A Hellenistic Bronze Figure of a Musician, probably Alexandria, 2nd/1st Century B.C.

standing and playing the foot-clapper with his left foot, his restored hands formerly holding a double flute, and wearing a wreath and himation falling from the left shoulder and leaving the right shoulder and left leg bare, his animated face with puffed-up cheeks and wide-set eyes.

said to have been found in Lower Egypt
Dr. Daniel Marie Fouquet (1850-1914), Cairo
James Bomford Collection, 1970s

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, prior to 1976

Paul Perdrizet, Bronzes grecs d'Egypte de la collection Fouquet, Paris, 1911, pp. 68ff., no. 104, pl. XXXII
Sotheby's, London, July 12th-13th, 1976, no. 491, illus.
Annie Bélis, "Kroupezai, scabellum," Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, vol. 112, 1988, p. 323, note 3

Hands restored in bronze up to above wrists, outer edge of mantle abraded at hip level, areas of proper left elbow, proper right leg and proper left leg and clapper with reddish pitted surface.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Flute players from Alexandria were famous performers in Roman times and in demand throughout the empire (Tacitus, Annales, XIV, 60; Julius Capitolinus, Verus, 8; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, IV, 79).

"The flute player is standing, but he is not striding; his weight rests as much on one foot as on the other; the left foot is brought forward, firmly set on the contraption called in Greek kroupezia or kroupezai, in Latin scabellum. He seems to have reached a particularly brisk part in the air he is playing; as the performer leans forward he is blowing with all his might (Perdrizet, op. cit, p. 68)."