Music Timeline

• 2000 BCE
  The first examples of the lyre in the Bronze Age Aegean occur in the Cyclades and on Minoan Crete.
• c. 1700 BCE
  The earliest written hint to a hand-drum: the Jewish tof played by Moses’s sister, Miriam, in Exodus.
• 1420 BCE - 1300 BCE
  Clay dancing figures including a rare female lyre player are made in Minoan Palaikastro.
• c. 1400 BCE
  Lyres across the Aegean assume S-shaped arms and become more decoratively carved, most often with sculpted birds.
• 1250 BCE - 1200 BCE
  A Linear B tablet from Greek Thebes mentions lyre players as members of the royal palace staff.
• c. 750 BCE
  The earliest depiction of the tympanon on a bronze disc found in the Idaean Cave in Crete.
• c. 575 BCE
  Scythian Philosopher Anacharsis plays the tympanon in his celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as accounted by Herodotus.
• c. 525 BCE
  The tympanon first appears on Greek pottery.
• c. 499 BCE - c. 456 BCE
  Aeschylus in The Edonians tells of the bull-roaring sound of the tympanon in the rites of the moon goddess, Kotys.
• c. 405 BCE
  Euripides in The Bacchai has Dionysos tell us how the tympanon was invented by him and his Mother Goddess, Rhea.
• 396 BCE
  Competitions for heralds and trumpeters were added to the schedule of the Olympic Games.
• 328 BCE
  Herodoros of Megara wins the first of ten consecutive trumpet competitions at the Olympic Games.
• c. 205 BCE
  The tympanon is adopted by the Romans together with the cult of Magna Mater.
• 1685 CE - 1750 CE
  Life of the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
• 1906 CE - 1975 CE
  Life of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.