Editing Lyre (section)

====Thin lyres====
[[File:Kinnor played before a king.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Excavated at [[Tel Megiddo]], a lyre player 1350-1150 BCE, identified as a likely ''kinnor'' by scholars.<ref name="GroveKinnor">{{cite book |entry= 'Kinnor |title=The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |date=1984 |publisher=MacMillan Press |editor=Sadie Stanley |last= Montagu |first= Jeremy |volume=2 |place=London |pages=432-433 |quote=[In New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, this is the caption accompanying the image:] Kinnor played before a king: ivory plaque (1350-1150 BC) from Megiddo (Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem. }}</ref>  During the Iron Age, Megiddo was a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel.]]

Thin lyres are a type of flat-based eastern lyre with a thinner [[soundbox]] where the [[sound hole]] is created by leaving the base of the [[resonator]] open. The earliest known example of the thin lyre dates to c. 2500 BCE in [[Syria]]. After this, examples of the thin lyre can be found throughout the [[Fertile Crescent]]. The thin lyre is the only one of the ancient eastern lyres that is still used in instrument design today among current practitioners of the instrument. As a means of support, players of the thin lyre wear a sling around the left wrist which is also attached to the base of the lyre's right arm. It is played using a plectrum or pic to strike the strings; a technique later used by the Greeks on the western lyres.<ref name="Grove"/>

There are several regional variations in the design of thin lyres. The Egyptian thin lyre was characterized by arms that bulged outwards asymmetrically; a feature also found later in Samaria (c. 375–323 BCE). In contrast, thin lyres in Syria and [[Phoenicia]] (c. 700 BCE) were symmetrical in shape and had straight arms with a perpendicular yoke which formed the outline of a rectangle.<ref name="Grove"/>

The [[kinnor]] is an ancient [[Israelite]] musical instrument that is thought to be a type of thin lyre based on iconographic archaeological evidence.<ref name="Grove"/> It is the first instrument from the lyre family mentioned in the [[Old Testament]]. Its exact identification is unclear, but in the modern day it is generally translated as "harp" or "lyre",<ref name="Bromiley">{{cite book|author=Geoffrey W. Bromiley|title=The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia|date=February 1995|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zkla5Gl_66oC&pg=PA442|accessdate=4 June 2013|publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing|isbn=978-0-8028-3785-1|pages=442–}}</ref>{{rp|440}} and associated with a type of lyre depicted in Israelite imagery, particularly the [[Bar Kochba]] coins.<ref name="Bromiley"/>{{rp|440}} It has been referred to as the "national instrument" of the Jewish people,<ref name="PutnamUrban1968">{{cite book|author1=Nathanael D. Putnam|author2=Darrell E. Urban|author3=Horace Monroe Lewis|title=Three Dissertations on Ancient Instruments from Babylon to Bach|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rLDoAAAAIAAJ|accessdate=4 June 2013|year=1968|publisher=F. E. Olds}}</ref> and modern [[luthiers]] have created reproduction lyres of the "kinnor" based on this imagery.