Seikilos epitaph

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The Seikilos epitaph is an Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation. Commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD, the inscription was found engraved on a pillar (stele) from the ancient Greek town of Tralles (modern Aydın in present-day Turkey) in 1883. The stele includes two poems; an elegiac distich and a song with vocal notation signs above the words. A Hellenistic Ionic song, it is either in the Phrygian octave species or Ionian (Iastian) tonos. The melody of the song is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in ancient Greek musical notation. While older music with notation exists (e.g. the Hurrian songs or the Delphic Hymns), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition. Based on its structure and language, the artifact is generally understood to have been an epitaph (a tombstone inscription) created by a man named Seikilos and possibly dedicated to a woman named Euterpe. An alternative view, put forward by Armand D'Angour, holds that the inscription does not mark a tomb, but was instead a monument erected by Seikilos himself to commemorate...

The Seikilos stele is an inscribed marble column from the ancient settlement of Tralles in western Anatolia, in what is now the city of Aydın, Turkey. Serving as a gravestone, it bears an elegiac distich (a form of Ancient Greek poetry) and a song transcribed in Ancient Greek musical notation.

The epitaph was discovered sometime around 1883 by Irish engineer Edward Purser during the construction of the Ottoman Railway in Aydın, Turkey. In 1883, the archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay published a description of the epitaph in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique [ fr ]. A rubbing was made of the inscription at some point prior to 1893, and was published in 1894 by French archaeologist Théodore Reinach. The base of the stele was in a damaged state; wishing to use it as a pedestal for his wife's flowerpots, Purser had the bottom of the pillar sawed flat so it would stand steadily. This destroyed a line of text on the monument, which is only documented via the earlier rubbing. The pillar later passed to the private collection of De Jongh, Purser's son-in-law, in nearby Buca.

The Dutch Consul in İzmir protected the stele during the 1922 Burning of Smyrna in the Greco-Turkish War. The consul's son-in-law transported it, via stops in Istanbul and Stockholm, to The Hague, where it remained until 1966. Presumed lost, it was acquired by the Department of Antiquities of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and revealed in December of the following year. The stele continues to be showcased at the museum.

The find has been variously dated, but the first or second century AD is the most probable guess. One authority states that on grounds of paleography the inscription can be "securely dated to the first century C.E.", while on the same basis (the use of swallow-tail serifs, the almost triangular Φ with prolongation below, ligatures between N, H, and M, and above all the peculiar form of the letter omega) another is equally certain it dates from the second century AD, and makes comparisons to dated inscriptions of 127/128 AD and 149/150 AD.

The epitaph was discovered sometime around 1883 by Irish engineer Edward Purser during the construction of the Ottoman Railway in Aydın, Turkey. In 1883, the archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay published a description of the epitaph in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique [ fr ]. A rubbing was made of the inscription at some point prior to 1893, and was published in 1894 by French archaeologist Théodore Reinach. The base of the stele was in a damaged state; wishing to use it as a pedestal for his wife's flowerpots, Purser had the bottom of the pillar sawed flat so it would stand steadily. This destroyed a line of text on the monument, which is only documented via the earlier rubbing. The pillar later passed to the private collection of De Jongh, Purser's son-in-law, in nearby Buca.

The Dutch Consul in İzmir protected the stele during the 1922 Burning of Smyrna in the Greco-Turkish War. The consul's son-in-law transported it, via stops in Istanbul and Stockholm, to The Hague, where it remained until 1966. Presumed lost, it was acquired by the Department of Antiquities of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and revealed in December of the following year. The stele continues to be showcased at the museum.

The find has been variously dated, but the first or second century AD is the most probable guess. One authority states that on grounds of paleography the inscription can be "securely dated to the first century C.E.", while on the same basis (the use of swallow-tail serifs, the almost triangular Φ with prolongation below, ligatures between N, H, and M, and above all the peculiar form of the letter omega) another is equally certain it dates from the second century AD, and makes comparisons to dated inscriptions of 127/128 AD and 149/150 AD.

The elegiac distich (also called couplet) was written on top of the tombstone and precedes the song. Originally in all-capitals (followed below by the polytonic lowercase and Latin transliteration ), it reads:

ΕΙΚΩΝ Η ΛΙΘΟΣ / ΕΙΜΙ ∙ ΤΙΘΗΣΙ ΜΕ / ΣΕΙΚΙΛΟΣ ΕΝΘΑ / ΜΝΗΜΗΣ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΥ / ΣΗΜΑ ΠΟΛΥΧΡΟΝΙΟΝ

- Εἰκὼν ἡ λίθος εἰμί. τίθησί με Σεικίλος ἔνθα μνήμης ἀθανάτου σῆμα πολυχρόνιον. eikṑn ḗ líthos eimí. títhēsí me Seikílos éntha mnḗmēs athanátou sêma polykhrónion.

Per Landels (2002), the distich translates in English as:

- "I, the stone, am an image and Seikilos places me here (to be) a long-lasting monument to immortal memory"

D'Angour (2021) maintains that the translation of the letter "Η" ( Eta ) as "the" ( ἡ ) results in an awkward phrasing in Greek, and thus prefers the conjunctive "and" ( ἤ ), which translates as "I am an image and a stone; Seikilos sets me up here as a long-lasting marker of undying memory". In all cases, the language of the distich implies that the stone should be imagined as speaking to the reader in first person and in the present tense ; a familiar structure that is commonly found in ancient epitaphs, where the stone appears to 'speak' to the passer-by (see the epitaph of Simonides ).

Below the distich follows a brief poem, also in all-capitals, with vocal notation signs above the words. The text, here excluding the musical notations (followed below by the polytonic script and Latin transliteration), reads:

- ΟΣΟΝ ΖΗΣ ΦΑΙΝΟΥ / ΜΗΔΕΝ ΟΛΩΣ ΣΥ / ΛΥΠΟΥ ΠΡΟΣ ΟΛΙ / ΓΟΝ ΕΣΤΙ ΤΟ ΖΗΝ / ΤΟ ΤΕΛΟΣ Ο ΧΡΟ / ΝΟΣ ΑΠΑΙΤΕΙ

ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου | μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ | πρὸς ὀλίγον ἔστι τὸ ζῆν | τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.

[ˈoson] [ze̝s], [ˈpʰɛnu] | [me̝ˈden] [ˈolos] [sy] [ˈlypu] | [pros] [oˈliɡon] [ˈesti] [to] [ze̝n] | [to] [ˈtelos] [o] [ˈkʰronos] [aˈpɛti]

hóson zêis, phaínou | mēdèn hólōs sỳ lypoû | pròs olígon ésti tò zên | tò télos ho khrónos apaiteî.

In English the poem translates as: "As long as you're alive, shine, don't be sad at all; life is short, time asks for its due" per Rohland (2022). Landels (1999) provides the alternative translation: "As long as you live, let the world see you, and don't make yourself miserable; life is short, and Time demands his due".