Old Anglo-Saxon lyre also on the Silk Road


A 1600 year old lyre from what is now Kazakhstan resembles musical instruments found in Anglo-Saxon graves from the 1st millennium. Apparently the relevant knowledge about the stringed instrument, which is also called the lyre, and with it a technology, had been passed on over thousands of kilometers.

During the Soviet era, archaeologists excavated a settlement in the Kazakh region of Dzhetyasar and found a wooden object. It later turned out to be the remains of a stringed musical instrument from the 4th century AD. Upon re-examining the object, Gjermund Kolltveit, an independent researcher in Nesodden, Norway, noticed that the lyre resembles lyres discovered in early medieval cemeteries in England and Germany. This includes an example that was found in the famous boat burial in Sutton Hoo, UK. The grave there was dug in the 7th century.

Lyra in comparison | On the left a drawing of the lyre from the settlement in the Kazakh region of Dzhetyasar, on the right a replica of the lyre from Sutton Hoo.

The Kazakh lyre is high and flat, and it has a one-piece sound box with a curved bottom. The arms are hollow and connected at the top by a crosspiece. The form and technology, it has been assumed so far, were unique in Western Europe.

Since Dzhetyasar was once on the Silk Road, the design of the lyre could have reached Kazakhstan – or traveled in one direction or the other from there – on this ancient trade route that linked Europe with China. The cultural exchange is an example of an early musical technology transfer between West and East, as study author Kolltveit writes in the specialist journal »Antiquity«.



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