In recent years the discovery of two Late Babylonian tablets listing the names of the nine strings of the harp, and of musical intervals, and the interpretation of these tablets in a series of articles by Mme. Duchesne-Guillemin and Mrs. Draffkorn Kilmer, have brought the subject of Babylonian music into the forefront of discussion. My own responsibility for the publication of one of the tablets and my interest in the subject led me to consult a musicologist, Mr. David Wulstan of Magdalen College, Oxford, and as a result of our discussions Mr. Wulstan decided to propose a new interpretation of the two tablets. His article was already written and had been submitted for publication, when Dr. Edmond Sollberger discovered among the tablets from Ur still awaiting publication in the British Museum an Old Babylonian fragment of a musical treatise of a rather different kind. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Sollberger for generously ceding to me the right to publish this important tablet. It provides welcome confirmation of most of the conclusions already reached by Mr. Wulstan, and his article, as published in this volume, has needed very little revision.

The fragment, numbered U.7/80, is a flake measuring 100 × 89 mm. and containing parts of two columns of text. The surface is very slightly curved, but not enough to make it certain that it is from the reverse of the tablet. The terms used for the strings and intervals are (as far as they are preserved) identical with those already known from the two tablets mentioned above.