02x13 - The Search for King David's Harp

[bunniefuu]

What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology was found.

Hi how are you?

I need a planter.

A shrine to a bellybutton.

Is this a rock of salt?

Look at that!

Nobody gets in here?

Whoa! Don't take me too far.

Now that's naked archeology.

[theme music]

[SIMCHA] King David, righteous king of biblical Israel,

was a man of many talents. He slew Goliath.

He conquered the Philistines.

His love life was X-rated.

But he also had amazing musical abilities.

Before becoming king,

David was just a regular teenager with a menial job:

shepherding.

But tending sheep can get boring.

So David took up the harp.

He got good at it practicing for hours

while he tended his flock.

How do we know he got good?

There's a passage in I Samuel that says

King Saul wanted a "cunning harp player"

to calm his nerves when the evil spirit was upon him.

So David was summoned,

and when he played for Saul, sure enough,

the evil spirit departed from him.

But did David really play the harp?

The Hebrew Bible says he played a "KINNOR".

What's a kinnor? In many editions of the bible,

"kinnor" is translated as harp,

but 'kinnor' is also known as a lyre.

I'm going to find whatever kind of instrument

King David played and bring his music back to life.

To better understand King David,

who lived over , years ago,

I need to understand the role music played in his day

as well as the kind of instruments available back then.

I'm headed to the Bible Lands Museum

here in Jerusalem because they have

some of the coolest artifacts related to ancient music.

One of the oldest findings on display here

are these ,-year-old noisemakers,

which were found in a tomb wrapped around the waist

on the skeletal remains of a woman.

They'd make noise as she swung her hips like a belly dancer.

There are also depictions of musicians

playing ancient flutes, drums, and guitar-like instruments.

Curator Moshe Piamenta is here

to take us to a time before rock bands and MP players.

When we say music in the ancient world, in biblical times,

what are we talking about?

Today we look at music as a commodity, as entertainment.

If you want to hear music, you just need to open the radio

or to buy a CD.

Those days you don't have that.

If you want to hear music, you have to produce it.

You have to be the musician.

So music really wasn't just what we think of music,

it was part and parcel of storytelling, performance, religion.

Music was always perceived as a bridge

or as a doorstep into spiritual world.

[SIMCHA] So King David had an important spiritual role

as a musician.

Now let's find out what kind of harp he played.

Since I'm here in Jerusalem

I think I'll start my search in the Old City.

[shrill squeal]

What are you laughing about?

This is a kind of harp.

[aweful squeeking]

*The buffalo don't bammel...

Is this authentic biblical music?

Oops. I'm trying to sell your flute.

Oh, sorry. Sorry.

[SIMCHA] Okay, no luck here.

But I know a famous antiquities collector

who may be able to help.

Shalom! Oh!

The legendary Shlomo Moussaieff. Hi.

Hi.

You're looking good.

Thank you.

[SIMCHA] Shlomo Moussaieff

is a collector of antiquities.

Most of his vast collection is in London,

but he also has several thousand pieces here in Israel!

Woah - look at this.

[SIMCHA] I wonder if he has any musical instruments.

What is that?

This is Midianite.

NO. -Yeah.

This must be at least , years old.

Yeah.

[SIMCHA] Amazing. Depictions of instruments

that pre-date King David.

There's three women on a camel.

Somebody's playing some kind of flute,

somebody's playing a drum,

and somebody's playing cymbals, yes?

Yeah.

But no harp.

You know what this is?

You know how bands go around in buses?

This may be the original tour bus.

You want to see rock and roll?

You want to see Elvis Presley?

You got Elvis Presley?

Yeah.

I can't believe it, he's got Elvis Presley.

Look at that, he's in the Elvis position.

Ancient Elvis.

[SIMCHA] An ancient Elvis with a stringed instrument.

Close, but no harp.

So the hunt continues...

It had to be small because you don't carry a big thing

when you're tending sheep.

It had to be sturdy because you don't know

when a philistine like Goliath is going to att*ck you.

But we still don't know what David's music sounded like.

I'm back in Jerusalem, where the art of music

has been handed down from musician to musician,

there's even one who claims descent from king David.

Yeah? There's a connection?

So my father claims.

So your father...

so look, we've got a descendant of King David.

We're in Jerusalem.

There's always been here singer, poets,

and they're still here, and they're kind of

making biblical music contemporary-wise.

Here we've got one troubadour there.

Today I'm going to try to find King David's music.

I'm going to try to find King David's harp.

But in the meantime, I'm finding his modern descendants.

Yeah, there's a connection?

So my father claims.

So your father...so look,

we've got a descendant of King David.

And you're keeping the family business going.

Yeah.

And. and he wrote some pretty good music.

Oh, yeah. I like his poems.

Do you know any of them?

Sure. -Yeah?

*[singing in Hebrew]

It's the Psalm of David, ladies and gentlemen.

*[singing in Hebrew]

Wow.

[SIMCHA] That was Psalm ,

one of King David's best-known psalms.

Jewish tradition maintains that the psalms

in the Bible are the handiwork of David.

But what is a psalm?

"Sacred song or hymn."

