Trossingen Lyre

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Handmade reconstruction of the Germanic lyre from the 6th century found in a burial site in Trossingen.

The lyre is an ancient instrument. The earliest known examples of the lyre have been recovered at archeological sites that date to c. 2700 BCE in Mesopotamia. The Trossingen lyre is a Germanic lyre that is representative of a separate strand of lyre development. Appearing in warrior graves of the first millennium AD, these lyres differ from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or ‘yoke. Famous examples include the lyre from the ship burial at Sutton Hoo and and the decayed lyre discovered in silhouette at the Prittlewell royal Anglo-Saxon burial in Essex. The waterlogged lyre recovered from a grave at Trossingen, Germany, in 2001 is the best-preserved example found so far.