The stringed instrument to show up earliest though is the harp. Harps are depicted in some, apparently genuine, Cycladic figurines, in sealstones, and schematically in the Cretan hieroglyphic script. Representations cease after the end of the Middle Bronze Age, at the same time that depictions of the phorminx begin to appear. The conclusion is that the harp became obsolescent, or specialized and reserved for women's use. This would explain the rarity of the harp in musical scenes of the classical period.
Lyres begin to appear when harps fade away.
The Cretan Ayia Triada Sarcophagus shows a phorminx, whose arms are gracefully curved, that clearly possesses seven strings. In other depictions where the strings can be counted, the number is seven. This evidence handsomely disposes of the myth, so cherished in antiquity, that the primitive lyre started out with four strings and gained three more by the innovation of Terpander in the seventh century. A Cycladic figurine represents a person playing auloi, and auloi continue to be seen, despite a short gap in the evidence, up through the Iron Age and beyond. Whether the syrinx, or panpipe, existed during the Bronze Age is doubtful.