That means David wasn't writing songs

to impress the girls, he was writing songs

as a way of worshiping God.

Maybe his melodies have been preserved in prayer.

To find out, I'm headed to a synagogue.

Professor Yaakov Kaduri has studied

how ancient music was notated.

Maybe he knows how ancient texts

were chanted and how music was handed down.

Of course it was difficult in ancient times.

They didn't have the system of notes that we have.

So how does anybody know how to chant the text?

They did develop a rather sophisticated system

for annotating the text and indicating at the same time

how it was to be sung.

They developed a system of little signs

to put into the text.

Those signs are called in Hebrew te'amim

or in English accents.

They're a kind of punctuation system.

Every word was marked with an accent,

and the accent told you three different things:

the degree of connectedness or separation between

that word and the next,

then it also indicated which syllable within the word

was accented,

and the third thing is these same accents

indicated the melody that went with that particular word.

*[singing in Hebrew]

[SIMCHA] Those te'amim have survived to this day.

Let's hear what they sound like.

*[singing in Hebrew]

Beautiful. Beautiful. I know. I've got to shake your hand.

I felt King David. You know, I did.

[SIMCHA] Professor Kaduri tells me

that these melodies may have been preserved

not only in Jewish tradition,

but in Christian tradition as well.

The psalms were sung publicly in early Christian communities,

and at least one scholar I know

felt that the Gregorian chant tradition is ultimately linked

to the way the sounds might have been rendered

in pretty early times.

[SIMCHA] So it seems King David's music

has influenced everything from sacred Gregorian chants

to the rock music of today.

But I still don't know what kind of lyre

or harp King David played.

Maybe this juice possesses the secret.

You know, looking for King David's harp,

you can work up quite a thirst.

This is the place, obviously, to get pomegranate juice, yeah?

Okay. Can I have some?

My pleasure, my friend.

[SIMCHA] So far, I've heard what David's psalms

might have sounded like , years ago

and I've seen depictions of ancient instruments

from the time of David,

but nobody can tell me exactly what King David's lyre

or harp looked like.

Thank you. Look at this.

I'm looking for King David's harp,

and there it is on the Israeli half shekel.

My God, that's incredible.

[SIMCHA] An ancient biblical lyre on a modern Israeli coin.

Maybe King David played something close to this.

Joachim Braun is an expert in ancient musical instruments.

Maybe he'll know if the lyre on a half-shekel

I have here a modern Israeli coin, the half shekel,

and it has a lyre right on it, right?

Yes, yes, I know this instrument very well.

This is a symbol not only of the lyre,

but it is a symbol of a fake. And...

A fake?

It does not respond historically to the lyres of this time.

The shape, the shape of it.

Because the arms are turned to the outside,

which in no lyre you will find such a thing.

So this lyre is comes from a forger or a liar.

It's a lyre based on a liar.

But it is true. -It's true, right?

Yes, yes.

Do we have any idea now what David's lyre,

given the archaeology, what would it have looked like?

They have two types of lyres: one elegant,

small lyre with three to four strings,

the other one was big and heavy,

with a number of things strings much larger... five to seven.

His lyre was probably the smaller type.

[SIMCHA] So a small lyre is what David actually played?

Makes sense. If it was too big,

he couldn't schlep it through the hills.

But I still want to see what it looks like.

I'm headed to the ruins of a fabulous Roman city

here in Israel, in the Galilee.

I've heard there's a mosaic there

that may be able to shed some light

on what kind of lyre David may have played.

Hey Jacob of Sepphoris, Jacob of Sepphoris.

Hey Simcha. The Naked Archaeologist.

Welcome to Sepphoris National Park.

What is this place? When did it start? When did it end?

This used to be the capital of the Galilee.

We know it's a Jewish city from probably the beginning

of the first century.

It was destroyed by the Romans when Jesus was a little guy.

[SIMCHA] That's when it became Sin City, and the cultural life

of Sepphoris really started to cook.

I've heard about this Orpheus, this music man.

What's he doing over here?

The Orpheus mosaic is a pagan motif.

It's quite an amazing mosaic.

Where's Orpheus?

Orpheus is right over here.

Over there, right?

Yeah. -Let's go.

You have a special- you're a big sh*t.

You have permission to do this.

So we're in somebody's living room.

We're now in somebody's living room,

we're in his triclinium, in his entertaining room,

and you're standing probably on one of the tables.

They would lie down in sort of like a sort of chaise chair,

a divan chair, and the servants would come

and feed them the courses.

This is the Orpheus mosaic.

[SIMCHA] Orpheus, the David of the Greeks,

was the greatest musician and poet of Greek myth,

his songs could charm wild beasts and coax trees

and rocks into dancing.

Does this Orpheus mosaic show a true picture

of King David's Lyre?

I know that King David lived , years before this lyre.

But does this give us historical information

as to what the Biblical lyre would've looked like?

Very much so. Imagine if you could go in a time machine

and take photographs of what was back then.

Here is what you have.

You see here the lyre, and you can

count the number of strings it has.

This is closer to King David's lyre

than some of the harps we see today.

Absolutely.

Things in the ancient world changed very slowly indeed.

