The chelys or chelus ( el, χέλυς, la, testudo, both meaning "turtle" or "tortoise"), was a stringed musical instrument, the common

lyre The lyre () is a string instrument, stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the History of lute-family instruments, lute-family of instruments. In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it ...

of the ancient Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell. The word ''chelys'' was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks, which was said to have been invented by

Hermes Hermes (; grc-gre, Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Hermes is considered the herald of the gods. He is also considered the protector of human heralds, travellers, thieves, merchants, and orat ...

. According to the '' Homeric Hymn to Hermes'', he came across a tortoise near the threshold of his mother's home and decided to hollow out the shell to make the soundbox of an instrument with seven strings. Britannica Lyre Chelys or Lyre

The word has been applied arbitrarily since classic times to various stringed instruments, some bowed and some plucked, probably owing to the back being much vaulted.

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fe ...

(''Musurgia universalis'', 486) applied the name of chelys to a kind of

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

with eight strings. Numerous representations of the chelys lyre or testudo occur on Greek vases, in which the actual tortoiseshell is depicted. A good illustration is given in '' Le Antichità di Ercolano'' (vol. i. p1. 43).

Propertius Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC. Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of '' Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the poets Gallu ...

(iv. 6) calls the instrument the ''lyra testudinea''.

Joseph Justus Scaliger Joseph Justus Scaliger (; 5 August 1540 – 21 January 1609) was a French Calvinist religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish a ...

was probably the first writer to draw attention to the difference between the chelys and the

kithara The kithara (or Latinized cithara) ( el, κιθάρα, translit=kithāra, lat, cithara) was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. In modern Greek the word ''kithara'' has come to mean "guitar", a word which etymolog ...

. The acoustics of an authentically reconstructed ancient Greek tortoise-shell lyre, known as chelys, was investigated in 2011.E. Bakarezos, V. Vathis, S. Brezas, Y. Orphanos and N.A. Papadogiannis, "Acoustics of the Chelys - An ancient Greek tortoise-shell lyre" Applied Acoustics 73, 478 (2012) Modern experimental methods were employed, such as electronic speckle pattern laser interferometry and impulse response, to extract the vibrational behavior of the instrument and its main parts. Additionally, the emitted sound from the instrument was recorded, under controlled conditions, and spectrally analyzed. Major findings include the concentration of the emitted sound between 400 Hz and 800 Hz, with an amplitude modified in a manner consistent with the experimentally measured vibrational characteristics of the instrument’s sound box and bridge. The experimental results validate the historical evidence that chelys was used in Greek antiquity as an accompaniment instrument to the human voice.

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External links

Chelys-Lyra, Greece, 400 BCE
{{Greek musical instruments Ancient Greek musical instruments Lyres String instruments