Ancient Israeli Music
Israel Antiquities Authority 23.05.2021
As Eurovision 2021 has concluded, we wish to take you back in time to the ancient music scene in Israel.
It seems that music played an important role in the lives of our ancestors – The most ancient known scene involving music here in Israel appears on a rare, 5,000-year-old cylinder seal impression from the Early Bronze Age. So believe archaeologists Dr. Yitzhak Paz, Dr. Ianir Milevski, and Nimrod Getzov of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The seal impression was found in the 1970s in the site of Bet Ha-‘Emeq during an archaeological survey conducted in the Western Galilee by Dr. Rafi Frankel. The impression was made by rolling the cylinder seal over the surface of clay before it was fired, forming a series of repeating designs.
The scene depicted in the seal impression includes three female figures, two standing, and one sitting. The seated figure is playing an instrument that appears to be a lyre - a well-known musical instrument known of the ancient world.
According to the researchers, "It seems that the rare seal impression, which appeared on a fragment of a large storage vessel (pithos), sheds light on the symbolic-ritualistic world of the Early Bronze Age inhabitants in Israel.
The importance of the scene lies in the possible symbolic context, it being part of a complex ritual known in Mesopotamia as the 'sacred marriage'. In this ceremony a symbolic union took place between the king and a goddess (actually represented by a priestess).
The ceremony included several rites: music and dancing, a banquet, a meeting between the king and the goddess and an act of sexual congress between them. Recently, Professor Pierre de Miroschedji of the CNRS suggested that many of the seal impressions from the Early Bronze Age portray the sacred marriage rite.”
This is the first time it is definitely possible to identify a figure playing a musical instrument on a seal impression from the third millennium BCE.
Reconstruction of the music scene, prepared by Nimrod Getzov, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.Share with music fans!
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