The man is characterized by the copious hair and thick beard which frame his face and largely cover his neck. The face, with its severe, distant expression, is that of an adult male in the prime of life, with well structured features.
He was seated on a throne and pressed his feet on a small stool, still preserved; he wears a short-sleeved tunic partially hidden by the himation covering his left shoulder and his legs.

This figure should certainly be identified with the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, whose cult was introduced by Ptolemy I Soter (late 4th century) in order to establish a patron god for the city of Alexandria; this deity also brought together the Greeks, newly arrived from Egypt, and the natives. Serapis combines the characters of Egyptian gods (Osiris and Apis) with different figures of the Greek pantheon (Zeus, Hades, Asclepius), which gave him the ability to please many faithful and to be widely worshiped: he was a god of fertility and abundance, closely linked to the Chthonic sphere, who also healed the disabled and pronounced oracles. From an iconographic point of view, his appearance owes much to the Greek god Hades: abundantly coiffed and bearded, he sits on a throne, or stands upright, and wears a chiton and a himation; his most usual attribute is the cylindrical headgear (kalathos in Greek, modius to the Romans), a symbol of agrarian fertility, sometimes coupled with the cornucopia that the god holds in his left hand, as it was probably the case for this statuette.

Serapis enjoyed great popularity during the Hellenistic period, going as far as to replace Osiris ; his large temple was located in Alexandria, but he had another famous temple in Memphis. His cult was very successful in the ancient world and spread throughout the Mediterranean basin.

The iconography of this small bronze, attested by a large number of similar figures, probably corresponds to that of the cult statue housed in the Alexandria temple, commissioned by Ptolemy II to the sculptor Bryaxis the Younger.

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