Chronicles the history, conservation, and reconservation of two spectacular lyres discovered at Ur in the Great Death Pit of the Royal Cemetery during the 1928-29 season. A comprehensive analysis within the economic, historical, and sociological context of mid-third millennium Mesopotamia. Includes photographs, CAT-scans, X-rays, and color plates.

During Leonard Woolley's excavations at the cemetery of Ur in the late 1920s, he uncovered two musical instruments, both of which are now housed in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The first is a silver boat-shaped lyre, the second a lyre with the head of a bull, including features in gold and lapis lazuli.