Sambuca (instrument)

The sambuca (also sambute, sambiut, sambue, sambuque, or sambuke[1]) was an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin.

[7] Athenaeus also wrote that Euphorion in his book on the Isthmian Games mentioned that Troglodytae used sambuca with four strings like the Parthians.

[9] The sambuca has been compared to the siege engine of the same name by some classical writers; Polybius likens it to a rope ladder; others describe it as boat-shaped.

In a glossary by Papias of Lombardy (c. 1053), first printed at Milan in 1476, the sambuca is described as a cithara, which in that century was generally glossed "harp":[3]

In Tristan und Isolde (bars 7563-72) when the knight is enumerating to King Marke all the instruments upon which he can play, the sambiut is the last mentioned:

During the later Middle Ages sambuca was often translated "sackbut" in the vocabularies, whether merely from the phonetic similarity of the two words has not yet been established.

1st century CE Roman fresco depicting women in a peristyle, listening to another woman play a kithara (on her knee) and sambuca (on the klinē ). National Archaeological Museum, Naples
Another possible sambuca arched harp in Greek art, from the 5th century B.C.