The sambuca (also sambute, sambiut, sambue, sambuque, or sambuke) was an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin. The term sambuca is also applied to a number of other instruments.

The original sambuca is generally supposed to have been a small triangular ancient Greek harp of shrill tone, probably identical with Phoenician: sabecha and Imperial Aramaic: סַבְּכָא, romanized: sabbǝkhā, the Greek form being σαμβύκη or σαμβύχη or σαβύκη.

Eusebius wrote that the Troglodytae invented the sambuca, while Athenaeus wrote that the writer Semus of Delos said that the first person who used the sambuca was Sibylla, and that the instrument derives its name from a man named Sambyx who invented it. Athenaeus also wrote that Euphorion in his book on the Isthmian Games mentioned that Troglodytae used sambuca with four strings like the Parthians. He also add that the Magadis was an ancient instrument, but that in latter times it was altered, and had the name also changed to that of the sambuca.

The sambuca has been compared to the siege engine of the same name by some classical writers; Polybius likens it to a rope ladder; others describe it as boat-shaped. Among the musical instruments known, the Egyptian enanga best answers to these descriptions, which are doubtless responsible for the medieval drawings representing the sambuca as a kind of tambourine, for Isidore of Seville elsewhere defines the symphonia as a tambourine.

The sabka is mentioned in the Bible (Daniel 3 verses 5 to 15). In the King James Bible it is erroneously translated as "sackbut".

During the Middle Ages the word "sambuca" was applied to:

In an old glossary article on vloyt (flute), the sambuca is said to be a kind of flute:

Sambuca vel sambucus est quaedam arbor parva et mollis, unde haec sambuca est quaedam species symphoniae qui fit de illa arbore.