In the wider, organological sense of the word, lyres are chordophones whose strings are attached to a yoke on the same plane as the resonator, the yoke consisting of two arms and a crossbar (in contradistinction to the harp, whose strings lie on a plane different from that of the resonator); they lack a neck. In the narrower sense, the term is applied to the Greek lyra.
Lyres are either bowl or box lyres, the former having a natural or artificially...