Lyres

The lyre () (from Greek λύρα and Latin lyra) is a stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the lute family of instruments. In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound table, and consists of two arms and a crossbar.

thumb|322x322px|Young kitharode|kithara player, in costume, by the Goluchow painter; Athens, The kithara (), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching music to beginners. As opposed to the simpler lyre, the cithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. In modern Greek, the word kithara has come to mean "guitar"; etymologically, the word guitar derives from kithara.

Kinnor ( kīnnōr) is an ancient Israelite musical instrument in the yoke lutes family, the first one to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.

thumb|200px|Greece 460-450 B.C. A woman holds a barbiton.

Phorminx is also a genus of cylindrical bark beetles.

The krar (Geʽez: ክራር) is a five-or-six stringed bowl-shaped lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is tuned to a pentatonic scale. A modern krar may be amplified, much in the same way as an electric guitar or violin. The krar, along with the masenqo and the washint, is one of the most widespread musical instruments in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The begena, () is a ten-stringed box-lyre instrument from Ethiopia, and is the sole melodic instrument devoted only to the zema, the spiritual part of Ethiopian music.

The simsimiyya (Arabic: سمسمية or سنسمية simsimyya/sinsimiyya; pl. simsimiyyāt/sinsimiyyāt, سمسميات) is a box or bowl lyre used in Egypt. Models exist with both circular soundboxes as well as rectangular. In the past, Egyptian models had 5 strings. The strings are held in place by pegs instead of tuning rings. Today, images of the instrument in Egypt may show 12 strings. It has been played since ancient times.

traditional string instrument

musical instrument

thumb|Cylix of Apollo with the chelys lyre, on a 5th-century BC drinking cup ([[kylix)]]

300px|thumb|:en:Nyatiti|Nyatiti 300px|thumb|Nyatiti played in Tanzania during a school cultural day The nyatiti is a five to eight-stringed plucked bowl yoke lute from Kenya. It is a classical instrument played by the Luo people of Western Kenya, specifically in the Siaya region north of Kisumu. It is about two to three feet long with a bowl-shaped, carved wood resonator covered in cow skin. Historically, strings were fashioned from cattle tendons, but modern players almost exclusively use nylon and plastic fishing line of various sizes, a move which changed the sound of the nyatiti drasticall

The kissar (also spelled kissir), tanbour or gytarah barbaryeh is the traditional Nubian lyre, still in use in Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. It consists of a body having instead of the traditional tortoise-shell back, a shallow, round bowl of wood, covered with a soundboard of sheepskin, in which are two small round sound-holes. The arms, set through the soundboard at points distant about the third of the diameter from the circumference, have the familiar fan shape. Five gut strings, knotted round the bar and raised from the soundboard by means of a bridge tailpiece similar to that in u

plucked string instrument widely used in north-western Europe from pre-Christian to medieval times