I have been making a lute bridge today, which has me thinking about bridges. Most of the very early lutes, especially the longed-neck lutes from Ancient Egypt, Elam, Iraq, Byzantium, etc., have bridges held in place by the strings, which terminated at the end of the instrument. Although a few images of Egyptian instruments from the 18th Dynasty seem to have bridges glued onto the fronts, most styles of ancient makers chose to connect the string tension to the instrument's body rather than have it stop at a fixture glued to the front. After seeing the vihuela E.7048 In the Cité de la Musique in Paris, I can understand why. String tension has caused the bridge to come off that instrument many times, judging by the condition of the front. The early Persian ʿūd makers came from a tradition of instruments that had strings fixed to each end, but they chose to develop a design where one end of the string terminated at a fixed strip of wood glued to the front. I can see trying that once, but doing it twice and then developing a whole musical heritage around the design? It was an interesting decision.