Norwegian archaeologists discover an analogue of an ancient lyre from England in Kazakhstan

 

Norwegian archaeologists have discovered amazing similarities between musical instruments found in different countries, about 4 thousand kilometers from each other. Thus, the 800-year-old harp, found in the 1970s in Kazakhstan, is not much different from the harp from the famous medieval cemetery of Sutton Hoo in Britain’s Suffolk county, which dates back to the 7th century AD.
An article on this topic was published in the journal Antiquity.

Archaeologists, studying the strange tablets they found in 1973, could not identify them as fragments of a lyre, but a frequent analysis of the finds, conducted a few years ago by Kazakh archaeologist Azilkhan Tazkievat from Kyzylorda State University, made it possible to identify the musical instrument And determine its age – the fourth century BC.

It turned out to be the same type of harp that was found earlier in Germany and in a ship burial in Sutton Hoo, but the age of the English harp, according to history, is three centuries older than the Kazakh.

The study of the Kazakh instrument and its comparison with other guitars of the time was carried out by independent researcher Jermond Calthwaite from Norway. It is believed that the Kazakh and English types of lyre came from the Mediterranean region: it originated in the East, reached the West, to Europe, along the Silk Road or other routes.