The Sumerian not only developed the first cuneiform writings but all so they developed the new mathematical system with a base number of 60 (Every one of you aware, now we are following a decimal system of numbers based on 10). They have created a far-reaching acoustical theory with mathematical model for their universe. That was the laying stone for their musical system and they assigned each number to their god and their functions which is the basic ratio of music system. Here you have to keep in mind the Sumerians cuneiform writings and mathematical notations were fully exploited by the later period Babylonian who controlled them in the later period.
If you are the regular reader of my blog then no need to say In Mesopotamia the myths and mythology took a firm place in their life. They have marked the important events of their gods in bricks in a matrix form they used few symbols and marks to notate them. The classical music tones were to be deciphered and it is waiting more than 2000 years.
The musical theory is nothing but acoustic science about the notes and the distance between their pitches connecting with the ratios of integers and numbers. This kind of theory was first accredited by the famous mathematician of the 6th century BC the great Pythagoras. All the countries like India Greece, Egypt, and China of those days music was very important in cultural life and all of them have a same mythic values for the same numbers. Amazing isn’t it???
They played a greater role in mention the musical intervals. This similarity between the cultures raises our doubt that any of those people were expert in musical knowledge in other words Acoustics. The Mesopotamian used the word “Harp” which also referred the string length. You can correlate the pitch and the string length. Likely in prehistoric china people used the leg bones of the birds and they hole them accurately to give specific tones as flutes. These pairs of flutes were used in the rituals of the sacred burials. The expertise in making holes to the suitable note proves their knowledge in the music. The Sumerian tombs of fourth millennium BC gives a valuable proof for their music knowledge, harps, lyres and pipes and many literature with musical notes of hymns in clay tablet yet to be deciphered perfectly give evidence to their usage of 60 based number theory. The religious gods were assigned glyph a grooved notation or a symbol followed by a particular number named after that god himself. And the importance of these numbers can be ascertained from the triangular pebble counter.
The Sumerian mythology and cosmology is based upon the symbolic copulation of the male and female numerical number arrays. The head god of the Sumerians is the sky god “An” (A male god; I know my regular blog readers are familiar with this name) is assigned 60 written as one in cuneiform. Mathematically “An” is the geometrical mean and is the mean of any number and it’s reciprocal. Theologically An/ Anu is the central reference point, middle group of sky else it is the middle tone of reference. The Sumerian platonic harmonics are very simple to learn, why because even those can count the base ten can sing and play the scale constructively which resembles the cosmos. Since 60 are perfectly divisible by multiples of 2 and 3 it can be correlate with many subsystem which allows the handling of fractions. Amazingly this is the very early mastery of arithmetic. Most of the pitch ratios- string length calculations of ancient harps, length of the panpipes of those days which is similar to that of the flute, tone -Hole ratios of the Aulos are based on this mastery of the number theory.
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