The Epitaph of Seikilos is the oldest surviving complete musical composition in the world. Research suggests it dates to either the 1st or 2nd centure CE.

The music is engraved on a tombstone called the Seikilos Stele. This tombstone was discovered in 1883 by Sir William Mitchell Ramsay near the city of Aydın in present day Turkey during a construction of a railroad under the direction of Edward Purser. When it was discovered, the base was broken and couldn't stand upright.

Some accounts say that the stele was housed in a museum in Greece, but had to be evacuated out of the country during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). It was kept in the Dutch consulate for safekeeping.

There is also another story where the bottom of the stele was sawn off to make it able to stand on its own, so that the Pursers could use it as a flowerpot stand. This story explains why the bottom of the stele is neatly sawn off, cutting off the last line(s) of the inscription. The bottom line of the tombstone are now lost, but Mrs Purser did copy the bottom lines through rubbing, preserving some of the last lines. It was then passed down to their son-in-law, and then to the Dutch consulate after the end of the Greco-Turkish war.

Whatever the story, the stele was then bought by the National Museum of Denmark in in Copenhagen 1966, where it still stands until today.

Even though the text is very old, the message is still very much relevant today. It speaks of living a meaningful life to the fullest.

The text on the stele is divided into three parts: an indication (lines 1-5), the song (6-11), and a dedication (12-?).

The indication of the stele read:

ΕΙΚΩΝΗΛΙΘΟΣ

ΕΙΜΙ•ΤΙΘΗΣΙΜΕ

ΣΕΙΚΙΛΟΣΕΝΘΑ

ΜΝΗΜΗΣΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΥ

ΣΗΜΑΠΟΛΥΧΡΟΝΙΟΝ

Which translates to:

I am an icon, a gravestone

Seikilos put me here

As a sign of undying memory

The second portion is the song itself, which you can see the translation above. The small letters above the song is the musical notation which was commonly used at the time.

The dedication reads:

ΣΕΙΚΙΛΟΣΕΥΤΕΡ[...]

which confirms that it was Seikilos who wrote the song. The second portion is unclear but would have shown the relationship Seikilos would have had with whoever the second name was. Two possibilities are

ΣΕΙΚΙΛΟΣΕΥΤΕΡ[ΠΕΙ]

which would suggest he wrote it for Euterpe, which meant he could have written it for the Muse of Music, or more realistically, his wife named Euterpe, and

ΣΕΙΚΙΛΟΣΕΥΤΕΡ[ΠΟΥ]

which means Seikilos was the son of Euterpes.