The Lyre is the only stringed instrument attested for the Mycenaean civilization, and this seems to foreshadow its dominance in Classical Greece, where only the pipes approach it in importance and all other instruments are of marginal significance.
The tablet TH AV 106 presents ru-ra-ta-e ‘two lyre players.’ This written evidence shows that lyra, which was probably a round-based box lyre or giant lyre played by two players, is older term than kithara or phorminx in spite of all previous suggestions.
