shofar

shofar The ancient Hebrews called their horns by the generic name of keren; they were made of ox or of ram horn, emitted only a few tones, and were signal instruments exclusively. One of these was the ritual signal-horn shofar, the sole instrument to have survived into the twentieth century in the same form it had in antiquity. Its name is cognate with the Sumerian sheg-bar or zag-bar, the male wild goat or ibex, but although the ritual shofar may be made from the horn of any animal of the…