Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources (review)

Archaeomusicology, a field that explores past music cultures through archaeological artifacts and texts, provides a unique perspective through which to research and comprehend previous societies and their musical lives. It is somewhat buried in the larger discipline of music history with its focus on notated music, and more so ethnomusicology with its concentration on fieldwork. Indeed, musicological studies based on archaeological findings are still relatively rare, although since the 20th century a number of interdisciplinary methodologies in the field of archaeomusicology began developing. The exploration of musical culture in ancient Israel/Palestine especially attests to this and is evident in Bathja Bayer’s The Material Relics of Music in Ancient Palestine and Its Environs: An Archaeological Inventory (Israel Music Institute 1963), documenting about 250 archaeological finds, and Alfred Sendrey’s Music in Ancient Israel (Philosophical Library 1969). However, at this point these studies are largely outdated due to new findings, new interpretations, and new methodologies.

Joachim Braun’s Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine provides an up-to-date study that brings a fresh wind to archaeomusicology, with broader questions and deeper theoretical exploration. He aims for an integrated approach, though rooted in archaeology, that widens the perspectives to some ethnomusicological and sociological questions, combining archaeological and written with comparative ethnological sources to “gain insight into the character of that music, into its ‘setting in life’ and symbolism” (xi). The monograph is a revised, updated, and enlarged version of the German edition Die Musikkultur Altisraels/ Palästinas: Studien zu archäologischen, schriftlichen und vergleichenden Quellen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999). The English text considers relevant literature published since the writing of the German version and new archaeological finds. However, the author does not detail the kinds of discoveries made since, for they do not indicate new musical activities or include new musical instruments, and thus do not change the picture drawn in the earlier edition.

Musikkultur or music culture is the subject of this study—and not “music” as the English title misleadingly states—in all senses of the word. For one, Musikkultur refers to (religious) musical cultures of the many ethnicities of ancient Palestine/Israel that Braun discusses, among them Dionysians, Edomites, Idumaeans, Israelites and Judaeans, Nabataeans, Philistines, Phoenicians, and Samaritans. For another, Musikkultur indicates that the focus is not the music itself (as sources are scarce and little is known about the musical notation in the ancient Holy Land), but rather a good 650 archaeological finds from Israel/ Palestine and some adjacent areas of southern Syria and Lebanon, as well as comparative materials from the Near East at large, that give insight into the musical culture of the region from the Stone Age to the late Roman period.

Although Braun’s goal is not a total restoration of the ancient music culture, he provides a comprehensive and encompassing insight into the music history of antiquity in Israel/Palestine. Thus Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine is much more than an inventory. The author presents a tremendous amount of sources, ranging from written (mainly biblical texts, canonical post biblical writings, and documents of the Bronze Age that serve to identify instruments and give insight into the perception and performance of music) to archaeological (musical instruments, figurines, etched stone illustrations and other iconographic depictions, seals, and mosaics), and discusses some of them in great detail, often in sociocultural contexts, thus exploring larger cultural implications. Braun also considers discrepancies between written and archaeological material, even opting out of any analysis if the sources do not allow for a correct and consistent image, as in the case of the Babylonian-Persian period. In addition, the influences on and exchanges between the musical arts with other areas or ethnicities are taken into consideration. Further, Braun provides varied information on the organology of aerophones, chordophones, membranophones, and idiophones; confluences of music and dance; musical life...