang, and ZhaoChen Kong. “Oldest playable musical instrument found at Jiahu early Neolithic site in China.” Nature. 23 September 1999. 4 February 2007. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6751/pdf/401366a0.pdf>.

Brookhaven Lab Expert Helps Date Flute Thought to be Oldest Playable Musical Instrument

Bone flute found in China at 9,000-year-old Neolithic site

Upton, NY – Researchers in China have uncovered what might be the oldest playable musical instrument. Their work is described in a paper published in the September 23 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

Recent excavations at the early Neolithic site of Jiahu, located in Henan province, China, have yielded six complete bone flutes between 7,000 and 9,000 years old. Fragments of approximately 30 other flutes were also discovered. The flutes may be the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated, multinote musical instruments.

Garman Harbottle, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and member of the Jiahu research team, helped analyze data from carbon-14 dating done in China on materials taken from the site. “Jiahu has the potential to be one of the most significant and exciting early Neolithic sites ever investigated,” said Harbottle. “The carbon dating was of crucial importance to my Chinese colleagues in establishing the age of the site and the relics found within it.”

The exquisitely-crafted flutes are all made from the ulnae, or wing bones, of the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis Millen) and have five, six, seven or eight holes. The best-preserved flute has been played and tonally analyzed in tests at the Music School of the Art Institute of China.

The discovery of these flutes presents a remarkable and rare opportunity for anthropologists, musicians and the general public to hear musical sounds as they were produced nine millennia ago. Two audio recordings of the flutes being played are available here: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/1999/Flute7.wav

The excavations and carbon-14 dating were carried out by researchers from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, China; the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China; and the Paleobotany Laboratory, Academia Sinica, Beijing, China.

Tonal analysis of the flutes revealed that the seven holes correspond to a tone scale remarkably similar to the Western eight-note scale that begins “do, re, mi.” This carefully-selected tone scale suggested to the researchers that the Neolithic musician of the seventh millennium BC could play not just single notes, but perhaps even music.

Jiahu lies in the Central Yellow River Valley in mid-Henan Province and was inhabited from 7000 BC to 5700 BC. The site was discovered by Zhu Zhi, late director of the Wuyang County Museum, in 1962, but only in the past 15 years has significant excavation activity begun. In addition to the musical instruments, the site has yielded important information on the early foundations of Chinese society. Music in China is traditionally associated with ritual observances and government affairs.

To date, only about five percent of Jiahu has been excavated, uncovering 45 house foundations, 370 cellars, nine pottery kilns and thousands of artifacts of bone, pottery, stone and other materials. Additional excavation activities are planned for the near future.

The authors of the paper describing the Jiahu findings are Juzhong Zhang, from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, China, and the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China; Changsui Wang, also from the Archaeometry Laboratory; Zhaochen Kong, from the Paleobotany Laboratory, Academia Sinica, Beijing, China; and Garman Harbottle from Brookhaven

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Museum identity: National Museum of Iran: INV:2194

Period: 2000 BC

Culture: Elamite

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Museum identity: Unknown, probably Italy

Description: Lyre player painted as a fresco

Culture: Etruscan

Location:  Tarquinia, tomba del Triclinio

Period: 480 BC

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Museum identity: British museum N.190

Description: small bronze horse collar bell.

Origin: Assyrian, Nimrud

Period: 800 BC

Measurements: Height: 5.08cm; diameter: 2.85; weight: 83gm.

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Museum identity: British museum: BM ME 108843

Description: Moulded and fired clay plaque showing bearded man wearing a short skirt playing a lute and standing before a pot placed in a tripod stand.

Origin: Old Babylonian; 2000 – 1000 BC

Measurements: Height: 7.5 centimetres; Width: 5 centimetres

Acquisition date: 1914 (Sold to the Museum collections of Mesopotamian and Egyptian artefacts in 1914.)

Acquisition name: Purchased from Albert Amor, ex-collection Maimon.

