Hear the Haunting Sound of an Ancient Celtic War Trumpet: Silent for 2,000 Years, It Now Sounds Again

Nor­folk is known for its net­work of rivers and lakes, its stock of medieval church­es, and for being the home coun­ty of Alan Par­tridge. Last year, it quite lit­er­al­ly unearthed anoth­er mark of dis­tinc­tion in the form of an iron age war trum­pet. “The bronze trum­pet or carnyx is only the third ever found in Britain, and the most com­plete exam­ple dis­cov­ered any­where in the world,” writes the Guardian’s Esther Addley. “Fash­ioned in the shape of a snarling wild ani­mal, the object would have been mount­ed on a long mouth­piece high above the heads of war­riors, allow­ing it to be sound­ed to intim­i­date the ene­my in bat­tle.” One could hard­ly hope for a more pow­er­ful sym­bol of Celtic fear­some­ness.

Yet “there are many con­tra­dic­tions” in the longer sto­ry of the carnyx, says envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tist Paul Whitewick in his new video, “from where it’s been found to its intend­ed use, its depic­tion on art and coins: none of those seem to make sense.” The most famous head of a carnyx was uncov­ered in a Scot­tish peat bog; anoth­er came out of the Riv­er With­am in Lin­colnshire.

In addi­tion to those recov­er­ies from non-bat­tle­field set­tings, one detailed iron­work pan­el com­mon­ly ref­er­enced in carnyx recon­struc­tion presents its use in more of a pro­ces­sion. It also became a sym­bol on Roman-era coinage, and with an appar­ent­ly wide range of mean­ing. Per­haps the carnyx was a war horn; per­haps it was much more.

Wher­ev­er the ancients typ­i­cal­ly broke them out, carnyces aren’t for dis­cussing, but for hear­ing. None was sound­ed for two mil­len­nia, until the recon­struc­tion of the one found in the peat bog, known as the Desk­ford Carnyx. The first musi­cian to give it a blow, in 1993, was John Ken­ny, who’s been known as the world’s fore­most carnyx play­er ever since. He does so in the video just above from Nation­al Muse­ums Scot­land, which offers not just the instru­men­t’s haunt­ing sound, but a close-up view of its wag­ging tongue. Ken­ny, too, believes that carnyces have uses beyond war, and even that “they are more impres­sive when they are played less loud­ly.” Still, just imag­ine how intim­i­dat­ed an ene­my army would feel upon hear­ing a whole line of them sound­ed at once — to say noth­ing of see­ing all those tongues.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Haunt­ing Aztec “Death Whis­tle,” the Instru­ment That Made Sounds Resem­bling a Human Scream

Bronze Age Britons Turned Bones of Dead Rel­a­tives into Musi­cal Instru­ments & Orna­ments

Hear a Pre­his­toric Conch Shell Musi­cal Instru­ment Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

Hear the Trip­py Mys­ti­cal Sounds of Giant Gongs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.