Lesson plan
Chelys
with the chelys lyre, on a 5th-century BC drinking cup (kylix) The chelys or chelus ( , , both meaning "turtle" or "tortoise") was a string instrument, the common lyre of the ancient Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell. The word chelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks, which was said to have been invented by Hermes. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, he came across a tortoise near the threshold of his mother's home and decided to hollow out the shell to make the soundbox of an instrument with seven strings. The word has been applied arbitrarily since classic times to various stringed instruments, some bowed and some plucked, probably owing to the back being much vaulted. Athanasius Kircher (Musurgia universalis, 486) applied the name of chelys to a kind of viol with eight strings. Numerous representations of the chelys lyre or testudo occur on Greek vases, in which the actual tortoiseshell is depicted. A good illustration is given in Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (vol. I, p. 1, 43). Propertius (iv. 6) calls the instrument the lyra testudinea. Joseph Justus Scaliger was probably the first writer to draw attention to the difference between the chelys and the kithara. The acoustics of an authentically reconstructed ancient Greek tortoise-shell lyre, known as chelys, was investigated in 2011.…
Article summary
with the chelys lyre, on a 5th-century BC drinking cup (kylix) The chelys or chelus ( , , both meaning "turtle" or "tortoise") was a string instrument, the common lyre of the ancient Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell. The word chelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks, which was said to have been invented by Hermes. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, he came across a tortoise near the threshold of his mother's home and decided to hollow out the shell to make the soundbox of an instrument with seven strings. The word has been applied arbitrarily since classic times to various stringed instruments, some bowed and some plucked, probably owing to the back being much vaulted. Athanasius Kircher (Musurgia universalis, 486) applied the name of chelys to a kind of viol with eight strings. Numerous representations of the chelys lyre or testudo occur on Greek vases, in which the actual tortoiseshell is depicted. A good illustration is given in Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (vol. I, p. 1, 43). Propertius (iv. 6) calls the instrument the lyra testudinea. Joseph Justus Scaliger was probably the first writer to draw attention to the difference between the chelys and the kithara. The acoustics of an authentically reconstructed ancient Greek tortoise-shell lyre, known as chelys, was investigated in 2011.…
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