To navigate the timeline, click and drag it with your mouse, or click on the timeline overview on the bottom.
1700 BCE
1600 BCE
1500 BCE
1400 BCE
1300 BCE
1200 BCE
1100 BCE
1000 BCE
900 BCE
800 BCE
700 BCE
600 BCE
500 BCE
400 BCE
300 BCE
1700 BCE: The earliest written hint to a hand-drum: the Jewish tof played by Moses’s sister, Miriam, in Exodus.
750 BCE: The earliest depiction of the tympanon on a bronze disc found in the Idaean Cave in Crete.
575 BCE: Scythian Philosopher Anacharsis plays the tympanon in his celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as accounted by Herodotus.
525 BCE: The tympanon first appears on Greek pottery.
499 BCE - 456 BCE: Aeschylus in The Edonians tells of the bull-roaring sound of the tympanon in the rites of the moon goddess, Kotys.
405 BCE: Euripides in The Bacchai has Dionysos tell us how the tympanon was invented by him and his Mother Goddess, Rhea.
205 BCE: The tympanon is adopted by the Romans together with the cult of Magna Mater.