This deep crimson lip-paint in a stone vial was uncovered at an old graveyard site in 2001, but researchers only now identified it.
An international team of scientists believe it was applied with a brush, unlike current lipsticks.
The discovery illuminates "public images of female allure" in the fast-changing Bronze Age, scientists say.
Professor Massimo Vidale of the University of Padua in Italy, who analyzed it, told
BBC News he likes to see it worn by "the elite societies of 5,000 years ago" ladies.
A third millennium BC graveyard along the Halil River in Kerman Province,
south-eastern Iran, yielded the cosmetic paste vial.