Video: Recreation of an Elamite harp. I talked about Iranian musical instruments before, but will focus on the harp, used in Iranian music for thousands of years until the 17th C, and now being brought back by various musicians
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Recreation of harp from Choga Mish, Iran, 6800 BCE
I believe we in fact have early evidence of this gesture from time of Bahram II (274 – 293 CE), at Tange Chogan ...
The relief was damaged in the last few centuries, but there is enough to consider this the same gesture, repeated here in this relief , possibly of Shapur II ...
"A page from Ērān-winnārd-Kawād, named Wāspuhr, stood before the King of Kings [with] the hands [crossed] under the armpits" [khosrow and the page, from Gesticulationes Sogdianorum, Shavarebi, 2022]...
Please forgive me, but I'm getting excited here... I may have connected some dots that were left unconnected before...
1: In "Ardashir and the Sasanians' Rise to Power" by Dr. @tourajdaryaee & "ReOrienting the Sasanians" by Dr. @sasanianshah I did not see these connections.
2: For some reason various sources note the name of a "Indo-Parthian" ruler as "Sasan", for example ...
in "Problems of Chronology in Gandhāran Art":
and "The interrelation between Indo-Parthian and Kushan chronology", 1992. This second article seems to provide some clues: