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A small Egyptian dark blue faience sistrum with blue glass inlays image 1
A small Egyptian dark blue faience sistrum with blue glass inlays image 2
The Resandro Collection of Ancient Art (Lots 14-49)
Lot 37*

A small Egyptian dark blue faience sistrum with blue glass inlays

The Classics Online: Antiquities, Clocks, European Ceramics
22 November – 9 December 2024, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, New Bond Street

Sold for £1,792 inc. premium

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A small Egyptian dark blue faience sistrum with blue glass inlays

Late Period, circa 664-332 B.C.
10.3cm high

Footnotes

Provenance:
Resandro collection, Europe, primarily formed late 1960s-1997 (R-665 (HA 211)).

Published:
I. Grimm-Stadelmann (ed.), Aesthetic Glimpses, Masterpieces of Ancient Egyptian Art, The Resandro Collection, Munich, 2012, p.208, no. R-665.

The sistrum was a form of rattle used in worship of female goddesses such as Isis and Hathor. This small-scale, but complete, sistrum was most likely dedicated as a gift to a goddess at a cultic site, as its small scale and lack of ability to hold cross-bars means it could not actually be played as a musical instrument. The three small holes on each side of the naos, imitating where the cross bars which held the sounding plates would be inserted on a full-size instrument, are here filled with blue glass. This statuette may also have been amuletic; as Carol Andrews notes, 'amulets of the sistrum...exclusive to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty and later, associated their wearer with the powerful goddess Hathor in her aspect of bringer of music and joy' (Amulets of Ancient Egypt, London, 1994, p.81). Cf. an example of a large, amuletic sistrum in green faience at the Petrie Museum of Archaeology, acc. no. LDUCE-UC38583.

Additional information

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