Bes- Egyptian GodDeity"Protector of Households"

The Face

Nearly every figure in Egyptian art was drawn in profile. Bes stared straight out. A dwarf's body, a lion's mane, bandy legs, a protruding tongue. His face confronted evil head-on, and artists carved or painted it that way on beds, chairs, mirrors, knives, and cosmetic containers. He appeared on the humblest household objects, not in grand temples. No elaborate priesthood served him. His protection was domestic and personal, practiced in homes by ordinary people.

He danced. He played the tambourine. He made noise. In Egyptian belief, commotion drove evil spirits away, and Bes provided commotion with everything he had: wild dancing, bared teeth, music loud enough to scatter demons from any room he occupied.

The Birthing Room

Women squatted on decorated birth bricks during delivery. The birth brick of Renseneb, excavated at South Abydos and dated to the Thirteenth Dynasty, bears Bes's image alongside Taweret, the hippopotamus goddess who shared his watch over pregnant women and newborns. Birthing rooms were painted with his face. Women wore his amulets against their skin.

He guarded sleep as well. Wooden headrests, the supports Egyptians used instead of pillows, were carved with his image to ward off nightmares. At Deir el-Medina, the workers' village that built the royal tombs, his face appeared throughout the houses: on walls, on furniture, on the small objects of daily life. The workers who spent their days preparing for the pharaoh's eternity came home to a dwarf god's protection.

The Bes Chamber

At Saqqara, near the Serapeum complex, excavators uncovered a room covered floor to ceiling with images of Bes. The chamber may have served as a healing sanctuary where the sick sought cures through sacred sleep under his watch. During the Ptolemaic period, Bes vessels and terracotta figurines spread well beyond Egypt, his grotesque face traveling wherever people needed a guardian for their homes and children.