Chelys

Ancient Greek chelys or lyre from a drawing on a vase in the British Museum

The chelys (Greek: χέλυς, Latin: testudo), was a stringed musical 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 (475) he was attracted by sounds of music while walking on the banks of the Nile, and found they proceeded from the shell of a tortoise across which were stretched tendons which the wind had set in vibration.^[1]

Apollo with the chelys lyre, on a 5th-century BC drinking cup (kylix)

The word has been applied arbitrarily since classic times to various stringed instruments, some bowed and some twanged, 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 (vol. i. p1. 43).^[2] Propertius (iv. 6) calls the instrument the lyra testudinea. Joseph Justus Scaliger^[3] was probably the first writer to draw attention to the difference between the chelys and the kithara.^[1]

The acoustics of an authentically reconstructed ancient Greek tortoise-shell lyre, known as chelys, was investigated recently.^[4] Modern experimental methods were employed, such as electronic speckle pattern laser interferometry and impulse response, to extract the vibrational behavior of the instrument and its main parts. Additionally, the emitted sound from the instrument was recorded, under controlled conditions, and spectrally analyzed. Major findings include the concentration of the emitted sound between 400 Hz and 800 Hz, with an amplitude modified in a manner consistent with the experimentally measured vibrational characteristics of the instrument’s sound box and bridge. The experimental results validate the historical evidence that chelys was used in Greek antiquity as an accompaniment instrument to the human voice.

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schlesinger, Kathleen (1911). "Chelys". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 26. 

External links

• Chelys-Lyra, Greece, 400 BCE

Greek musical instruments
Ancient	Aulos Pan flute Pandura Salpinx Water organ Lyre Barbiton Chelys Epigonion Kithara Phorminx Trigonon
String Instruments	Bowed instruments Byzantine lyra Cretan lyra Pontian lyra Plucked instruments Baglamas Bouzouki Karantouzeni Laouto Lavta Mandola Mandolin Psaltery Tambouras Thaboura Tzouras Struck instruments Santouri
Aerophones	Woodwind instruments Askomandoura Tsampouna Floghera Karamuza Lalitsa Mantura Souravli
Percussion instruments	Membranophones Tambourine Toubeleki Tympano Idiophones Cochilia Crotalum Koudounia Stamna Trigono Zilia
See also	Music of Greece Greek folk music Byzantine music Rebetiko Laïko Greek dances