The earliest hymn?

I could not find a good scan of the original, so I will try to post a modern score when I get a chance. In the meantime, hear a MIDI of the tune here. The file was taken from the Ancient Greek Music site at the Austrian Academy of Science. Go check them out and listen to all the other goodies they have there. And then, go buy this.

The following is taken from a manuscript fragment known as Parchment Oxyrhyncus 15.1786 (or more commonly as POxy 1786) and dates from the late 3rd century. It is significant for two reasons:

1. It is the latest in date of the extant compositions using ancient Greek music notation and thus marks the end of that era.
2. It is the earliest extant example of Christian hymnody. There are a few other hymns that are arguably older, including "Hail, Gladdening Light" and some passages of the New Testament (though there's some disagreement there if they are hymns or merely poetic flights.)

In this space, you will here me tell many more times how I feel about our musical heritage, both of Christendom as well as the larger heritage of Western Civilization. Christians discuss the communion of believers often, and how our bond connects us to each other across boundaries of geography and race and culture. I believe the importance of hymnody, of all of our worship traditions, is that they allow us to commune with believers across the boundaries of time. To sing "Amazing Grace" is to share in an experience common to untold brothers and sisters of the last two centuries. To sing Palestrina's "Sicut Cervus" is to breathe the same breath of a believer an ocean and half a millenium away. To hear this hymn -- to read the text, to sing it from your own tongue -- is to have a physical experience here, in 2006, in common with a bishop in Egypt in 290. We stretch across this span of space and years and we touch something that is so very, very close to the beginning of it all. We feel our kindred spirit and recognize more fully the gravity of the responsibility we have to bear faithful witness. To be a worthy disciple.

When we commune, through our worship and our song, with our future brethren, we can only hope to be so honored.

Translated by M.L. West, from Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

. . . Let it be silent,

Let the luminous stars not shine,

let the winds and all the noisy rivers die down;

and as we hymn the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

let all the powers add 'Amen, amen.'

Empire, praise always, and glory to God,

the sole giver of all good things.

Amen, amen.