Musical Instruments Timeline

• c. 1700 BCE
  The earliest written hint to a hand-drum: the Jewish tof played by Moses’s sister, Miriam, in Exodus.
• 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.
• c. 205 BCE
  The tympanon is adopted by the Romans together with the cult of Magna Mater.