(Lat., from Gk. seistron: ‘that which is shaken’; Fr. sistre; It., Sp. sistro).
A sliding rattle in the shape of a spur (classified as an Idiophone). It consists of a ‘U’- or lyre-shaped form, often of silver, with a straight, usually wooden, handle protruding from the bottom. The ‘U’ is traversed by loose-fitting metal rods or wires which jingle when shaken. Frequently small loose discs are fitted on the rods to create additional sound. This is the form it retains when used in the ritual of the Ethiopian Church, where it is known as sanāsel or tsenatsil. Possibly of sub-Saharan origin, the instrument still appears among certain African tribes.
The sistrum was especially common in Egyptian cult practice, at first in the worship of Hathor and later in that of Isis. Its function is usually interpreted as having been apotropaic, that is, to ward off undesirable evil spirits. From Egypt it spread to other Near Eastern civilizations, and Hattian sistra were highly developed by the end of the 3rd millennium in Anatolia. There a kind of sistrum became associated with the worship of Cybele, as seems clear from a Roman terracotta.
The Egyptian sistrum had two main forms: the arched sistrum, usually of metal (see illustration), and the sistrum in the form of a naos or shrine, mostly of faience. The central feature of both was a head of the goddess Hathor. Decoration often included a cat (sacred to Bastet) and the uraeus. The ends of the metal rods used for mounting the sounding-plates were sometimes shaped to represent the uraeus or a bird’s head. The naos sistrum appears to have been indigenous to Egypt. This is the form of a model alabaster instrument inscribed with the titles of King Teti (c2345 bce) in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Associated with the divine wives of Amun, often royal princesses dedicated to the service of the god, the sistrum gradually assumed primary importance in the temple. With the spread of Isis worship in the Roman world, use of the sistrum was widespread, particularly after Egypt became a Roman province in 30 bce. The cult was at first frowned upon officially as exotic, luxurious and associated above all with the hated Cleopatra; but it became established with the building of an Isis temple in 38 ce under Caligula. Roman representations of Isis generally showed the sistrum as a chief attribute, and in Egypt a Roman emperor might be portrayed worshipping her or Hathor with a sistrum, one arched and the other of the naos type, in each hand. The sistrum has been revived for use in modern percussion works, for example, Double Music (1941) by John Cage and Lou Harrison.
See also Greece, §I, 5(i)(d).
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H. Hickmann: Catalogue générale des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire (Cairo, 1949)
H. Hickmann: ‘Eine Sonderform des griechischen Sistrums’, Musa – mens – musici: im Gedenken an Walther Vetter, ed. H. Wegener (Leipzig, 1969), 27–8
R.D. Anderson: Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, iii (London, 1976)
C. Ziegler: Les instruments de musique égyptiens au Musée du Louvre (Paris, 1979)
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 172–3
JAMES W. McKINNON, ROBERT ANDERSON