Am Not...UR2

UR Lyre

The Lyre of Ur recreated from pieces found in 1929
in the Pennsylvania Museum (unplayable).
It is approximately 4,750 years old and predates the
construction of the Great Pyramid by 750 years!

Early Dynastic funerals depicted in drawings and sculpture often include musicians playing lyres or harps, instruments that were found in several of the royal tombs. Some of these lyres held inlays of feasting scenes. One of the bodies buried in the Great Death Pit near Queen Puabi was draped over a lyre like this one, the bones of her hands placed where what would have been the strings. Music seems to have been extremely important to Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: many of the graves in the Royal Cemetery contained musical instruments, and quite possibly the musicians that played them.

Modern Playable Copy

In April 2003 Mr Andy Lowings formed a group to remake an authentic, but playable version of the famous Gold Lyre of Ur , damaged in Baghdad during the conflict.
Inspiration for this came from stone carvings on view in the Chicago Oriental museum that show the earliest stringed instruments ever.
This had never been done before, authentically, using the correct original adhesives, Sumerian region wood and correct gold quality and thickness. MORE

Extract from the Standard of Ur…
Lyre Player and Singer, Ur 4750 BC.
Scene showing The Bull Lyre being played.
(Discovered separately at Ur in 1929).
British Museum London

Neuschwanstein Castle

Photo by Pilar Azaña

I was doing some research into digital SLR cameras, and one of the sites about the Canon Rebel EOS had examples posted on Flicker. I went to see and found this one that had been uploaded on October 22. I would like to think that this is a current view with a fresh dusting of snow. You can see this picture on Flicker, HERE.

I have a Flicker account, but I don't use it very often. I think it's, Happy Phil . Let me know if it works. I've got 4 pictures there.

Still Changing

The Treehouse tree, still changing. 10/24/09

Pieces Of Art

"What a cut-up" - George Bleich

I want to thank my friend George Bleich for keeping me up to date with his latest creations and experiments. You can visit George HERE.

Banjo

The Banjo Player, an 1856 painting by William Sydney Mount.

When many of us think of banjo players, we tend to picture a dull witted, slack jaw, inbred, redneck, backwoods bumpkin, picking one melody, endlessly, in the key of G or D. That would pretty much describe most of the people that seem to keep playing "Turkey In The Straw" and calling it different names, but, historically the banjo came to our shores with the people our white ancestors bought from the Dutch and the Arabs. You know, the slaves.

In our long tradition of exploiting anyone and anything, American white people attempted to imitate the African banjo players and it sounded awful. We named it bluegrass and have been assaulting peoples musical sensibilities with "Hoe Downs", ever since. In recent years, descendants of the slaves are getting even with Rap and Hip Hop.

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Seikilos Epithaph - Ancient Greek Music

Harmony