Anne Draffkorn Kilmer with permission of National Museum, Damascus

ON THE COVER: A 3,400-year-old cuneiform song text bearing the earliest evidence of musical notation was unearthed during the 1950’s at Ugarit, a city which flourished during the second millennium B.C. The three-inch-high, seven-inch-long tablet inscribed on both sides was found in three fragments which were then joined together by French Assyriologists. The different colors of the tablet halves are the result of dissimilar weathering. (For a detailed description of this tablet see “World’s Oldest Musical Notation Deciphered on Cuneiform Tablet.”)