Any one that has played Civilization 5 would be familiar with this song.
The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest known complete musical composition, it is a Hellenistic musical composition found in Aydin, Turkey in 1883 but then got lost lol and it was rediscovered in Smyrna towards the end of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922. It is carved on to a stele and is believed to be from the first century AD.
The transliteration is:
"While you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and time demands the toll"
It is believed to be a dedication to a wife
There's something about the oldest known musical composition that we have found being about death and time that strikes. Of all of the compositions that could have stood the test of time from drinking songs to ceremonial songs to poems about the gods or the earth, it's this topic.
