Box lyres were widespread in the ancient Middle East. Giant lyres placed on the ground and played by seated musicians appear in Sumerian (Sumer) reliefs (3rd millennium BC); some exceeded 40 inches (100 cm) in height, although smaller lyres were also used. Typically ornamented with a carved bull on one side, the Sumerian lyres were played in upright position with the fingers of both hands. They were asymmetrical, having one longer arm.

Small asymmetrical lyres predominated after Sumerian times. Most were held vertically or at an angle and were played with a plectrum; Babylonia also had a small horizontally held lyre. Egyptian lyres included (from c. 2000 BC) an asymmetrical, plectrum-plucked instrument held horizontally and (from c. 1000 BC) a smaller symmetrical lyre played upright. The Hebrew kinnor was also a box lyre. Except for the Sumerian instruments, the Middle Eastern and Greek lyres were tuned by thong or cloth bulges into which the ends of the strings were wound and which could be shifted or tightened to increase string tension. Sumerian lyres were tuned by wooden wedges inserted into the winding bulges.

As an attribute of Apollo, the god of prophecy and music, the lyre to the ancient Greeks symbolized wisdom and moderation. Greek lyres fell into two types, exemplified by the lyra and kithara. The kithara was apparently of Asiatic origin, the lyra either indigenous or of Syrian provenance. Both shared the same playing technique, tuning, and stringing, the number of strings varying from 3 or 4 in Homer's time to as many as 12 by the 5th century BC; the classical number was 7. Normally used to accompany singing, they were played by a plectrum held in the right hand, the left-hand fingers damping unwanted notes and occasionally plucking or stopping a string to produce a higher note. In solo playing, both hands apparently plucked with the fingers. The lyra was the instrument of the amateur, the kithara, of the professional singer. Latinized to “cithara,” it was adopted by the Romans.

In medieval Europe new varieties of lyre emerged that, like the kithara, were box lyres, although their precise relation to the lyres of classical antiquity is not known. The European lyres, often called rotta, varied from straight-sided to gently waisted. In most cases the body and yoke were cut from a single piece of wood. Tuning pegs replaced the wound thongs of the ancient lyres. Around the 12th century bowed lyres appeared; they are still played in Finland and Estonia under the name bowed harp. One bowed lyre was the Welsh crwth, which by the 13th century had gained a fingerboard running from the crossbar to the soundbox. Plucked lyres in which rattling pebbles are placed survive among the Ostyak and Vogul, Finno-Ugric peoples of Siberia.

The lyres of modern East Africa probably reflect ancient diffusion of the instrument via Egypt. Box lyres survive only in Ethiopia and among the Sebei, a Nilo-Hamitic people of Uganda. The Ethiopian begenna is a plectrum-plucked instrument normally used to accompany singing. Like the Sumerian lyres, it is tuned by wooden wedges. African bowl lyres vary from the Ethiopian masonquo and krar to the ndongo and odi of Uganda and similar instruments in the Congo region. In some cases the sound is made to buzz either by running the strings close to the skin or by placing a rattling object on the skin under the strings. Observation of the playing techniques and tuning of the African lyres affords insight into the probable tuning and playing techniques of the ancient Greek lyres, notably because in significant instances such observation corresponds with pictorial evidence and with some interpretations of Greek technical terminology.