Tympanum: Greece musical instrument

In the ancient Rome or Greece, the tympanum was a kind of frame drum or a tambourine. The musical instrument was circular, shallow and beaten with the bare hands by the player. Some representations show some decorations or zill-like object around the rim of the instrument. The musical instrument was performed by worshippers in the rites of Dionysus, Cybele and Sabazius.

The musical instrument is said to have originated in the old Near East, but first shows in Greek art in the 8^th century BC, on a bronze votive disc discovered in a cave on Crete that was a cult site for the Zeus.

The tympanum is one of the objects that was always carried in the thiasos, the retinue of Dionysus. The musical instrument is played by a maenad, while wind musical instrument like the pipes or the aulos are performed by satyrs. The performance of the frenzied music contributed much to achieving the ecstatic state that the Dionysian worshippers needed.

This musical instrument was the most common of the instruments linked with the rites of the Cybele in the art and literature of Greece and Rome, but does not show in the representations from Anatolia, where the goddess came from. From the 16^th century BC, the Iconography of Cybele as Meter may portray her with the musical instrument balanced on her left arm, often seated and with a lion on her lap or in attendance.