Short answers, pulled from the story.
The oldest known musical instrument is a bone flute discovered in the Swabian Alps of Germany, which dates back 30,000 to 37,000 years. A more controversial artifact known as the Divje Babe flute found in Slovenia in 1995 suggests human music may have begun 67,000 years ago.
By 2600 BC, the Sumerian city of Ur had produced one of the first known ensembles of instruments, including nine lyres, two harps, and a silver double flute. These instruments were buried in royal tombs to accompany the dead into the afterlife and were excavated by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s.
Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs adopted Victor-Charles Mahillon's scheme and published an extensive new scheme for classification in 1914. The Hornbostel, Sachs system remains widely used by ethnomusicologists and organologists as the most comprehensive and widely accepted method for understanding the vast array of musical instruments that exist in the world today.
Bob Moog and other inventors developed the first commercial synthesizers in the late 1960s. The latter half of the 20th century saw the evolution of synthesizers, which produce sound using circuits and microchips, creating an industry of electronic musical instruments.
The Hornbostel, Sachs system classifies instruments into four main groups: idiophones, which produce sound by vibrating the primary body of the instrument itself; membranophones, which produce sound by a vibrating a stretched membrane; chordophones, which produce sound by vibrating one or more strings; and aerophones, which produce a sound with a vibrating column of air.
The lyre appeared in Egypt 800 years after its Sumerian origins, suggesting a slow diffusion of cultural knowledge. While Mesopotamian cultures developed complex stringed instruments, neighboring Egypt initially lagged in adopting the lyre.