Chidem Inch: Armenians Invented Music Too?

PeopleOfAr and YouTube sited cited in this blog

     First it was reported in 2010 that Armenians Invented Clothes. Then a year later it was reported that Armenians Invented Wine. How amazing are we? And,it doesn’t stop there.
     On January 16, 2019, Tatul Sonentz-Papazian shared an article on Facebook that basically proves we invented music too. What? We invented music? This is crazy and very cool.  But, come on! Now we are starting to just make stuff up to irritate Recep Tayyip Erdogan (it should be noted that wholeheartedly I support such efforts in this regard).
     Actually, perhaps we did not actually create music but the we are credited with, or taking credit for, the oldest fragment of written music. Well, actually, it was our grandfather ancestors the Hurrians.  The article Sonentz-Papazian shared was from a website, The PeopleOfAr. It seems that a 3,400 year old cuneiform tablet of a hymn to the goddess of orchards was discovered in the 1950s. The tablet stated the music was written for an ancient lyre and even provided instructions for tuning. It was in a complete state where Amazingly, scholars were able to make enough sense out this to transcribe the tune to sheet music and then play it.
     There is a recording of one Michael Levy playing the tune. This YouTube post makes no mention of the Armenians except in one comment:   “Hurrians/Urartu/Hayasa-Azzi/Arme-Shupria = Armenians.” Speaking of comments here are a few I found amusing.

• This is not real music. What is it with all these "instruments" this new generation uses? In my day, we just used to sing and beat together two rocks to make music.
• Dis song is bring me back to my childhood memories
• Definitely my favourite brutal hurrian hymncore song
• If you grew up listening to this, your childhood was awesome.
• I saw these guys in concert back in the day

     So, who are the Hurrians and how do we know they are our national grandparents? I have never heard of them before. But, I am nowhere near being a historian specializing in such things. I looked them up on the internet and read two articles I found out about them in such places as the Encyclopedia Britannica and Archeology: a publication of the Archeological Institute of America. Neither of these mentioned anything about Armenians being descendants of the Hurrians. I did find a 1944 book, Hurrians and Subarians by Ignace Gelb of The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, in which Armenia and Armenians are referenced several times.
     It should be noted that on the YouTube site that one of the people that posted a serious comment, Messenger of Hor-pen-abu, in which the author basically alludes to the Assyrians being the descendants of the Hurrians. It seems that the Hurrians might have contributed to a few races. They seem to have lived at times in what is today Syria, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Armenia. Any peoples who came after the Hurrians could probably say they are descendants.
   Per Gelb:

The territory around Lake Van was occupied in the Late Assyrian period, between 900 and 600 B.C, by the state of Urartu, whose kings left many cuneiform inscriptions written in a language which is a close relative of Hurrian. This region may have formed the home of both Urartians and Hurrians with the qualification that, while the Urartians occupied predominantly the area north and east of Lake Van, the Hurrians may have held the area south and west of it. (Gelb pp 90 – 91)

     OK then, this tracks with what was written in the PeopleOfAr blog. The About PoA states:

This blog is dedicated to Armenian culture, history and everything else Armenia related. PeopleOfAr is set on a journey of self education, sharing of knowledge and pursuit of hidden Armenian cultural “treasures”, all in the spirit of academic integrity.

     So, did we invent music? Is this an Armenian song? The scholarly type in me says “I am not entirely sold on these claims. I will say that this very old song is from the regions where Armenians descended and lived for centuries.” The proud Armenian in me says, “Of course we invented music. Armenia is the cradle of civilization.”
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