Archaeologists in Israel have finally deciphered the depiction on a 5,000-year-old seal impression, which they discovered portrays a sacred marriage rite. The Early Bronze Age art relic was originally unearthed in the 1970s during an archaeological survey conducted by Dr. Rafi Frankel of the Israel Antiquities Authority, at the Early Bronze Age ruins in Beit Haemek near the Western Galilee. It is now deemed the most ancient artifact to depict a music scene.
Symbolic meaning derived from Early Bronze Age Art
Archaeologists deduced that the impression was made by rolling a cylinder seal along the surface of clay before firing it up. The repeating designs on the relic show a musical scene from the marriage rite between a Mesopotamian king and a goddess. The fragment shown above in the image depicts a seated lyre player and two standing women. The important thing about this discovery is that it sheds light on the symbol-laden ritualistic world of Early Bronze Age Israel.
The “sacred marriage” rite, like the one depicted on the artifact, would typically be a scene ripe with musical revelry — there would be dancing, a banquet, a meeting between the bride (who would be represented by a priestess) and groom, leading up to the consummation. All of these rites form the complex marriage ritual that once took place in ancient Mesopotamian times.
The first identifiable musical scene in Early Bronze Age Art
The IAA reported that this finding proves indeed to be the first identifiable relic dating to the 3rd millennium B.C. that depicts a figure playing an instrument. There have been other “cultic” impressions uncovered from the Early Bronze Age era that depict scenes from feasts, in which men and women face each other before the consummation rite.
Many seals dating back to the Early Bronze Age depict scenes from the sacred marriage rite, but this recently-identified seal is the only one found at Beit Haemek to concretely show a musical scene. Other seal impressions that have been found at the same site most commonly show geometric patterns. The recovered seal has given archeologists and historical researchers an additional peek inside the musical and traditional rites of the sacred marriage ritual.
The archaeologists of the IAA are planning to present the finding on Thursday, as part of a symposium titled, “Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll” at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
