The oldest complete song we can still play is carved on a Greek tombstone

Older musical writing exists — the Bronze Age Hurrian Hymn and the Delphic Hymns predate it — but those survive only in fragments. The Song of Seikilos is different: it is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, a record recognised by Guinness World Records.

Dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD, it was found engraved on a marble grave stele from the Hellenistic town of Tralles, near modern Aydin in Turkiye. Above each line of Greek lyrics sit signs and symbols that spell out an exact melody — so musicians today can reconstruct and perform it.

While you live, shine; have no grief at all. Life exists only for a short while, and time demands its toll.

The short epitaph was a husband’s dedication to his wife, Euterpe. The stele is now held in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen — a complete, singable song that has outlasted nearly two millennia.