So my guess is King David's harp looked something like this.

That's pretty big.

[SIMCHA] Maybe too big for a shepherd to schlep around.

Bottom line?

The lyre that David played, unfortunately,

we really don't know exactly what it looked like.

[SIMCHA] Ok, so I've hit a dead end.

Or have I? Both Orpheus and King David

were famous not only as lyre players,

but also as heroes and Kings.

Mythical Orpheus was King of the Cicones, Sikonehs.

And there's another famous mythical hero

who played the lyre, Tristan,

a Celtic warrior and a knight of the Round Table.

Is there a connection here

between heroes and lyre players?

Just like today, people in ancient days

wanted God to be on their side during a battle.

So it helped if their warriors were spiritual people.

Consequently, they may have used spiritual music

in hopes of b*ating their enemies to a pulp.

The fact that David was the king and musician and warrior,

this was obviously something that at that time was valued.

There is like a role in our mind of this hero of music, okay?

You can see Orpheus, you can see Tristan,

you can see David.

So there's no contradiction between being a warrior

and a musician.

No, not at all. Those warriors used music.

To conquer themselves.

Yeah, because it helps you to remember, I am not...

My lower part.

My lower part. We can see on him this w*r,

this inner w*r between his passions,

to his physical longings.

And he has a higher part which sings songs

and sings music and relates to the voice of God.

He dances. He plays instruments.

Yeah. He's a representative of human being.

He's standing in the middle and he holds both hands-

I am that and I am that. And he has to choose what he is.

[SIMCHA] So King David used music

to reach his higher spiritual self.

We still haven't heard what his music sounded like,

but I'm not giving up just yet.

I've heard about a workshop in the hills of Jerusalem

where a couple is making reproductions of harps

from King David's time.

But how do they know what they looked like?

I hate to harp on this,

but ever since I've been hunting for David's harp,

I see harps everywhere.

[SIMCHA] I now know that David played

a small harp or lyre so that he could easily schlep it

through the hills while tending his sheep.

But although I've seen depictions of instruments

from Kind David's time,

I haven't found his lyre or harp.

I'm off to a little workshop in the hills of Jerusalem

where I've heard there's a couple

that makes biblical instruments

and even harps from Kind David's time!

I'm very excited.

We're going now to biblical harp makers.

Hello? Hi. How are you?

Hello. Hi. Good. How are you?

You must be the famous harp maker.

I'm Shoshanna. Yeah.

Shoshanna the harp maker.

Come on in and I'll show you a little bit

about what we're doing.

[SIMCHA] Twenty-five years ago,

Micah and Shoshanna Harrari brought their musical

and woodworking talents to Israel

and started this workshop to recreate biblical instruments,

including David's harp.

None of the experts I've spoken to

have been able to show me what David's harp

or lyre looked like. How do the Harraris do it?

-There's three sources of information that we use.

There's the Bible, there's archeology,

and then there is the Talmud.

These are the three sources that speak about it.

And so we took everything-for example,

there's the shape and the way it looks,

so that's from archeology.

This is the shape that's on this cave,

a drawing in a cave that the archaeologists say

is , years old.

[SIMCHA] Found at Megiddo in Israel,

this etching is the earliest known depiction of a harp.

Larger than a kinnor, this would have been

known in biblical times as a nevel.

So, this is the nevel.

This is the nevel.

And this is the kinnor or the kinnor David.

[SIMCHA] I've finally found David's Harp!

All of the psalms that are in the Bible

were composed upon one or both of these instruments.

But he was a shepherd.

I find it hard to believe that he was schlepping this big thing.

He wasn't. You can pick it up. It's not heavy.

[SIMCHA] So David had a kinnor and a nevel!

But wait-didn't Professor Braun tell me

this shaped lyre was a fake?

I was told that that this image,

which is also on the half shekel,

archaeo-music-ologists say it's a fake.

Well, maybe they've never played it,

but it makes perfect musical sense,

and it also makes beautiful music.

[SIMCHA] David was quite revolutionary.

Before he came along,

pagans were also combining music and temple worship,

but they focused on orgiastic sex,

accompanied by music.

David was rejecting the pagan way

he made the music central to the worship.

*[soft harp music]

Beautiful.

When you talk archaeology or you talk about musicology,

you almost forget that they weren't going for a PhD,

they were trying to communicate to God.

So, he used his harp as a sort of cell phone to heaven.

[SIMCHA] Now that we understand

how David's harp looks like, sounds like,

and how he used it to connect to God,

I've got one more thing to show you.

There's one piece that I saw back at Shlomo Moussaieff's

that I've saved for last..

archaeology that shows us how music

was performed before David came along.

What have you got there?

Playing the harp. See her movement?

Harp! Harp!

See her body?

Look at this: a woman reclining nude.

Here are the strings.

This is dedication to music, first of all.

But second of all, we are actually talking about

an artifact that may predate David

and that actually shows a pre-biblical or biblical harp

played in a way that would raise eyebrows even today.

When I went searching for the archaeology of David's harp,

I never, ever thought that I would get to the bottom

of this archaeological mystery,

and here it is: the bottom and the harp.