# Bull-Headed Lyre of Ur > Unknown Sumerian craftsmen, Ur - c. 2550-2450 BC (Early Dynastic IIIa) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/sumerian-workshop-ur/bull-headed-lyre-of-ur-penn-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-23 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Sumerian craftsmen, Ur - **Date:** c. 2550-2450 BC (Early Dynastic IIIa) - **Medium:** Gold and silver sheet, lapis lazuli, and shell over a wood core, with a modern reconstructed wood soundbox - **Dimensions:** Head and beard (B17694B): 40 x 25 x 19 cm per the Penn Museum's online catalog; the head alone is given as 35.6 cm in height in the 2003 conservation literature. Frontal plaque (B17694A): 31.5 x 11 x 1.5 cm. - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Mesopotamian, Early Dynastic III (Sumerian) - **Current location:** University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum), Philadelphia - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary What is on display in Philadelphia is a gold, silver, lapis lazuli and shell bull's head, beard and plaque excavated from the King's Grave at Ur in 1926-27, mounted on a wooden soundbox that Penn Museum conservators built in 1976-80 after discovering that the museum's own first reconstruction, made in 1929-30, was the wrong size. Leonard Woolley recovered the original ancient soundbox not as wood, which had rotted away completely in the ground, but as a plaster cast poured into the void the wood left behind, and his own published measurements of that cast were, decades later, the evidence that proved the first Penn Museum reconstruction wrong by roughly a third.The object was excavated by a joint British Museum and University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition and assigned to the University of Pennsylvania Museum's share under Iraq's 1920s division-of-finds law, alongside sibling instruments from the same cemetery now held in London and Baghdad. It is one of at least nine lyres and harps recovered from the Royal Cemetery's royal graves, buried as part of documented funerary rites involving mass sacrificial interment, and its maker, unlike the grave's principal occupant, left no name or trace beyond the physical evidence of the specialist gold, stone and wood work the head, beard and plaque still show under close examination.No maker is known. No market history exists; the object has never been sold and has been institutionally held since the 1920s division of finds. What is documented is a genuine, fifty-year mistake in its own museum's reconstruction, caught, corrected and published by the conservators who found it. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 2550-2450 BC** Made for burial with the primary occupant of PG 789, the King's Grave, Royal Cemetery of Ur `[documented]` (origin) Buried in a grave containing more than sixty sacrificed attendants in addition to the primary burial, adjacent to Queen Puabi's grave PG 800. The maker is unknown. - **c. 2450 BC-1926** In the ground, undisturbed `[documented]` (gap) The wooden soundbox decayed completely in situ over roughly four thousand years, surviving only as a void lined by the non-perishable gold, silver, lapis and shell decoration. - **1926-1927** Excavated by Leonard Woolley's joint British Museum and University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition `[documented]` (excavation) The soundbox void was cast in plaster of Paris in the field to preserve its form; the crushed head was stabilized with paraffin wax and muslin bandaging before removal. - **1927-1929** Allocated to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in the division of finds `[documented]` (division of finds) Divided under Iraq's 1924 Antiquities Law between the Iraqi state, the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The Penn Museum's own online catalog records the expedition/accession year as 1928; the object's arrival in Philadelphia is generally dated 1929 in secondary accounts. - **1929-1930** University of Pennsylvania Museum `[documented]` (first reconstruction) A new wooden soundbox was built around the surviving head, beard and plaque and decorated by museum artist M. Louise Baker. This reconstruction's soundbox dimensions did not match those Woolley had already published from the excavation cast, though this was not established until decades later. - **1955-1976** University of Pennsylvania Museum `[documented]` (reassessment) Leonard Woolley, visiting the museum in 1955, is reported to have remarked that the reproduction soundbox looked too large; comparison of the reconstruction against his own 1934 published excavation measurements later confirmed a mismatch. The 1955 visit itself is reported in tertiary literature (Wikipedia) and is flagged here for replacement with