Sistrum

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although the sound elements have disappeared, the wires are preserved on this functional arc sistrum. The wires terminate in duck heads; in pharaonic examples they mainly take the form of reared cobras. Sound disks would move on the wires, which might also themselves move, to rattle against one another. Where the sound elements are preserved, they are flat or cymbal-like pieces of metal. This arc sistrum is a type seen outside Egypt in the Roman period in the context of Isis cults that encircled the Mediterranean. It does not show the goddess face at the juncture of arc and handle, presumably because the ancient fetish of Bat / Hathor was not understood as necessarily relevant. Indeed, the naos sistrum iconic for Hathor apparently did not move beyond Egypt at all. Atop this sistrum lies a cat, wearing a crescent and disk, with her young. The cat may represent solar associations, or the pacified aspect of the goddess soothed by the sistrum, or she might simply evoke an Egyptian atmosphere. At either side, below the projecting ends of the bars on the flat sides of the arc are what appear to be a crown of Isis and a pine-cone, the latter a Roman symbol of good fortune.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art