Analysis of two terms related to music in ancient Mesopotamianam-nar and nārūtu(m)

Résumé

We know many terms in the Sumerian and Akkadian sources for designating the musical instruments, musicians, compositions and some aspects of the musical “performance” in ancient Mesopotamia. However, there was ever a term for designating all these aspects together? There was a term for "music" in ancient Mesopotamia like in our western culture? According to the main current researchers in Mesopotamian music, there is no term in Sumerian nor Akkadian for “music”. There would be specially no term for "Music" as a sound combination as we could understand nowadays in the western culture. The closest terms to that word "music" would be nam-nar (Sumerian) and nārūtu(m) (Akkadian). However, they designated only some musical aspects, like the office of a musician or the ability for making music. In any sense, only few texts containing nam-nar and nārūtu(m) have been analysed for these researchers in order to make those statements. In consequence, the objective of this study is to analyse all the extant current mentions to nam-nar and nārūtu(m) in order to prove the consistence of that scientific agreement. The hypothesis of this study is that nam-nar and nārūtu(m) actually meant “music” in most occasions and, therefore, it existed actually a word for "music" in Mesopotamia. In order to prove the hypothesis of this study, we analyse 70 texts containing nam-nar or nārūtu(m) from the Old Akkadian Period until the Late Seleucid Period. They are presented in our study with a transliteration, translation and philological notes, and they are analysed with a commentary. In this sense, three disciplines are combined in our study: Assyriology (for the cultural-historical framework and the philological methodology), Musicology (for the topic and some comments) and the History, since all the textual excerpts are presented here according to their chronological and geographical provenance. Once we have performed the analysis of our texts, the first conclusion is that it is complicated to say something for or against the hypothesis of this study. That is caused due to the current (little) number of texts with nam-nar and nārūtu(m) in addition to their state preservation and the specific problems for each text. In any case, in most part of the texts, nam-nar and nārūtu(m) meant Music. We have texts from most of the periods of the Mesopotamian History where these terms mean “music”. Other meanings are secondary. Certainly, our earliest references to nam-nar and nārūtu(m) as “office of the musician” only come from the Late 3rd Millennium BCE. Furthermore, our references to these terms as “text corpus of the musician” come only from the 1st Millennium BCE. Therefore, on the contrary to the previous research, we can talk about a word for “music” in ancient Mesopotamia. That will be very relevant for the possible future research works about the Mesopotamian conceptions of the music, which have not been yet well-explored regarding other ancient cultures.