Pair of clappers

A pair of clappers could be played either with both hands or with just one. That this pair was played one-handed is indicated by the holes near the rounded ends, which show slight traces of wear caused by rubbing from an attached string.

Ancient Egyptian depictions of performers playing clappers are frequent, and clappers were used in all activities featuring music or singing, such as banquets, funerary processions, and rituals. When played, the instruments marked the rhythm and substituted for or complemented hand-clapping. Hands were therefore an obvious choice for their shape, but they also had a religious connotation. The goddess Hathor could be called "the hand of Atum," a reference to the myth that this god created the world through masturbation. Not only generally associated with Hathor as "mistress of music," hand-shaped clappers specifically signify her creative and regenerative powers. They sometimes incorporate a depiction of Hathor’s head, and clappers in various shapes seem to have been part of a regenerative ritual closely connected to her.

Clapping with hands or with clappers was possibly used as a magical act to drive away evil forces. A single clapper was part of the magical equipment found in the Ramesseum, which also included a female figure with a lion’s head; in Kahun a pair was discovered in a hole in the floor of a house, together with a figurine similar to the one from the Ramesseum (a mask depicting a lion was also excavated nearby).

This pair of clappers was found together with at least thirteen more, a surprisingly large number. They were excavated in a tomb shaft containing several burials of the mid-Twelfth to Thirteenth Dynasty that was located within a Late Middle Kingdom house. Since these burials were robbed in antiquity, their contents may have been mixed up with those of the house, and thus the clappers may have come from either one or several of the burials or from the occupants of the house. In addition, the plan of the excavators appears to show, very close to this tomb shaft, a small, freestanding structure that may have functioned as a chapel. It may also be possible that the clappers originally derived from there, or that the owners of the tomb and house had an affiliation with the freestanding building.

Isabel Stünkel 2017

Excavated by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Acquired by the Museum in the division of finds.

Hayes, William C. 1953. Scepter of Egypt I: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge, Mass.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 247.

Stünkel, Isabel 2015. "Pair of Clappers." In Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, edited by Adela Oppenheim, Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 105, no. 46.

Morris, Ellen 2017. "Middle Kingdom Clappers, Dancers, Birth Magic, and the Reinvention of Ritual." In Company of Images: Modelling the Imaginary World of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000-1500 BC). Proceedings of the International Conference of the EPOCHS Project held 18th-20th September 2014 at UCL, London, edited by Gianluca Miniaci, Marilina Betrò, and Stephen Quirke. Leuven and Paris and Bristol, Connecticut: Peeters, pp. 304–05, fig. 7.