Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

History of the Guitar The guitar’s history can be traced back in time through monuments, pictures, poems and sculptors. The name of the guitar can be derived from a modification of the Greek word cithara. It is a musical instrument strung with gut or nylon strings played by the fingers having a body with flat back and slight curves. Its history can be traced back over 4000 years. The oldest evidence of the existence of the guitar dates back to 1900-1800 B.C. It was found in Babylonia on clay plaques, which portray nude figures playing instruments that bear a general resemblance to the guitar. There are many cultures that take claim to inventing the guitar, but many accounts report the Egyptians had a fine example of the guitar with ribs and incurvations and a long neck identified on a monument in Cappadocia, Syria in 1000 B.C. There still seems to be great disagreement in those who claim the guitar originated in Europe or those who state it came from the Arabs. The guitar originally had two courses of strings, two double, the top course single, that ran from a violin-like peg box to a tension bridge glued to the soundboard, or belly; the bridge thus sustained the direct pull of the strings. In the belly was a circular s