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This episode of Noted Stories, “Artifacts and Fiction,” takes three events from the past and turns them into songs (with no small amount of creative license).

In “Miss Mesopotamia,” a construction worker returns to school to become an archaeologist. On a secret dig in Iraq, his team uncovers what appears to be an ancient beauty pageant. He can’t resist telling the coworkers who once laughed at his ambitions—and one of them tips off a tabloid.

“Warm Egyptian Nights” follows a weary West Tennessee farmer who believes that, in a previous life, he swept the floors of an Egyptian pyramid. He wasn’t a pharaoh, but he does miss the warm nights beside the Nile…a different Memphis in a different time.

The final song, “The Lyre,” begins with the tradition that Nero played music while Rome burned. Although the instrument he played is commonly described as a fiddle, it most likely was a lute. So, the lute becomes the focus of this song, or rather a lyre (which is actually a yoke lute). I imagine his instrument turning up centuries later in a Jewish shop in Germany on the night of Kristallnacht. The instrument’s journey is fiction, but the destruction and persecution are history—and a reminder to stay alert to their return.

© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI