Earliest depiction of music scene in Israeli archaeology discovered

Israeli archaeologists found what they think is Israel's most ancient depiction of a music scene, Israel Antiquities Authority announced on 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 1970s 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, Xinhua news agency reported citing the statement.

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.