May 15, 2019 Comments Off on The Seikilos Epitaph, the oldest complete song in the world Views: 1815 Music, Nostalgia

The world of our ancients was filled with sounds, vibes, and music. Imagine drums, singing, and ritualistic dances before going hunting. Recall the sound of shamans performing for the entire community. Or the sound of kitharas and lyres warming the cold, marble walls of temples and shrines.

While there is an abundance of artifacts that record how connected were ancient communities and peoples with producing sounds and music, it’s less often that we get to hear reconstructed versions of the melodies they sang and played.

However, one successful example of reconstructing an ancient song brings us back to ancient Greece. The Seikilos Epitaph, which is dated to the period in between 2nd century B.C. and 1st century A.D., is believed to be the oldest surviving complete musical composition. The epitaph emerged from the ruins of the ancient city of Tralles, close to the city of Aydın in what is now Turkey and where once the ancient Greek civilization also stretched. The locality is relatively close to the ancient city of Ephesus as well.

Being only four lines long, the Epitaph goes something as follows in English:

While you live, shine,

have no grief at all.

life exists only for a short while

and Time demands his due.



The lines were inscribed on a marble stele which further reveals an inscription saying: “I am a tombstone, an image. Séikilos placed me here as a long-lasting sign of deathless remembrance.”

The composer of the song Seikilos dedicated this song in memory of his beloved wife who died. The tone and voice of the epitaph seem rather uplifting, reflecting a timeless memento mori philosophy. That as humans we should remember that life will not last forever and that we should shine and seize every moment possible.

A reproduction of the Song of Seikilos, via YouTube

Because of the song’s brevity, the ancient composer was able to inscribe the entire piece on the surface of the tombstone. The song’s brevity is probably also one of the reasons that helped it survive to modern days, thus archeologists and other experts have been fortunate to carry out full reconstruction including an approximation of the musical score. We say approximation as there is an ongoing debate if the epitaph author used Phrygian or Lastian tonos, two different modes within the musical system of ancient Greece.

Photos of the Seikilos epitaph. On the left: the marble stele containing the music notations and lyrics, photo: Nationalmuseets fotograf – Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0; On the right: Details of the marble stele, photo: Lennart Larsen, Nationalmuseets fotograf, CC BY-SA 3.0

Archeologists have been able to stumble upon pieces of music older than the Seikilos Epitaph, however, these are only fragmented remains. For instance, it was during the 1950s that clay tablet fragments from Ugarit (northern Syria) were found to contain musical symbols. One of them revealed the Hurrian hymn to Nikkal, a Semitic goddess of fertility (what would be Aphrodite, Ishtar, Venus, or Innana in other cultures). While this is the oldest known piece of musical notation (lyrics included), its reconstruction has been challenging. With elusive accuracy, there isn’t only one single reproduction of the Hurrian hymn, but several.

The Seikilos Epitaph remains to be the oldest-known complete work of music and the only such piece of artifact claimed from the remnants of ancient Greek civilization. The location of the find, around the city of Aydın, charts the map of southwestern Turkey, near the Menderes River. Centuries after the region was dominated by Greek society, today Aydın is a significant trading center in between two other Turkish cities, Afyon and Izmir.

The marble stele containing the Seikilos Epitaph is displayed at the National Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen.

We also thought to remind you of Termessos, a remote ancient city found in Turkey

Tags: ancient cities, Ancient civilizations, Ancient Explorer, Ancient Greece, archeology, culture bombs, relics, The Seikilos Epitaph