Древний струнный инструмент Пандура

Ancient string instrument

The pandura (πανδοῦρα, pandoura) or pandore, an ancient string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork depicts such lutes from the 3rd or 4th century BC onward. Iranian influences are indicated by the Persian origin of the word.

The ancient Greek pandoura was a medium or long necked lute with a small resonating chamber, used by the ancient Greeks. It commonly had three strings: such an instrument was also known as the trichordon (three stringed) (τρίχορδον, McKinnon 1984:10). Its descendants still survive as the Kartvelian panduri, the Greek tambouras and bouzouki, the North African kuitra, the Eastern Mediterranean saz and the Balkan tamburica and remained popular also in the near east and eastern Europe, too, usually acquiring a third string in the course of time, since the fourth century BC. Renato Meucci (1996) suggests that the some Italian Renaissance descendants of pandura type were called chitarra italiana, mandore or mandola.

Information about Roman pandura type instruments comes mainly from ancient Roman artwork. Under the Romans the pandura was modified: the long neck was preserved but was made wider to take four strings, and the body was either oval or slightly broader at the base, but without the inward curves of the pear shaped instruments. The word pandura was rare in classical Latin writers.

Lute class instruments were present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BC.