As of the present time (late autumn, 2019) my second book is approaching the completion of its first draft. I have given it the working title Music and Religion in the Ancient Near East. Here I present the first extended discussion of the relationship between music and cultic worship in ancient western Asia. The geographical coverage of the book embraces ancient Israel and Judah, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Elam, and ancient Egypt. The chronological coverage focuses on the period from approximately 3000 BCE to around 586 BCE. This wide-ranging book brings together insights from ancient archaeological, iconographic, written, and musical sources, as well as from modern scholarship. Through analysis, comparison, and evaluation of those sources, I create a picture of a world where religious culture was predominant and where music was intrinsic to the prevalent types of common cultic activity. Consideration is given to the spatial setting of cultic activity and its music (typically temples and elevated open-air sacred sites), and to the ritual context of the music (sacrifices and other rites, processions, sacred dance, the ministry of prophets, and warfare). Topics discussed in depth include the musical media themselves (human voice, plucked-string instruments, wind instruments, drums, bells, clappers, cymbals, rattles and other shaking instruments), music groups and ensembles, the sanctity and divinization of instruments, and the organization and administration of cultic music. The book concludes with an enquiry into how much we can know about the concept and idiom of music in the ancient Near East.
There are, of course, many published works that provide detailed coverage of isolated topics related to music and to religion in various regions of the ancient Near East. They include learned articles as well as books, some of which have made outstanding contributions to their field. Many of them do indeed make brief and passing comments about music cultures outside their main areas of interest. However, there has hitherto been no single publication devoted to a consideration of the relationship of music and religion in the broad context of the ancient Near East. It is my hope that this new book may go some way towards making good the lack hitherto of a dedicated treatment of the subject.