The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a

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Lyres from various times and places are sometimes regarded by organologists as a branch of the zither family, a general category that includes not only zithers, but many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries.
Others view the lyre and

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In Ancient Greece, recitations of lyric poetry were accompanied by lyre playing. The earliest picture of a Greek lyre appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (a Minoan settlement

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• Reproduction of the lyre from the Sutton Hoo royal burial (England), c. 600 AD
• A reconstruction of a Germanic lyre (Rotte, Round lyre)

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Some instruments called "lyres" were played with a bow in Europe and parts of the Middle East, namely the Arabic rebab and its descendants, including the Byzantine lyra.
After the bow made its way into Europe from the

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The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the work or skill of a poet, as in Shelley's "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is" or

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The lyres of Ur, excavated in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), date to 2500 BC and are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments.
The kinnor is

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