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265music transcription. There are 57 syllables, and 18 of them (like our own do, re, mi, fa,sol, la, ti) denote the single notes. All the other syllables denote the chordal combinationof two and even three sounds. Later research suggested that this excerpt represents therecording of the harp part, which is accompanying the voice, singing the melody.Semitone melodic moves are thoroughly avoided. Only the five tones within the octaveare used. The rest three or even four tones are used only when modulating in other mode.From the full scaleC D E F F# G A B Cthe musician from the Babylon uses only the following scale sequences:C D E G A CC D F G A CD E G A BD E F# A B“In these melodic sequences the semitone is always absent. It is not used neitherin diatonic nor even the chromatic phrases. The harp is following the melody in unison,simultaneously accompanying the melody with the two and three-part chords, consistingof fourths, fifths, octaves, seconds, and double octaves. The music makes an impressionof great inner unity and reminds of the Chinese music (the same way, as the system of theseasons of the year)”.“The importance of this discovery is in the fact that this is not only the first andthe only example of Babylonian music, but the only example of musical culture of pre-Hellenic epoch. Besides, this is the first example of multiphonic instrumental music, andit gives us at least some idea of what and how was performed on the multistring harp”(Sachs, 1937:103-104). Therefore, great German scholar suggested that Sumeriansinstrumental music was polyphonic.After the 1930s, when Kurt Sachs wrote these words, the archaeological researchbrought few more “first-hand” musical material to our knowledge. Few dozens of tabletswith apparently musical notations were found from the Ancient Mesopotamia,particularly during the 1960-1970s. Few different readings of these notated exampleswere suggested (see the discussion in West, 1994). The most widely known is theinterpretation made by Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, scholar who played important role ininterpreting and publishing the Ancient Mesopotamian texts related to music theory.Kilmer interpreted the interval names as indication of two-part music (the upper part as avocal line and the lower line as an accompaniment). Therefore, Kilmer also point towardsthe presence of instrumental polyphony among the peoples of Ancient Mesopotamia (inthis case in Hurrians from Ugarit, the ancient royal residence in contemporary northernSyria) (Kilmer, 1971, 1974).Kilmer’s transcriptions caused major controversy mostly because scholars couldnot believe developed two-part music could exist in Ancient Mesopotamian epoch. AsWest puts it, “One’s immediate reaction is skepticism at the notion of this kind ofharmony existing in any ancient music” (West, 1994:173). Other scholars also expressedthe same kind of skepticism (Wulstan, 1974; Duchesne-Giullemin, 1975, 1980:11-18). Asa support for her suggestion of the possible presence of polyphony in Mesopotamianmusic, Kilmer mentioned the study conducted by Hans Hickmann.