Welcome to the ancient page! This page, along with it's subsections (ancient 1, 2, and 3), are all
concerned with the earliest models of guitar, and how these early models evolved seperately to form
other instruments like the lute, harpsicord, citar, and many other stringed instruments. Believe it or not,
the guitar has the same ancestors as all these other instruments!
This page mostly concerns the time period of 4500/3500BC-1500AD. That's right, it goes back far
right? Farther than you thought? Most sources point to the first guitar as being made in the 16th century,
but although that is the first example of a more modern guitar, it isn't the true first. The guitar goes back
to ancient mesopotamia. The guitar may have originally gotten its name from the ancient Sanskrit word “tar,” which means string.
Many of the stringed instruments in central Asia use names that contain "tar" as a prefix to show the
number of strings on that instrument. Below on the right is the earliest known relic of that time period.
This one in particular is the lute of Har-Mose at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo
