The Bull Headed Lyre is one of the oldest stringed instruments ever discovered. The lyre was excavated in the
Royal Cemetery of Ur
The Royal Cemetery at Ur is an archaeological site in modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate in southern Iraq. The initial excavations at Ur took place between 1922 and 1934 under the direction of Leonard Woolley in association with the British Museum and ...
during the 1926–1927 season of an archeological dig carried out in what is now Iraq jointly by the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. Leonard Woolley led the excavations.
The lyre was found in “The King’s Grave”, near the bodies of more than sixty soldiers and attendants. It is one of