Egyptian Light Green Faience Sistrum In The Form of a Naos

The sistrum (the modern name sistrum derives from the Greek σειστρον, seistron) is composed of two elements. (1) A janiform head of the goddess Hathor, with identical pentagonal faces, is surrounded on four sides by thin locks of hair. The goddess, who wears a severe expression, has bovine ears, and her neck is adorned with a rich necklace strung with several rows of pearls. (2) A rectangular architectural element (it is actually a monumental door rather than a naos) constitutes the real musical part of the sistrum: movable bronze bars fi tted with small metal disks would have once crossed the frame of the naos and produced a rhythmic sound. The base is decorated with a standing cobra (an uraeus), while the long spiraled stems on the sides are generally interpreted as Hathor’s horns.

To the Egyptians, the sistrum was a percussion instrument chiefly used in the cults of Hathor and Isis; in the Late Period, it was also connected to other deities, sometimes even male ones. A complete sistrum has a cylindrical handle and an arched or naos-shaped upper part, pierced with holes into which bars and rings were inserted. According to popular beliefs, their clicking and rustling noises delighted the goddess Hathor, reminding her of the sounds of reeds and papyrus in the Delta, her birth region, and they were said to ease women in childbirth, dispelling evil from them.

Among the closest parallels for this sistrum is one in the Louvre, which is very similar from a morphological point of view. For stylistic reasons, it is dated to late Dynasty 25, a period to which the present example can also be attributed.

Faience sistrums in the form of a naos (called sesheshet in ancient Egyptian) appeared in the Third Intermediate Period (probably beginning in Dynasty 22) and were very popular during the Late Period and the Ptolemaic era. The use of a material as attractive and as fragile as faience—and as unsuited to the manufacture of an object for daily use—leads to the classifi cation of these sistrums among objects of symbolic worship rather than among true musical instruments; they were probably ex-votos dedicated in a shrine or placed in a tomb.

In terms of its artistic qualities and state of preservation, this sistrum is comparable to the best surviving instruments of this type.

Despite the absence of the handle, now lost, and some minor chips, the piece is very well preserved. The condition of the surface, which retains its plastic qualities and beautiful light green color, is especially noteworthy. The naos has been reglued.

With Jean-Luc Chalmin, London and Paris, end of the 1980’s; Japanese private collection.

Faïences, Phoenix Ancient Art, Geneva-New York, 2011, pp. 146-147, n. 63.

CAUBET A. et al., Faïences de l’Antiquité. De l’Egypte à l’Iran, Paris, 2005, pp. 145ff., nos. 392-394 (no. 393 pour le sistre du Louvre). FRIEDMAN F.D. (ed.), Gifts of the Nile, Ancient Egyptian Faience, Providence, 1998, pp. 215-216, no. 91. ZIEGLER C., Catalogue des instruments de musique égyptiens, Paris, 1979, pp. 31-62.