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Museum identity: British museum: N.155

Description: Bronze bell from horse collar, with rounded sides; flange around base and ring holder at the top cast in one piece with the bell. The clapper does not survive, but there are traces of an iron fixture inside the bell at the top centre.

Measurements: Height: 8.3cm; Diametre: 6.0; Weight: 280.5 gm.

Origin: Assyrian, Nimrud; Northwest Palace, [S] Room AB?

Excavated by: Sir Austen Henry Layard around 1855.  (archaeologist; politician/statesman; British; Male; 1817 – 1894) Celebrated archaeologist whose excavations greatly increased knowledge of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia; ‘discoverer’ of Nineveh and Nimrud in the late 1840s/early 1850s. Born Paris. Travelled to Egypt at the age of 22; acquired an interest in the fine arts in Italy; acquired some knowledge of Arabic and Persian languages, and then travelled overland to Ceylon. Following a suggestion made by the Royal Geographical Society he lived among the Bakhtiari tribes of western Iran in 1840-42, publishing his account in ‘Early Adventures’. He first visited Mesopotamia in 1841. He excavated most extensively at Nineveh and Nimrud in Assyria. He conducted two lengthy seasons of excavations in Assyria, from November 1845-Juner 1847 and from October 1849-April 1851. He first visited Khorsabad in August 1846 and returned to excavate there in November 1849. After his early archaeological career he turned to politics, becoming MP for Aylesbury; Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1861-1866; British Ambassador to Spain, 1869-1877; Ambassador in Turkey, 1877-1881. He retired to live in Venice, developed an important collection of paintings (bequeathed to the National Gallery) and became a patron of the glass industry at Murano. His portrait is held by the Department of the Middle East in The British Museum, and his extensive papers, now mostly in the British Library, were bequeathed to the British Museum by his widow, Enid, in 1912. His memorial plaque is in St Margaret’s church, Westminster. Author of: “A Description of the Province of Khuzistan”, ‘Journal of the Royal Geographical Society’, 16 (1846), pp. 1-105; ‘Nineveh and its Remains’ (London: John Murray 1849); ‘The Monuments of Nineveh’ (London: John Murray 1853); ‘A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh’ (London: John Murray 1853); ‘Early adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia’ (London: John Murray 1887, abridged 1894).

Exhibition History: 2008-2009 21 Sept-4 Jan, Boston, MFA, ‘Art and Empire’; 2007 2 Apr-30 Sept, Alicante, MARQ Museum, ‘Art and Empire’; 2006 1 Jul-7 Oct, Shanghai Museum, ‘Art and Empire’

Bibliographic reference: Curtis J E & Reade J E 1995a 160; Curtis J E & Reade J E 1994a 160; Dumbrill, R.J., The Idiophones of the Ancient Near East in the Collections of the British Museum.

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Museum identity: Unknown. Hosted in the Museo Arceologico0 Nazionale, Naples, Italy, Collezione Farnese.

Origin: Roman

Period: 100 BC 100 AD

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Museum identity: Unknown. in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy, Collezione Farnese.

Origin: Roman

Period: 100 BC / 100 AD

Curatorial notes: It will be interesting to note that collar bells on horses and other equidae might have been a fashion imported to Italy during the Orientalising Period on account of the wide-spread practice in Assyrian.

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Museum identity: 21275 ? in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy

Origin: Greco Roman

Period: 100 BC 100 AD

Curatorial notes: The resemblance with Ancient Near Eastern rattles from Sumer is striking and indicates that such zoomorphic idiophones were in usage from the third 10 the end of the first millennium AD, and even the first centuries AD. It is probable that these implements were imported form the Near East during the orientalising period and then that the tradition continued during the first centuries of the first millennium AD

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Museum identity: 21275 ? in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy

Origin: Greco Roman

Period: 100 BC 100 AD

Curatorial notes: The resemblance with Ancient Near Eastern rattles from Sumer is striking and indicates that such zoomorphic idiophones were in usage from the third 10 the end of the first millennium AD, and even the first centuries AD. It is probable that these implements were imported form the Near East during the orientalising period and then that the tradition lasted some centuries later.

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