The Pontic lyre (kemenzes or kemenze) is a stringed, fretless, bottle-shaped instrument played with a bow (Pontic toxar). Its name probably comes from the Persian word kamatsia (a type of Persian lyre) or from the ancient Greek kelis (boat) and kelomai (to urge). Other historians consider it a variant of the three-stringed Arabic instrument rembab. In the 10th c. we have the first references to it, while it passed to the West through Byzantium and in fact its evolution was the four-stringed lyre (violin). It spread in Greece after the genocide of the Pontians and their total uprooting, in the period 1922-1923.
The Pontic lyre, as the foremost musical folk instrument of the Pontic Greeks, is a solo instrument and accompanies dance and song.