a citation to Maude de Schauensee's monograph directly; the underlying measurement mismatch is independently confirmed in the 2003 primary conservation literature. - **1976-1980** University of Pennsylvania Museum `[documented]` (full conservation and second reconstruction) The head and beard were fully disassembled, cleaned and documented, then reassembled on a new soundbox built to Woolley's original excavation measurements, roughly a third larger than the 1929-30 reconstruction it replaced. Reinstalled in the Mesopotamian Gallery in 1980. - **1996** University of Pennsylvania Museum `[documented]` (reexamination) Examined by conservator Lynn A. Grant ahead of the traveling exhibition Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur; no deterioration found in the 1976-80 repair after sixteen years on exhibit. - **2009-present** University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology `[documented]` (ongoing display) Featured in the Penn Museum's 2009 exhibition Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery, and currently on permanent display in the Middle East Galleries. ## Open questions - Who built the 1929-30 soundbox, and where, and by what process. The Penn Museum's own conservation literature states plainly that it is not certain when the first restoration was done, where, or by whom. - Why the 1929-30 reconstruction came out the wrong size at all, when Woolley's 1934 excavation report already published the soundbox's original measurements as taken from the plaster cast made in the field. No source consulted explains the discrepancy. - How the lyre was originally strung and tuned. The organic strings did not survive, and reconstructions of stringing and tuning rest on comparison with other depicted or excavated instruments rather than on direct evidence from this object. - What the frontal plaque's animal registers meant to the people who buried it. Scholars agree the imagery draws on a wider Early Dynastic repertoire of animal fable, but published readings diverge on whether the sequence is a coherent narrative or a looser assembly of stock motifs, and this record does not resolve that disagreement. - How the head was originally attached to the soundbox. The 2003 conservation literature states this directly: the system used to attach the head to the original ancient soundbox is unknown, and the surviving evidence does not allow it to be reconstructed with confidence. - Whether the accession year the Penn Museum's own online catalog records for this object, 1928, or the year commonly given in secondary literature for the division of finds, 1929, is the more accurate date for when the object physically reached Philadelphia. This record has not been able to reconcile the two from the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Penn Museum online collections catalog, 'Lyre Fragment, Bull Head - B17694B'. - [2] Penn Museum online collections catalog, 'Lyre Fragment, Plaque - B17694A'. - [3] Penn Museum online collections catalog, 'Lyre, Sound Box, Reproduction - B17694C'. - [4] Virginia Greene, 'Conservation of a Lyre from Ur: A Treatment Review', Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 42, no. 2 (2003): 261-278. - [5] Penn Museum, Expedition Magazine, 'A Spectacular Discovery'. - [6] Penn Museum, Expedition Magazine, 'The Musical Instruments from Ur and Ancient Mesopotamian Music'. - [7] Tees Valley Museums, 'Gertrude Bell and the Law of Excavation', on the 1924 Iraq Antiquities Law and the division-of-finds system used at Ur. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Bull Headed Lyre of Ur', for the 1955 Woolley visit and remark on the soundbox's proportions. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Maude de Schauensee, 'Two Lyres from Ur' (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2002), the academic monograph it and this record both ultimately depend on for that detail. - [9] Review of Maude de Schauensee, 'Two Lyres from Ur', Ethnodoxology.org, corroborating the approximately one-third size increase between the first and second soundbox reconstructions. - [10] Penn Today, 'Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery', on the Penn Museum's 2009 exhibition, the Thomas Hoving quotation, and the site's return to Iraqi state custody in 2009. - [11] Penn Museum, Expedition Magazine, 'Mary Louise Baker', for the circa-1930 photograph of Baker completing the first soundbox reconstruction. - [12] Penn Museum Publications, 'Two Lyres from Ur' by Maude de Schauensee (2002), publication listing. - [13] Wikimedia Commons file metadata (extmetadata/LicenseShortName) for each image used in this record's gallery, verified individually against the Commons API. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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