Music and Dance, Part of Ritual Ceremonies of Ancient Iran - CAIS Archaeological & Cultural Daily News of Iran©

Oldest sketches from ritual ceremonies of Iran, evidence of their being filled with music and dancing, date back to the fifth and fourth millennium B.C.

One of the pictures is on a four legged plate from the fourth century B.C., discovered in Tal Jari, which shows the ritual dances of the era. The picture of a group of men is seen on the plate, standing half bent in a row, dancing collectively around the corona of what can be assumed to be fire, a symbol of sun, or a stack of harvest.

The other picture is that on a clay pot from the fifth millennium B.C., found in Ismail Abad, showing four people standing in front of each other with their hands upward moving to the tune of ritual and religious dances.

The pictures reveal that the oldest musical instruments are the wind ones and different kinds of drums which people invented inspired by the sound of beating wood or bone sticks on tree trunks or stone.

Besides being used in ritual ceremonies, the instruments were means of inflaming the young in battle fields.

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