Held in one’s hand, a sistrum was often used in Ancient Egyptian religious rituals. The sound produced by the sistrum was thought to be the echo of a papyrus stem being shaken in the wind.M. B. Dowling, ‘Sistrum’, in R. S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, A. Erskine, and S. R. Huebner (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, 2013), 6272. Because they were also connected to the papyrus plant, the goddesses Isis and Hathor are closely connected to the sistrum.
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