The real thing

Over the years I've constructed several different home-made musical instruments. I made my grandson a rain stick from a Pringles can. Many of my friends have received ceramic rattles from me that I made in pottery class. One year for a Yule ritual, I strung jingle bells on metal bangles so everyone would have bells to ring. And someday I'd dearly love to make some instruments from PVC pipe like the instruments used by Blue Man Group.

Along the way I've constructed a few very primitive sistrums using y-shaped pieces of wood from my alder tree, floral wire, and flattened bottle caps. I've always thought sistrums were cool instruments. I can remember that they were mentioned in the Bible, and, before that, were associated with Isis or with Hathor.  The British museum has this lovely sistrum bearing an image of Hathor  This  instrument is supposed to sound like the wind blowing through the reeds along the banks of the River Nile. (Ancient Egyptians always connected Isis with the annual inundation of the Nile.  Here's a typical--and ancient-- sistrum with rods that create a sound by sliding back and forth.

Earlier this month, when I was at the Brooklyn Museum, I happened to see this sistrum in a case with other Egyptian antiquities. It is also decorated with an image of Hathor-as-cow-goddess. I wish now that I could remember what the museum's label said about the metal used. It looks too substantial to be copper, and the museum says it's bronze. I love Hathor's cow ears sticking out past her heavy Egyptian wig.

Goddess Egypt Egyptian museum Brooklyn+Museum Hathor Isis music musical+instrument home+made+instrument Blue+man+group Nile inundation river

Comments

[Charles @ Brooklyn Museum]

It's bronze - here is the lable:

Handle of a Sistrum Ending in
Two Hathor Cow Heads
Late Period (664–332 b.c.)
Bronze
Provenance not known
Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.586E