Figurine of a Lute Player
Unknown · Middle Elamite period, c. 1500-1100 BC
Barely six centimetres high, the fragment shows a naked, beardless young man playing a lute. His body is bare except for a belt at the waist, and the long neck of the instrument crosses his chest as his fingers press the strings. The lower part of the figure is lost, but the pose is clear: a musician caught in the middle of a tune, pressed from a mould in ordinary clay.
Lute players are a recurring subject among the terracotta figurines of Susa in the Middle Elamite period, roughly fifteen hundred to eleven hundred BC. The long-necked lute is one of the earliest stringed instruments documented in the ancient Near East, and images like this one are among the best evidence for how it was held and played. Whether the musician performed in temples, at banquets or in the street is unknown. Small figurines of musicians may have been offerings, toys or simply popular images. The piece came to the Louvre through the sharing of finds from the French excavations at Susa.
Did You Know? The lute he plays has a neck far longer than its body, an instrument type still played across Iran and Central Asia today.
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