Sirius

SiStrum (Egyptian seshesht; Greek seislron) Musical rattling instrument played primarily by women, except when the pharaoh w'as making offerings to the goddess m a i iior. Although most surviving Greco-Roman examples are made of bronze, many ritual or funerary examples, which would often have been nonfunctional, w’ere made from other materials such as wood, .stone or faience.

Priestesses, princesses and royal wives were often represented shaking the instrument while participating in rituals or ceremonial activities. There were two basic types of sistrum, hooped and NAO. s-shaped, both of which were closely associated with the cult of I lathor, whose head was often depicted on the handle. An early travertine sistrum inscribed with the names of the 6lh-Dynasty' ruler tf. ti (2345-2323 uc;) takes the form of a papyrus topped by a naos, which is itself surmounted by a falcon and cobra, thus forming a rebus of

SMENKHKARa

SIWA OASIS

Snake

Detail of a Book of the Dead papyrm bearing the figure of the priestess Anhai shaking a sistrum and holding a length of vine. 20th Dynasty, c. J WO bc. (EA10472, SHEET 7)

The name of Hathor (i. c. hwt Ilor). The naos-stylc sistrum thus dates back at least as early as the Old Kingdom (2686—2181 bc), but it was the hooped style which became most common by the Greco-Roman period (332 Bc-AD 395).

N. DE G. Davies, ‘An alabaster sistrum dedicated to Y7m'gTc.’n JEA 6 (1920), 69-72.

F. D. aumas, ‘Les objects sacrcs de la deesse Hathor a Dendara’, RdE 22 (1970), 63-78.

C. ZiEGi. ER, Catalogue des instruments de musigue egyptiens (Paris, 1979), 31—40.

Siwa Oasis (anc. Sekhet-imit; Ammonium) Natural depression in the Libyan Desert about 560 km west of Cairo, where the earliest remains date to the 26th Dynasty (664— 525 BC). The site includes the cemetery of Gebel el-Mawta, dating from the 26th Dynasty to the Roman period, and two temples dedicated to the god AMUN, dating to the reigns of Ahmosc II (570—526 bc) and Nectanebo ii (360—343 Bc) respectively. In 332 bc the famous oracle of Amun at Siwa is said to have been visited by Alexander the great, where he was officially recognized as the god’s son and therefore the legitimate pharaoh. In the Middle Ages, the caravan route from northwest Africa passed through the Siwa Oasis.

A. Fakiiry, The oases of Egypt i: Suva Oasis (Cairo, 1973).

K. P. Kuhj. mann, Das Ammoneion: Archdologie, Geschichte and Kultpraxis des Orakels von Siwa (Mainz, 1988).