Archeologists have made a breaking discovery in Turkey’s ancient musical history: the lur.

The lur is believed to be an instrument denoted primarily to funerary settings, as it was unearthed in the site of an ancient morgue— however, interestingly enough, similar artifacts have been found in courthouses and prisons, only they are made out of steel instead of wood.

The lur is a heavy seven-stringed wooden instrument, measuring around a foot and a half in length. A**ll nine discovered artifacts of the lur weigh an average of twenty-two pounds. **Instead of being positioned on a surface to be played, it is hypothesized that the lur was instead carried by its musician, as it is equipped with a heavy leather strap to go around the torso. Though lack of evidence makes it difficult to prove whether **fingers or picks were used to pluck the strings.**

The strings make discordant, wobbly notes, similarly to a harp or untuned guitar. The lur’s sounds have been recorded in a study to cause unease in listeners, and to “sound like a woman’s gasp.”

As archeological evidence shows, the wooden lur was practiced in funerals, with a linked Turkish poem describing the high and low notes of the lur as representative of the dead’s soul having performed both evil deeds and good deeds.

In matters of law and punishment, the lur’s steel-designed cousin is believed to even play a role in the final rulings. The steel lur produces sharper and longer notes, and may have presented one’s innocence or guilt depending on the sequence that was played.