Head of a Woman Holding a Sistrum

This head of a woman was likely originally part of a stele or grave marker. The woman sits in partial profile holding a sistrum close to her head, possibly making music. A sistrum is a type of rattle that originated in ancient Egypt and spread to the Greek world. (View a sistrum in the collection here: 1920.1990 [https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1920.1990].) The sistrum likely signaled to ancient viewers that the woman on the grave marker was a worshiper of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose cult spread throughout the Mediterranean after Alexander the Great took over Egypt.