A tambourine was a sacred musical instrument of the peoples of northern and southern Siberia. Shamans are known to have used it to communicate with spirits during specially organized rituals. People believed that shamans could predict the future, heal the sick, find missing animals, and ensure successful hunting and other trades.

The wooden rim of this musical instrument was made of a rectangular spruce board.

The upper part of the rim was supplemented with six resonators made of wooden posts. The tambourine was covered with the skin of red deer.

A wooden handle of a complex shape with a carved pattern was inserted on the inner side of the tambourine. An iron bar was placed across the handle in the upper part of the inner side of the instrument. Iron pendants were attached to it — five on one side and four on the other.

Metal sickle-shaped pendants symbolizing shamanic sabers were also attached to the inner part of the rim on each side of the handle.

The outer part of the tambourine shows the images inspired by pagan beliefs, according to which the world is divided into three levels: the upper one is inhabited by divine entities, the middle one by people, animals and spirits, and the lower one (underground or underwater) by dark creatures.

Tambourines were usually created and painted by men at the request of a shaman.

The pattern was applied with a grouse bone. It took from two months to two years to make a tambourine. During his life, a shaman could have no more than nine tambourines. People believed that the tambourine, like a riding animal, helps the shaman to travel through the worlds. It also personified the animal whose skin it was made of.

Shamans believed that it was possible to get to the heavenly (upper) world on a horse or a reindeer, and the lower one could be reached by an underground river with the help of a tambourine serving as a boat. A characteristic scene was painted on the exhibit from the museum’s collection. On the left side of the tambourine, a shaman on a reindeer rides upwards, loses his bodily shell and appeals directly to the supreme god Ülgen.

In the lower world a frog is depicted in white paint and a snake-like figure in black paint.