The earliest harps and lyres were found in Sumer c, 3500 BCE, and several harps were found in burial pits and royal tombs Ur. The oldest depictions of harps without a forepillar are from 500 BCE, which was the Persian harp of Persepolis in Iran, and from 400 BCE in Egypt. The chang flourished in Persia in many forms from its introduction, about 3000 BCE, until the 17th century.
Around 1900 BCE arched harps in the Iraq-Iran region were replaced by angular harps with vertical or horizontal sound boxes.
By the start of the Common Era, "robust, vertical, angular harps",
which had become predominant in the Hellenistic world, were cherished in
the Sasanian
court. In the last century of the Sasanian period, angular harps were
redesigned to make them as light as possible ("light, vertical, angular
harps"); while they became more elegant, they lost their structural
rigidity. At the height of the Persian tradition of illustrated book
production (1300 to 1600 CE), such light harps were still frequently
depicted, although their use as musical instruments was reaching its
end.
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