Woman Playing the Water Organ and Dwarf Playing the Trumpet
Unknown · Late Hellenistic period, first century BC
On a small base a woman stands behind a tall instrument with a row of pipes, her hair bound up in a high bun under a crown, her hands on the keys. Beside her a dwarf in a belted tunic with a cloak over his shoulders puffs into a long straight trumpet, his exaggerated phallus showing beneath the tunic. The whole group is only thirteen centimetres high, moulded in light brown clay and rejoined from two fragments. Look at the organ: its pipes rise in graded lengths from a case that would have held the water chamber, and the woman leans slightly into her playing.
The instrument is the hydraulis, the water powered organ invented at Alexandria in the third century BC by the engineer Ktesibios, and this figurine, made and found in Alexandria in the first century BC, is one of the earliest images of it. The pairing of organist and trumpet player suggests the music of a public show, a procession or the arena, and the dwarf belongs to the comic entertainers popular in the city. The Louvre bought the group in eighteen ninety one.
Did You Know? The instrument the woman plays is the hydraulis, the water organ invented in Alexandria, and this little group is one of the earliest pictures of it anywhere.
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