Archaeologists discover earliest depiction of music scene in Israeli archaeology

Israeli archaeologists found what they think is Israel's most ancient depiction of a music scene, Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.

The scene appears on a relic of a rare 5,000-year-old large storage vessel from the Early Bronze Age, the antiquities authority said in a statement.

The relic was found in the 1970's at the Bet Ha-'Emeq antiquities site in the Western Galilee in northern Israel during an archaeological survey, but it was only recently that researchers have deciphered it.

The impression was made by rolling a cylinder seal along the surface of clay, forming a series of repeating designs. It portrays three female figures, two standing and one sitting and playing a lyre.

According to the researchers, the impression reflects a musical rite which was part of a complex ritual known in Mesopotamia as the "sacred marriage," a symbolic union between the king and a goddess (actually represented by a priestess).

"This is the first time it is definitely possible to identify a figure playing an instrument on a seal impression from the third millennium BC," said the researchers. Endit