A Babylonian plaque from about 1100 B.C., now in the British Museum, depicts a large, ovoid drum on a very short stem, reaching from the ground to the player's waist—perhaps some 90 centimeters (3 feet) or so high—and struck by a man with his bare hands: this is the prototype of the goblet drum. Our next glimpse of one is some eight centuries later.
Thureau-Dangin (1921) published in his Rituels accadiens the text—in Akkadian cuneiform and a French translation—of...